Day 8 - Thursday - Final Day

So onto the final day of my holiday. I had a lay-in today (9am is a relative lay-in!), had some breakfast in the Infantas café (croissant, cafe con leche y zuma naranjas as standard!) then walked around Aranjuez to have a look round in the daylight and take some pictures of the royal palace and gardens that are situated in the town. After that I headed to the DZ to spend a sunny day sitting around talking to the others and relaxing - which I think I needed after all the energy and adrenaline used up in the 7 days previously. The sun stayed out all day, and at about 5pm I headed off to Madrid Barajas to catch my flight home. After my troubles of getting lost for 2 hours on the way from the airport to Aranjuez I decided to leave myself plenty of time to get back - but with better directions and a car that WASN'T overheating, I made it to the airport with 2 hours to go til my flight. From the stories I've heard there have been more than a few skydivers who have missed their flights due to fitting in 'just one more jump'! They must be very disappointed having to stay another day in the sun ;)

The experience has been stressful and tiring at times, but has been excellent overall and well worth the cost. The people on the DZ - both staff and skydivers - have been great, and definitely very welcoming. I have no regrets about doing it, and feel a sense of achievement knowing I completed it :)

Since being back I think I've appreciated the feeling and the experience even more, especially when reliving it by telling people all about it. I'm feeling like I want to go back soon, and maybe get some tunnel time in before that just to try things out in the relative safety of the wind tunnel.
The sun, the people, the atmosphere, and the whole experience may be too appealing to keep me away...

As always - Blue skies and soft landings :)

Day 7 - Wednesday

Another day of great weather so I got my final three consols in, followed by my 'hop n pop' (or hoppus poppus as it was nicknamed by some of the others!).

On the hop n pop, you're taken to around 6k feet instead of 13.5k feet and there is no freefalling (as such) involved. Once you're out of the plane and stable (i.e. belly facing the earth!) you pull your chute and glide down. It's done to train you in exiting stable and pulling quickly, in the case of an emergency on any plane. I exited stable and pulled fairly quickly (after i'd pulled I was still at 5k - time for some spirals), though my instructor who was also on the plane said it wasn't my most tidy exit! Still counts as stable though!

I did the low jump with Drew (who completed his AFF and 10 consols too while I was there) and Ian (a formation skydiver who was just doing it for fun). Ian decided to exit the plane in a 'bomb' style - like making a splash into a swimming pool - and Drew decided to be a bit extreme and try a few moves out in freefall before pulling (he likes to push himself as much as he can I think :P). Then the plane went on up to the full altitude to let the rest of the others exit.

After i'd done that jump I knew that i'd achieved everything I'd gone to Spain to do - 18 jumps in total - and I was very pleased :) Had a couple of Cheers vodka and cokes that evening as I didn't have to get up early the next day (or jump from any planes unless I really felt the need), along with some food. We had a chinese meal this evening (I think there was about 14 of us there) which was nice, and a regular spot for the skydiving crowd I believe!

Day 6 - Tuesday

The sun was back again today so I aimed to get 4 jumps in, leaving 2 more plus my hop n pop to do on the thursday, giving me friday free to relax (and just in case the weather turned sour and slowed down the jumping). I got up on 3 loads spread through the day but by 6pm was feeling tired (these long days with not much sleep were catching up on me a bit!) so I decided I wasn't gonna jump any more so left it at that. In the evening we went to The Cookery to eat, which is like an american diner - I can personally recommend the burgers, and apparently the ribs are particularly good too!

Day 5 - Monday

The day started sunny but quickly the cloud began to build, so after getting on load 3 of the day jumping was ceased, and early afternoon it began to rain. So I headed off with Anton, Toni and Neil to the supermarket in Ocana, and bought some beers for passing my AFF course and for general consumption! Got back and it was still raining, and the porter was put to bed at about 6pm so we headed back towards Aranjuez.

It was Tom's last day so we all (about 12 of us) headed to Cheers (just round the corner from the hotel) for a goodbye drink for him. The barman let us have that round on the house, so we ordered another one after Tom had gone. I think we intended to go back to the hotel then go out to eat after, but we just stayed in Cheers instead, then went to eat at about 10 or 11ish!

