Skydiving is the best waste of money ever...

Oh man. Skydiving is possibly–nay, IS DEFINITELY–the coolest thing ever.

Danielle and I went skydiving again in our quest to become solo certified.

The last jump puts us up to four!

In this radically awesome picture that is a screen shot of the video that EDMONTON SKYDIVE CENTRE let me have for the purpose of this blog, you can see me almost doing the splits as it were.

I'm in my "arch," which makes it so I fly straight. You can see my pilot chute behind me. It will momentarily pull my main chute and I'll float away.

You can see jumpmaster Shawn (I don't know his last name, but he's cool as shit) giving me a peace sign. That's part of my awareness jump. To pass to the next level you have to prove that you're not just blacking out and going nuts jumping out a plane and tell him what sign he was giving you. I passed!

Finally, you can see Westlock airport in the distance.

Also when my chute opened, I had END CELL CLOSURE and LINE TWISTS, making the experience extra freakin heart stopping but I overcame them thanks to the all-day lessons they give you the first time to deal with it and I landed safely, albeit quite hard.

Danielle's jump didn't go so well, she didn't do her arch very well and rolled int he air. As well, the radio guy was late in telling her to "flare" so she hit the ground hard on her ass.

But it's all good! She passed the awareness, despite having her chute deploy when she was almost completely upside down, she kept her eyes on Shawn. (it's hard to see, but he legs are above her as he chute is about to deploy.)

And that's it for that really. Most of this stuff will be in a video I'm trying to make when I have time, though i'll be crazy busy over the next few days.

As a side note to skydiving, congratulations to my buddy Joel Anderson for graduating as valedictorian in his Aeronautics Engineering course, or whatever the heck it's called. Now he can take me skydiving, though I think he could have a while ago. Oh well, how many valedictorians are there ever, anyway.

Cheers!

Woooooo video camera

Danielle and I (mostly Danielle) purchased a video camera for our awesome adventure. He is a waterproof Sanyo Xacti.

It is pretty awesome. We have named him snoopy. Anyway, we've some shooting and I'm putting together a video that will be awesome as heck and legendary. We even got some footage from our skidiving adventure to make it more awesome. Just you wait people. just you wait.

Damn you peter pan! - i mean clouds!

I was supposed to go sky diving today. It was supposed to start with this picture of Danielle loading up the car with our breakfast smoothies and coffees and we went to be awesome and jump out of planes.

But unfortunately, inclimate weather (see pic below) had other ideas, and we had to hang around for a bunch of hours waiting to do nothing but leave essentially.

That's ok though, our jumps are now already paid for and we're just waiting for a day when we're free to go. It will be awesome then!

So you know, aside from going on a world trip, I want to try to get certified for solo skydiving.

It's a time consuming and expensive process... but i mean, c'mon, it's skydiving!

What I need to do is about 12 or so jumps. The next one Danielle and I do is called an awareness jump.

First you should know that when you're going solo, you literally hang off the plane until your instructor tells to let go. It's fuckin' cool.

Anyway, usually you kind of semi-black out because, well, you're jumping out a plane. However in order to qualify for your solo, the first thing you need to do is what's called an awareness jump.

As you let go of the plan and feel the roller coaster feeling, contemplate your death, and pray to whoever that the chute works, you also have to look at your instructor and see what kind of random hand signal he's giving you.

If you can tell him what it is, you go onto the next level, which is where you practise to pull your own chute, the finally pull it, then you progress to higher and higher levels until you're certified to jump anywhere in Canada.

How sweet would that be?

So that's what I'm writting about for lack of better thing. So to end, here's a cute puppy that was at the skydive place named Frankenstein. He was nine weeks old and still trying to hump a rotweiler. That's how Frank the Tank that pooch is.

Backpacks and boots!

photo by danielle. hence it being out of focus :p Notice to world map in the background and the thumbs up as if to say "I'm awesome."

Danielle and I went down to the city to Camper's Village and bought some stuff for our trip on Wednesday.

Off the list:
Backpacks
Boots

First off, it's pretty much the best store I've ever been to if you're into the sort of adventure/travel/camping kind of thing. Not to advertise for them, but they don't get commission and yet are extremely helpful. I think it's because they're all adventure junkies and like helping people out.

