Blog

Wingsuit Roadtrip

• June 2008
• Training Uncategorized

Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while will remember that my big brother Virgil was a big reason for me to start skydiving. So you might be wondering……how come we never hear anything about jumping with Virgil nowadays?


Well. As you know, BASE jumping is dangerous. Last December, Virgil started BASE jumping and smashed up his ankle landing from a low bridge jump. He was by himself when it happened, but since he is an ER doctor, at least he had a doctor there 🙁 I guess the bad thing about being an ER doctor is that when you get hurt you know just how bad it is…..

Now Virgil’s ankle has lots of metal in it. Happily, he is now better, and has started to skydive again. And even more exciting than that, he has just moved from Arcata, California to Salt Lake! Hooray!!!! 🙂

A few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted a short break from climbing. I trained a lot this winter, and did some climbs I had been hoping to do, and I’ve gradually learned over the years that short breaks are good for the mind and body. Since I just want to fly my wingsuit ALL THE TIME, I decided to take a wingsuit road trip out to California.

California is the home of the Lodi Drop Zone….unique in the world for having the cheapest jump tickets imaginable. Skydives are $15 there, and in most drop zones, the recent fuel price increases have driven jump tickets up to at least $27 each. That’s a pretty big difference.

In Lodi, I got to jump with all the monkeys, and experience the excitement of trying not to land in the vineyards that seem to be everywhere you look.

My friend Jade, an amazing wingsuit flyer, helped me out with barrel rolls, since I was developing this weird habit of starting into a barrel roll and then diving forward off my back into a front somersault. Thank heavens he gave me a tip to nip that one in the bud! But he did laugh at me uproariously every time I botched the barrel roll and then came back next to him, which made me laugh so much it was hard to keep flying…..

Lodi is only three hours away from Yosemite.

But of course I would never jump my wingsuit there, since BASE jumping is illegal in Yosemite for reasons which must be good. ??

I did enjoy some lovely hikes up Half Dome and El Cap in the late evenings and early mornings, and they were lovely.

Lodi was one of the most enjoyable drop zones I’ve ever been to, and it was wonderful having a whole crew of friends and wingsuiters to fly with during my days there.

I decided to finish the trip by heading south, to meet up with Virgil in Perris, California, which is the home of a famous skydiving destination. Bigger, and a little more “uptown” than Lodi, it has a bar and a swimming pool! It also has $27 jump tickets, so I wasn’t going to be jumping like crazy there….just one or two jumps with my brother. Virgil was in the area for an ultrasound training course, and this would be the first time we’d jumped together since he got hurt.

He was holding off on the wingsuit, since he hurt his shoulders a bit too in his accident. We flew up in the plane together for the first two jumps, but it was too silly to be jumping in the same air without being together, so I pulled the wingsuit off my rig, and we did a tracking jump together. It was so nice to be flying with my brother again! The perfect last jump of my trip 🙂

I had a great time travelling around, and flying from way up high! But as with any wonderful trip, the best part was coming home two days ago. There’s nothing like being home with my Moab friends in the beautiful desert. We may not have $15 skydives or 3000 foot cliffs, but Moab is the land of the free, and to me, that’s the real recipe for happiness…..