Day 4 - Sunday

Day of my first solo jump :) Going up in the plane on my own felt weird...although you're never alone in that plane - you can't help but be pressed up against people :P Plus the unity, even among people who don't know each other, in the skydiving crowd is great, and definitely helps you feel more confident. I did my solo - nothing fancy :P - on load 2 of the day, and landed with a big smile on my face :)

After that though the winds picked up a bit and some low cloud was coming over for quite a long while, so jumping was stopped for a while. Then after a while they started letting the most experienced, and the tandems go up (they're willing to risk tandems but not us AFFers ;) ). Still had to wait for low cloud and wind though, and then when that went then they let those still doing their AFF training go up ahead of me, so I only ended up doing one more jump (load 17 of the day), before we called it a day.

Day 3 - Saturday

It´s low cloud today so we´re not jumping as yet, which is why i´m updating this! We´ll see how it goes...hopefully we´ll get some jumps in later when the cloud moves away. Went out for a meal with 10 of the others last night which was cool, then onto a cuban bar (latino music and people doing kinda flamenco :-/), then back to hotel about half 12.

Dunno when I can update this, have been a bit busy :) But all ok! Very tiring, but very exciting, and great people here.

Well the cloud cleared later on and at about 5pm I got to do my Level 7 jump and graduated my AFF course :) I still haven't caught up on sleep yet so i'm not gonna do my first solo today - I'll wait til tomorrow so that I can enjoy it properly!

Day 2 - Friday

On Day 2 I planned to improve on my first jump, which I thought went badly (i felt panicky pretty much the whole way down). The dive went ok, managed to locate my ripcord and pull it myself this time. Landing wasn´t too bad but I landed on my knees kinda in the end.

I did another 4 jumps after that, progressing up to level 6. My Level 6 was through clouds at about 7000-9000 feet so everything turned white half way down! That went really well though. I planned to do my level 7 and finish the AFF tuition but some low cloud came in so we couldn´t do my final jump before light faded.

So on Day 3 I plan to do my Level 7, then buy a crate of beer for everyone else, then chill a bit before doing some of my solo jumps.

Day 1 - Thursday

And so the trip begins!

Flight out here was good, got hire car, but then got very confused on Madrid´s roads and ended up wasting two hours heading initially in the wrong direction!

When I got here I went through 4 hours of ground school at quite a pace, and managed to get my first jump in on the sunset load at about 830pm.

It was mental!

Felt so strange - and obviously scary. Was glad I did it but was definitely feeling exhausted.

I couldn´t locate my ripcord so my instructor to pull it for me. But I landed safely in one piece, and feeling glad to get the first one out of the way!

Assignment in, bags packed!

Well I handed my assignment in earlier at college, and have packed all my stuff so i'm pretty much ready to go! :) I should be on my way within the hour, heading for the Gatwick hotel where i'll stay overnight, ready to fly in the morning.

So I guess the next post I make may well be from Spain! :)

véale pronto amigos! (good old Babelfish)

A complaint letter to the King of Spain

That's what I'll write if it's cloudy too often when I'm in Spain!

Only joking ;)

(But seriously :|)

:P

2,890 words

This afternoon I got stuck into my assignment and wrote about 2,000 words, so have virtually finished it :) I've just got some tidying up of it to do and print it out then i'm done! Skydiving feels a hell of a lot closer now! Especially when I just got back from Heathrow picking a mate up from the airport.

Three days of work to go then i'll be off for a week and a half, that'll be nice :)

Gatwick Hotel

With having a 7:50am flight from Gatwick I thought it would be best to check into a hotel to stay nearby overnight, rather than drive the two hours in the very early morning of Thursday. So i've booked myself into the Waterhall Country House for next Weds. It's about 15 mins drive from the airport (my car parking is right next to the airport) and has got good reviews and a good price so I was sold!

Still gonna have to set my alarm for about 4:45am though :P Somehow doubt I'll be dozing off too quickly the night before either! All part of the experience though ;)

College work

Had a good morning of college work this morning, my program is almost there now. Then i've just got to write (up to) 3,000 words about it - which will actually be easier than writing about the other subjects I've had to write about before!

I PLAN to get just about all of it finished this weekend, so then I can just re-read (I never actually do that I don't think) in the week and then hand it in Weds before I depart towards Gatwick :)

Bring it on!

The third of April

April the 3rd - that makes it 10 days til i'm there, and makes it feel a lot closer! I can check out the 10 day forecast from now on (the Madrid Weather link on the right hand side of this page), though the accuracy won't be that great for 10 days in advance ;)

Not progressed much on my college work, mind you I don't have the motivation to work on it unless I'm under pressure, so I guess it will work itself out in the end!

I've updated the link to the Daily News on the right to the April page (which I think I actually do check daily). Providing the website team aren't too busy you may well see my face on there at some point! We'll see :)