Anyway, we purchased backpacks and boots for our adventure of epic awesomeness.

We went with Eagle Creek backpacks, which are from my understanding the top of the line in terms of technology, but thankfully not price point. We were going to go for Asolo bags but were talked out of it by the clerks.

I went with the Thrive 65L (right), and Danielle went with some kind of Tubular 55L for women, which I think has the model name Thuist (the straps are slightly different).

Mine is more in the shape of a rectangular suitcase with a backpack attached to it, and Danielle's is pretty much a tube with a little detachable fanny pack.

They are sweet, they were the best purchases I ever bought. Anyway, once again not to advertise, but they feature detachable day pack thing, rain covers, fully adjustable straps and supports, random material, and mine includes a cover for the straps so it's easier to carry around before you get into the airport.

They were both about $250.

As well we also bought boots. I don't have the box in front of me, but I believe they are Keen brand Targhee II's. Danielly got the girly couloured ones.

They have a breathable, waterproof membrane, leather on the outside, and what the sales guy called "sink heel principle," which is a fancy way of saying arch support.

What's potentially the most important thing is that they could be considered "trail runners" meaning that they're somewhere between boots and running shoes. It makes them comfortable and versatile, and will probably help reduce the type of shoes I'll bring with me on the trip by one pair.

Maybe it's because I've been wearing flat-bottomed skater shoes for the best... 10 or so years, but my god, these are the BEST shoes I've ever warn. Not only are they structuarlly designed for the whole backpacking/travel thing, they're simply the best shoes I've ever felt on my feet. Once again not advertising, just saying.

They ran at about $150, making them the most expensive shoes I've ever bought, but then again I'm cheap. The second most expensive pair was probably... a $39.99 pair of pro skater shoes by some guy I can't remember that was on sale, and after that, it's been Wal-Mart since like Grade 9.

But Seriously, they are the best, most comfortable, and I assume the most durable shoes I've ever had. I say assume because I've owned them for 2 days, but I've been wearing them in the spirit of breaking them in, but really just like wearing them.

Lastly, we bought cool socks for travelling. I've never owned fancy, expensive socks, so I'm just seeing if they're worth the hype. They're some random company's wool from some place I don't remember. But they're supposed to have the wick effect, pulling moisture away from your feet and all. So I'm testing both the shoe and the sock out.

Anyway, it's all part of gathering supplies for the world trip. The reason I can afford these stupidly expensive (for me) things is that I've cut almost all of my other stupid expenses. Note that cutting expenses doesn't mean giving up cool things, it means giving up stupid things, like say, pop, chips, smokes and drugs for ultimately more actually awesome things like skydiving and world travel.

And finally, for those who don't know who Danielle is, here she is fake packing her pack so we could wear them and feel cool!

Happy bday to me!

My birthday was on Saturday. I was on boat with my buddy Bryan Hall, his wife Melissa and someonther people whose names I can't immediately remember. It was a good time.

When I came back, I noticed my car had been hit. Weak. (I'll post a picture soon). It's the perfect time to point out why I'm glad that my first goal was to save $2000 as an emergency fund so I wouldn't all of a sudden be out of all my savings for my trip.

As you can see on the side menu, I've made it up to $1000. Modest I know, and it did take a while, but I count all victories as such so woot, $1000! 1/10th of the way there! Now I have 10 paycheques, from which I save about $500 each, plus money from my dental insurance, and some other random monies some in. Bam $10,000. And if I'm short I'm really not too worried because I've been learning about other ways to make money while abroad, which I'll discuss as they become appropriate in later posts.

Anyway, back to why saving money was important. When I came back to my car, there were conflicting reports about what had happened. The person who put their phone number on my car told me that they didn't do it. I don't really know how to prove it either way, so I just claimed it through insurance. That's why I pay $170 a month, to claim things?

Anyway, that's in the process and I'll let you know what happens.

But if it wasn't for my savings I'd be severly in the hole once all the repair costs and deductibles come through. Thankfully I saved $2000 with ING Direct, and I got them to send me a debit card, which I keep under lock and key and can now whip it out for these repairs. Woot.

But yeah, that was my birthday. Other than that, I'm still along way off from talking about anything interesting related to that trip, ALTHOUGH this week, I'm going to the city to look at backpacks and boots and some other stuff.

So stay frosty...