Okay, one last adventure before I turn this traveler loose and let it find its way through the geo-verse.
Today was the annual Wings Over Wiggins Fly-in, and once again this year a small group of skydivers was invited to perform at the event. Bill, Joe, Ryan, and I were the lucky ones. We made three skydives over the Wiggins airport in front of a crowd of approximately 400, I'm told.
On the first skydive, I jumped my 70 foot long red, white, and blue streamers while Bill jumped a flag and Ryan (since it was his first exhibition jump) just concentrated on the jump without doing anything extra.
For jump number two, I had prepared some red and blue smoke canisters on a couple of foot brackets and Ryan and I wore those while Joe jumped the American flag. Ryan and I flew crisscross paths to paint red and blue zigzag smoke trails in front of Joe with the flag. Bill stayed on the ground and did the announcing over the PA system. He kept it very entertaining for the crowd, suggesting that we were having problems with our equipment when we started smoking and speculating whether or not we were going to make it back to land at the airport, etc.
On the third and final jump, Joe and Ryan got out on the first pass while I stayed in the plane and gained a little more altitude. As the plane flew upwind on the second pass, I got out a little downwind and flew my R-Bird wingsuit up the runway in front of the crowd. Because of the wingsuit, instead of getting 20 seconds of freefall, I flew the wingsuit for 50 seconds before deploying my parachute at a safe altitude upwind of the crowd.
It sure was a fun day, with three great jumps. Afterwards most of us went to Bill's restaurant in Wiggins and had a great meal (we were starving!) and talked about the day and skydiving in general. After that, Ryan and I drove to the dropzone and made one more jump to finish out the day. Awesome! This geocoin was my sky companion and made all the jumps with me today.
Here's a video I put together of the three jumps at the fly-in:
Wings Over Wiggins Skydives
Hopefully this geocoin has been shown a good time, and it and the owner haven't been traumatized too much by all the extreme activities. This little guy will be released into a local geocache soon to continue its travels. I'm wishing it many miles and smiles on its journey.
Blue skies!
Model Citizen - Zero Discipline