North CA Tour

I had a most excellent adventure this last weekend. I was due in San Fransisco for business and decided to fly there early for the weekend. Got into San Francisco airport Friday afternoon and rented a car with aims of heading to Davis, CA for a sunset load at Sky Dance Skydive. Well, this was 4pm when I left the airport and I got a solid dose of traffic of the infamous 101!



Not to worry, I get a motel to stay at in Woodland, CA that offered a skydiver discount. Next morning bright and early to Sky Dance. There I filled in the mandatory waiver and was promptly drafted into a scrambles event. We have no such organizing where I come from but I was game on for it. I got drawn into a rookie team, we performed 4 jumps and came in top of the rookie division, winning $15 a piece, does that mean I need to turn pro?

There is a great container cafe called Docs at Sky Dance and Chef Doc put on a great dinner. Team Kaleidoscope let me sleep in their team room after dinner.

I hit the road the next morning heading to Lodi, I heard there was a drop zone of sorts there. Only an hour away from Davis but a very different flavor of a drop zone. I thought I had stept back in time somewhat. The hangar was full of 70's looking couches with old posters and parachutes all over the place. I went to manifest to fill in my paper work but was instead just asked for my log book by a skinny fella with long white hair. Just from his first words I knew this guy had some serious energy! He introduced himself as Bill and I recalled that a guy named Bill ran this place. Now, I had a late night and an early morning, I wanted to get my head on, but Bill had none of it, "Are you RW or Freefly?", "erm...belly today"...."ok, ok, Bill needs to find some RW folks". Before i knew it I was doing 5 way with some splendid folks. Spiders, retro things. Our final move was a star, left 360, star, backroll, star, right 360, star, backroll! We expected to be in the basement but we did it well enough to be ready for a second rotation, which nobody had expected!
Lodi is a magical place, magic people, motivated DZO, bizarre vehicles. Oh heck, did I mention that I got 4 jump tickets to 14k for 60 bucks? No joke, no joke at all. I had so much cash left over that I happily paid for my pack jobs. 80 bucks for a day of jumping without lifting a finger to pack, amazing.

Late afternoon I decided to head back to the hotel. I wanted to see Byron but was too beat to jump, so I promised myself that I would just go and get photos. They jump a PAC there, same as Davis, I knew this plane would make light work of just one more jump. Manifest was backed up but they made room for a visitor and I did a high pull. Pulled at 10k for a spectacular view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

I want to come back to this part of the world soon. Three hospitable drop zones within an hour of each other.