The last day of my trip, had a chance to stop by at Kamloops for the Skydiving Meet: it’s when many skydivers congregate at one drop zone for lotta fun jumping! I had a chance to only do one jump since the weather started to deteriorate and I still wanted to stop by at a lake for a freediving session before heading back home (I missed on my chance of doing a 10-way jump, meaning jumping with 10 people). I still had fun catching up with some friends and meeting new people.
One jump that I’ve done, we did a 2-way “Horny G” (just another skydiving name for a type of exit). After exiting the airplane, the guy I was jumping with thought that he forgot to do up his chest strap, so he was panicking trying to fix it! But then he realized that it was his undone zipper that was causing all the flapping… Super fun jump nevertheless!
After the meet, I drove to Pavilion Lake to do some freediving. It was a cool area, but I will have to explore deeper. Will dedicate a post to it another time when I go back to explore more!
As the days are getting longer and warmer, different activities come with it; Skydiving is one of them… Skydiving isn’t one of my favorite sports, but it’s fun to go do a few jumps once in a while! It is also interesting to jump from different drop zones, yesterday I decided to ride my motorcycle to Kamloops and do a couple jumps at Kamloops Skydivers.
Kamloops is 3 and a half hours drive from Vancouver, and it passes through a beautiful mountainous area which makes it a fun ride all in itself. This time a year it is still chilli to ride there, I didn’t wear proper clothing and my legs got super icy during the morning ride, took me half a day to un-thaw them afterwards lol.
After arriving to the Kamloops drop zone, I had a quick introduction to the area and their regulation. Everyone was super friendly there and I did a couple jumps with a few fun jumpers. Was a fun day indeed!
View of Yak Peak on Coquihalla Hwy.
Our Second Jump, doing a drift dive which I screwed up and fell behind the group lol (I’m in black/red jumpsuit)
Here’s a video of my first time jumping from a helicopter last year. The rush and excitement makes that first experience awesome! The feeling is much different than jumping out of an airplane!
This has been one of my best summers I had, I’ve done endless trips to Oregon and lots of other fun activities. The past couple weeks I have been taking it easier on the trips and staying more local to do as much windsurfing and skydiving as I can before the season is over. Now I will shift my attention on other activities like Scuba Diving for the next little while. Here’s a few pics I took over the weekend while Skydiving at Skydive Snohomish.
Was skydiving all weekend in Skydive Snohomish Dropzone. One of the jumps we played a game that’s called “Odd man out”. Was my first time playing it, and it was Fun! The object of the game is to fly up and link up to the pair of skydivers that are already linked, the last one who links up is the ‘Odd man out’ and he becomes the person who everyone tries to link up with…
I wouldn’t really call this much of a trip since Squamish is only an hour away from the city, but it’s a fun place for windsurfing. Saturday early morning, I loaded my equipment and headed to Squamish. Once I got there, I quickly assembled my sail (which is becoming easier these days, I used to really dislike doing it), put on my thick wetsuit and jumped in the water. Like always, I was having a blast windsurfing! It’s one of my favorite sports!
As the day progressed, the winds picked up to 30knots, and I was riding with a 6.0 meter sail, which is quite big for winds of that kind of intensity. I felt overpowered while riding, and was feeling a little nervous too, but I still kept at it as much as I could until I had no more energy left and my legs started cramping up. I came home in the evening exhausted and very bruised from all the falling, and I passed out to be ready for Day 2.
Day 2 – Flight to Campbell River for Skydiving
Last year I promised my sister to take her to Campbell River where she could take her First Jump Course (http://pacificairsports.com/learn.php). Early Sunday morning, I pulled myself out of bed, and headed to the airport to prepare the airplane for the flight. We took off from Pitt Meadows Airport and flew to Campbell River (a little town in Vancouver Island). It’s only an hour and ten minutes flight on the airplane, compared to having to drive and take the ferry (which is a hour trip), sometimes it’s worth being a pilot J. Once we got to Campbell River, my sister and her friend went to the classroom for the course, and I went off to start jumping. I did four skydives that day, and I even had time to finish writing an exam for my B licence. Overall it was a very productive day!
We flew back late that evening, and got home at 11pm. Feeling even more exhausted than I did the day before, I passed out once again for only a few hours of sleep till I had to wake up for Day 3.
Day 3 – Trip to La Push for Surfing
I had heard lots of good things about La Push, but never found a chance to go until that day. The Twilight movies had been filmed there, so if you’ve seen those, you’d know it’s a very beautiful place. I was very excited to go surfing there. So excited that it was enough to get me out of bed super early on Monday morning.
The trip to La Push from Vancouver is about 5 hours if you plan everything well and reservations for the ferry are made in advance. Obviously for us it was a new experience, and a learning curve, too. We didn’t book the ferry (never making that mistake again). It took us seven and a half hours to get there, and I was even thinking of turning back before arriving because I didn’t think we’d have time to get back that night (I had to get back to work the next day). But then I thought, ‘no way! I’m gonna get there and get back no matter what! Even if it means not sleeping the whole night to drive back home the long way if I miss the last ferry!’ And we did, we got to La Push, and it was indeed a beautiful place! The waves weren’t too big but they were really fun to play with. I caught a few really fun waves that definitely made my trip worth it! On the way back we caught the late ferry, and arrived home around 1 o’clock in the morning. I was a walking zombie the next day at work, but that’s the price to pay if you want to have fun!
