Sat 1 Sep 2007
I forgot to mention that the whole thing was organized by the Demo Divas. They’re a trio of bad-ass women who make me look like a baby in the sport. Their experience is and professionalism left me in awe and i would be proud and honored to work with them again.
Wed 22 Aug 2007
There’s nothing like a baseball game; the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the smell of hotdogs, the wind whooshing by my ears as i prepare to touch-down on home plate…. wait, what?
There was this problem. The AllStar game was a 40 minute drive away, we had the opening-pitch-ball. and there was only 20 minutes till the start of the game. What were we to do? Air delivery, of course! Fortunately we just happened to have a pilot and plane at the ready so we put on our gear and climbed into the cessna.
We had some aerial shots of the stadium, a description of a good approach vector, and a 2000ft flyby before exit time. There just happened to be some people that we know on the ground, with a radio on the same frequency as our plane, letting us know it was OK to jump and that there was basically no ground wind. Great.
I was first out from 5k. About 10 seconds into my 17 second freefall i notices that my knee really hurt. I would come to find out later, from the pilot, that i whacked it on the step on my way out. Figures. After 800 cessna jumps I manage to forget all i know about exiting a 182 after a few short years as a turbine whore. Anyway, my knee hurts, but someone threw a large, fast moving planet at me, so i responded by throwing a pilot chute. WOOHOO! It worked! I was Up-wind, on the wind-line and in a great position to be the first down and make my approach.
Looking at the field, I noticed a bunch of people right in my approach lane. I had planned on doing some sort of — probably something on the milder side — HP approach in the stadium. I wanted to come in from the far corner behind the left-field foul lone and carve across the landing area, setting down in the infield near home plate. Well, the visiting team apparently didn’t care that the organizers had asked for the field to be cleared and were spread out all along the left field line still doing throwing warm-ups. Not so great. Time to alter my approach.
I came in between the stadium lights out in center field and surfed into the infield, first contact on the pitchers mound, ran it out and took a few extra steps to stop on home plate. I was a rockstar. Then came the 3 other rockstars behind me: KayWay, Bev and Janjan. Janjan, last down, had the ball. She landed like a princess and presented the First Pitch Ball to the…. guy who was supposed to get it and we all made our way off the field. Not before Heidi, who just happened to be at the game, came over and gave me (a bit too big of) a kiss, for which we were taunted and admonished by the mascots (and a few fans in the stands who had kids). Naughty Heidi.
We were treated to beers and burgers and an amazing Prime Rib. ‘Twas a good eve. Check the video. I’m the first one down, and the one taking the first-person view.
Update: I’ve been informed that the video is broken in IE. I haddn’t noticed, as i don’t usually parate in the pleasures of that POS. For anyone who does not get a happy-happy youtube video window below, you can check it out at this link.