chaz720.net - journal

May 10, 2006

We must talk in every telephone. Get eaten off the web. We must rip out all the epilogues in the books that we have read. And in the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair, we must stare, we must stare, we must stare. We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell. Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell. And in the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn't dream, we must sing, we must sing, we must sing. While my mother waters plants, my father loads his gun. He says, "Death will give us back to God, just like the setting sun is returned to the lonesome ocean." We must blend into the choir, sing as static with the whole. We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul. And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won, we must run, we must run, we must run. We must hang up in the belfry where the bats and moonlight laugh. We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past. And in the caverns of tomorrow, with just our flashlights and our love, we must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge. And then we'll get down there, way down to the very bottom of everything. And then we'll see it, oh we'll see it, we'll see it, we'll see it. Oh my morning's coming back, the whole world's waking up. All the city buses swimming past, I'm happy just because. I found out I am really no one.

I took my last final this morning. It went well. It's always good to come out of a final not only feeling that you studied the right things to do well on the test, but that your overall knowledge of the course material is really what got you through it. I've learned a lot from my recent antenna courses, and I should get the opportunity to apply some of it in the near future at work.

On a grander note, that's it. It's done. It's finished. School is over. And the fact that I've had to state it several times just now might serve as a hint that it hasn't really sunk in yet. Or has it?

The relief and good spirits that usually follows any exam I take, that feeling of meeting a milestone, actually lasted a shorter duration after this test than it normally does. Maybe that's because the next test isn't out there on the horizon, and as a result there's nothing that completing this test has tangibly prepared me for. Or maybe it's because I never feel as good about accomplishing most things as I tell myself I'm going to in order to get myself to do it in the first place.

I attribute it to simply expecting a lot out of myself. Completing things like this successfully is a given. I don't expect compliments, and I shrug off the ones I get. Am I just that good at picking goals for myself and knowing what I can do? Or is the truth that I have no idea what I can do because I don't reach enough? This is something I've been thinking about not only now that I'm done with school, but really for these last couple months.

This past Saturday I got an opportunity to try out a Katana-120. I gotta tell you, it's a real joy to fly. The range you can get from the inputs is incredible, and the thing does exactly what you tell it to, never complaining. I think I will try jumping a Katana-107, and maybe even comparably sized Crossfires before I buy anything (the # indicates the square footage of the canopy for the non-jumpers) but I can definitely see one of these modern elliptical canopies in my future. The openings were, all-in-all, not that bad. I think once you get into the realm of "not a whole lot of canopy over your head" you simply have to pay closer attention to what you're body is doing and what your canopy is doing during openings.

Oh yes, and a slightly amusing anecdote regarding the canopy demo process.

Saturday morning I gave my rig to one of the PD reps to unhook my canopy and hook up the demo. When she went to put my canopy in the storage bag for the day, she moved the risers over to the bag and then said, "wait a sec, are these backwards?" I looked at them and said, "no that looks right, the rsl loop is on the left side, as it should be." So we shruged this off and I promptly forgot about it. I jumped all day and at the end of the day, laid my rig out for them so they could disconnect the demo and reconnect my main. The other rep there took care of this, and I closed my container and handed it off to Caitie, who had just walked up and needed to borrow it so she could have two rigs to jump the following day.

Sunday evening I get a phone call, "Hey Ryan, thanks for letting me borrow your rig, I appreciate it... however next time you might want to make sure the main is actually hooked up properly before loaning it to your sweet and loving friends."

Evidently it was (at least) hooked up flying the proper direction as I had confirmed the day before, however the risers had been twisted an asymetrical number of times (known as a step-through malfunction) requiring some aerial rigging to coax into a landable state. She was able to manage this and land it just fine, but I have no doubt this was all done while muttering unintelligible sentences composed of my name and other four letter words.

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