An abundance of fives

 

This picture, taken last Sunday, shows Skratch (in white), Jennifer (vamping), and Dougla (yes, that name is complete). They all came down from Jennifer's 55th jump. In her pocket is her father's picture, which she carries with her on every jump. When she was sixteen, he had 445 skydives, and they planned to make a jump together when she was old enough. He was only 43 when he died of cancer. Here's a quote from her story (published in the Canadian parachuting magazine) about why she decided to skydive back in April:

When I left for the airport that day - I put a picture of my dad in my  pocket.  We were going to jump together. . . some way or another.  I was going to make good on our promise to skydive together.  Gail, Amy and I arrived promptly at 2:30pm in the afternoon.  We checked in. You could feel the excitement, adrenaline and freedom in the air.  It was contagious.  My excitement was building... I heard our names over the intercom calling us to the benches for our training with our instructor, Spotty.  It was now or never.

She fell in love with skydiving and kept on going. Her 55th jump this past Sunday, which she preserved with a video taken by Dougla and accompanied by Skratch, is now part of her experience together with her dad. His last 55 jumps have been in her pocket, but she counts them as jumps they made together. It would coincidentally also have been her father's 500th.

Here they are packing up for the jump, after having done a practice one (not to mention needing to get to the magic number of 55). She is still learning how to pack, and Skratch is making sure she's learning all the cool techniques. Jennifer has a son who is almost 14 and has also got the bug. When he learned about wind tunnels, his eyes lit up. I think he'll be doing a tandem jump once he's old enough.

One thing I've learned about my husband: he thrives on teaching skydiving to new jumpers. I've seen it ever since I've known him, and although my days as an instructor are over, his will never stop as long as he's around young jumpers. It makes my heart glad. On Sunday, I made three jumps with my friends, playing in the sky, while he and Jennifer logged this very special jump.

:-)