The Joys of Logging

It’s always interesting when I stumble across something in my belongings that I haven’t seen or read in years. Today, I found all my skydiving logbooks, and of course, I had to glance back through them all. To my surprise, I discovered that at the end of my 2nd full logbook, I had tabulated the stats of that particular time period. Made for an interesting glimpse back on my nomadic skydiving life which I would like to share with you:

From October 1993 – January 1996 (jumps #154 − 453): I had skydived at 21 drop zones, to include 2 official demo jumps (one at an international airport and the other in to a football field) and 1 unintentional in to a K-Mart parking lot :). I had travelled through 5 American states, 6 countries (Canada, USA, Britain, South Africa, Mozambique and Kenya), attended 1 World Freefall Convention, 4 big name competitions / events (the US Nationals, Klerksdorp Nationals, World Meet ’93 and a Lake Wales World Record), 5 Boogies (Mmabatho, PPC, Arizona, Sebastian, Skydive City). The most unusual aircraft I had jumped during this time were a Luscombe, Puma helicopter and the Constellation (to date the coolest plane I have ever exited). I finagled 6 free helicopter jumps and a handful from other planes (sucks being a girl ;)). Plus on top of that, I literally won a free weekend of skydiving at Deland Florida in a Christmas Raffle at Bill Booth’s annual Christmas party. It wasn’t all fun and roses though … in South Africa, I managed to impale myself on a thorn tree demoing a new-to-me canopy (I still have the scars), I sprained an ankle, slid in on my face when I flared too low, and dislocated a toe (from dirtdiving barefoot, of all things = that’s a no-no in my books now). The sum of all these experiences made for some spectacular stories early on in my skydiving career. 🙂

People used to ask me why I kept such detailed logbooks of all my jumps …. the reason, as you can see, is so that I can go back to a time in my life when the memory fails to remember such magnificent moments in history. It’s hard to capture and encapsulate such a colourful past, but logbooks certainly do help!