Doing a variety of sports and activities is a lot of fun, but it can also be head wrecking at times. You might ask, “How could it be head wrecking?” The answer is simple- too many choices to pick from. Every week I try to come up with something fun to do over the weekend and I always get a few good options that compete for my time. Last Friday, I came up with a spontaneous idea, that I should try to do as many activities as I possibly can over the weekend.
What better place to do it than in one of my favorite weekend getaway spots in Oregon!
I searched the Internet to come up with a plan of things to do and places to go. This is what I came up with:
– Leave tonight after my training, then drive 7 hours to Hood River
– Wake up bright and early the next day to go on an amazing trail hike
– Treat myself to a Birthday present: An Inflatable SUP board for surfing
– Go windsurfing at the Gorge – the best place for windsurfing
– Drive to Portland
– Go Go-Karting
– Go Skydiving till dark
– Drive to the coast when traffic is low at night
– Next day wake up early to go surfing with my new toy on the Oregon Coast
– Go Dune Buggy or Quad
– Either go back to a different surf spot or go skydiving in Washington or.. Both!
– Drive home
Obviously nothing ever goes quite as planned, although I did manage to do most of the activities on my list. I wasn’t able to go windsurfing because the wind hadn’t started to blow at the usual time. I couldn’t go skydiving in Washington at the end of the weekend, because I arrived too late. Also, so much driving has been involved in this trip (roughly 1700km). But the weekend has been a lot of fun otherwise! Here’s how my trip went…
Friday evening, at 8pm, a friend arrived and we took off to Oregon. I was going to do this trip alone because it’s difficult to find people who want to go on a trip like this, due to the fact that there’s very little rest involved. But fortunately my friend came with me, which made it much easier on me since we got to take turns driving. After a long drive we made it to Hood River, Oregon, at 3am. We parked the car at the start of the trail hike (Eagle Creek), and slept in our vehicle. After 3 hours of sleep we woke up feeling extremely groggy. We started the walk up the trail. The calmness of the trail was peaceful and the fresh air was slowly waking me up. Something I find really cool about this trail, is the fact that it trails right on the side of the cliff. The first spot the trail leads to is called “Puchbowl falls.” It’s a really beautiful spot with a river, a couple waterfalls, and a few cliffs to jump from. The trail continues to other spots, but today we decided to turn back to save time for other activities.
After the hike, we ate a quick breakfast and drove to the store so I could buy myself a birthday present. I was going to get an inflatable standup paddle board, but after taking a peek at it, I didn’t think it would be a good choice to ride waves with. The owner of the shop showed me a few other boards and I fell in love with one particular board: A Mistral 9’2 Wave board. It’s an expensive board, but just by looking at it I could tell that this board would be awesome on the water! So that turned out to be my birthday present to myself. I had also gotten a used sail for windsurfing. Time sure flies by quickly when you’re shopping for toys! By the time I was done it was already 12pm. I was supposed to be windsurfing at that time, but the winds didn’t cooperate with my schedule. Since it wasn’t expected to pick up until 4 pm, I decided to skip windsurfing and head for a drive to Portland where I would be going Go-Karting and Skydiving.
We arrived to the Go-Karting race track about an hour and a half later without any major traffic delays. The track is a cool location and there were lots of go-kart owners parked with their trailers waiting to race. We signed in, bought 2 races (12mins each) and waited for our turn. Even though its only for fun, every time before I race I get a little bit nervous and feel competitive, trying my best to get a high score. This feeling always turns into an adrenaline rush as soon as I start riding! I felt like a kid again, and I really enjoyed the design of that track! After we did two races, we were off to go skydiving at ‘Skydive Oregon.’
Once we got to the drop zone, I wasted no time except for what it took to get all of my information filled in because I was coming to jump at a new drop zone. I then got my parachute inspected, got a good briefing on the drop zone protocols and was ready to go jumping. I jumped twice, then quickly packed my parachute. I was ready to get going to the Oregon Coast to hopefully get the last bit of sunlight for surfing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time for surfing. We parked by the beach and got some sleep for the next day.
We woke up at 6am. We had a little more sleep than the first night, and boy, we really needed it lol… We were driving around trying to find a place to get some breakfast, which was a challenge all in itself as most of the places we went to were closed! We found a lil coffee shop by the beach, had a quick breakfast there and headed to go quading. Wow, now that was an experience! It was my first time quading, and now I’m in love! It was one of the most fun things I have tried so far! The area was enormous, filled with many trails, sand dunes, and a really nice beach to ride on! I will definitely have to go back there again.
Right after quading, we drove to the beach (literally parked our car on the beach), and I went to try out my new surfing stand up paddle board (SUP). The beach, “Cape Kiwanda” was beautiful!Unfortunately, it didn’t have the best surfing conditions for an SUP because it was super windy, which made it very tough to stay on top of the board. I still managed to catch a few waves, even with the added difficulty. After a few hours, I packed up my stuff and we headed to Washington, stopping at one of my favorite Mexican food places in Seaside of course!
After a long drive, we arrived to another drop zone in Washington. I was hoping to do one more skydive before heading home. Unfortunately, I have arrived there too late, they finished jumping for the day. I was disappointed, but relieved at the same time, I was really tired by that time lol. So we decided to drive home. I arrived to my house around 1 am, ready to wake up for the next day to go to work.
Although I didn’t finish everything I had intended to do from my list, I still had lots of fun! Watch the video from this trip to see my adventure for yourself!
Edgar Bullon 