Jerm's Insanity

Got a cat. She’s cute.

Been making pesto from my monster basil… ohhhh the yummyiness

Last weekend I made my 3000th Jump a few days after my 10th Anniversary of my first skydive. Chrissi made her 300th on the same jump along with 11 of our friends.

I’ve been building an arcade machine. Really. More on this later.

I Finally made it out to California in August. It was swell.

I bought a Mac. I love my Mac.

I had a great time Saturday night. We got a bit silly at 2 different bars for Kealani’s birthday and ended up at a diner until nearly until nearly 4am after which and Dan & Ke dropped me off near the 59thst bridge. I hiked over to 63rd & York and quietly, so as not to wake the slumbering (read: the wuss went home early) Doctor, retired to the unoccupied sofa… mm drunken sleep.

About 8am I got a txt From Bernadette letting me know what time, 10am, to meet to help her move. I lounged for a bit, showered and managed to get on the FDR at 9:01am — i was gonna be late. I called her as i was approaching thruway exit 17 asking where i should meet her, and she said that things had gotten pushed back, to meet at 10:30. Cool! I could now could grab a change of clothes and some breakfast and not be too late. It was 10:01am. I got home at 10:20 and cooked an egg, threw on some jeans, checked all my pockets and… how did my ipod get into that pocket?

It felt like an ipod (is that an ipod in your pocket?), but it turns out it was actually Dr. Jenn’s wallet. Oh hell.

You see, Jenn, having dressed for going out, had a lack of pockets on her non-coat-clad person. As we weren’t wearing coats in the bar, i offered to keep her wallet in my pocket so so to be readily available.

I called the good Doctor, “I have some good news and some bad news… the good news is that you haven’t lost your wallet.”
*dramatic pause* “Jerm, this is really really bad”
“Any chance you can survive w/o it till friday (tunnel day)?”
“Jerm, i have to be ON A PLANE at 2pm”
Pondering the ramifications of this i realized 2 very unpleasant things:
1) i was going to be very late indeed helping B move.
2) i just did nyc->new paltz in record time w/o getting pulled over and it was going the frustrate the hell out of me doing the same trek 2 hours later and not being able to match the time (more traffic, smaller balls, etc..)

How could i minimize both the tardiness and automotive self-loathing? “Any chance you can met me half way”
“No, i’m still in brooklyn, and i haven’t packed… FUCK! i need to go pack!”
Shit.
I put my shoes on
I grab my coat
I grab my headset
I grab her wallet
I walk out the door & close it behind me
I wonder if i have my keys on me.

This is the part of the story where, if you considered, even for an instant, that i in fact DID have my keys, I must start to worry about you even though we have apparently never met.

I start laughing. In retrospect i imagine a less-positive stress response could have saved me a lot of time (punching in the window), but i figured that this wasn’t really a problem, as John’s car was still in the driveway, so he’s probably still home, especially considering that it’s not jumpable.

Subtract 2 points if you thought that John may have actually been home.

As i see that i’m getting long winded, i’ll summarize and let you know that i WAS able to get in touch with John who was nice enough to come let me in. I got in touch with Bernadette who was very gracious about my brain fart, especailyl considering the increase it workload this was bound to cause her, and I did manage to get Jenn’s wallet to her, though I ended up delivering it to her outside TerminalB at La Guardia….. after missing the exit for TerminalB and continuing down the GC parkway a bit then doubling back. *sigh*

I proceeded to have lunch with Rudi near city hall (i needed food & caffine), then to back to gardiner in time to help B’s crew unload the truck. I visited with Utah & deb for a bit and ended up stuck there because the roads were iced over (and you know it’s bad if _I_ won’t drive on it. I tried, i was only barely not sliding off the road, which was ok, but then i realized i wasn’t on the steep part yet. They kept me up chatting &, eventually, drinking until far too late.

‘Twas a long day.

PS The kicker of the whole incident is that Jenn was off to an interview for, I shit you not, a job that she had absolutely NO intention of accepting if offered. Nonetheless, she had to attend the interview, ah, politics.

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.

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 partake 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.