The Beginning of the End of My Flourishing Career: From Cutaway to 3Ring 

Originally published in the September 2011 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. 

How do you cutaway once you’ve realized everything has pretty much gone to shit and your beloved canopy (or life, for that matter) is one big malfunction? As baby skydivers, we’re trained to look at the cutaway handle, then pull it, look at the reserve handle, then pull it, or some variation of that. The point is, it’s a very robotic thing once you actually do it in real life. However, if you’re cutting away like one of the Baldwin brothers, it’s a bit different. Some people just yank the handle and then don’t really know where the reserve is or what to do with it or how it works. Or in my case, you chop that bitch and the RSL does the rest.

This is the story of how I actually cut away. Fade to “cutaway” montage from the movie that said “cutaway” one too many times.

We left off at January 2nd, with me sitting on the bench near the swoop pond at Zhills, having just decided that I’m quitting my awesome job in Austin and going after this whole living the dream thing.

Well, let’s rewind for a second, shall we? Flashback to November, a balmy 70 degrees (compared to 30′s in Chicago) and I’m all sitting at my fancy ass computer at my superawesome agency job in Austin. I ordered my rig earlier in the season and it wasn’t ready by the time I left Chicago, so I had it delivered to the office, because I was living in this gigantic swanky ass apartment complex and I didn’t want it to get lost. Obviously. So my rig arrives and I call Doug, the DZO at CSC, and we shoot the shit for a bit, mostly me squealing about how pretty my rig is. I had been working with Doug since the middle of the summer, so once CSC shut down and Doug wasn’t as busy as he usually is in season, the emails started piling up.

So we’re on the phone and I’m giving him shit about how there’s a good chance I’m doing more work for him than I am my clients when he asked me how everything was going since the big move. I ramble on about how I’m working like a crazy person, billing 300 hours in November. For the record, 300 hours = 37.5 8-hour working days. In case you didn’t know this, there aren’t 37.5 8-hour working days in November, or any month on the planet Earth, but that’s what I was billing. I was used to jumping Friday at sunset, all day Saturday and Sunday and leaving the DZ for the city on Monday morning. I had been in Austin for six weeks and hadn’t jumped yet. Unacceptable.

Doug: “So, that’s not exactly what you signed up for, huh?”

Me: “Honestly, I’d rather just work with you full time, and come back in the spring when season starts and take care of all of your marketing and stuff.”

I said that. To Doug. Sitting at my desk at my shiny new job that I had been at for oh, maybe four weeks.

Doug said that was entirely possible.

I hang up with Doug and call the boyfriend. He’s pumped. His wheels are turning. He thinks this could be a really great opportunity for me.

I hang up with him and call my parents. Mom and Dad listen and tell me to call them later when I get home. So I do. They think I’m insane. They say that there’s no way I’m ready for this and that I JUST got to Austin and I have an obligation to them and I should stay and that the skydiving industry isn’t a great place to start out on my own in the marketing world. My parents, who have never told me that I couldn’t do anything, think it’s probably the worst idea I’ve ever come up with in the history of ideas.

That was November. Bring it back to January and my dad has just told me I’d be stupid not to go with this plan.

I come back to my job in Austin only to get sat down for our Monday morning staff meeting and be told that the guy who recruited me (a huge reason I joined the company because he’s wicked smart), is leaving for another agency. This is the biz. People come and go. However, that day, I was going to let my team know that I was planning on departing in March. So my whole grand plan of how I’m going to have this incredibly difficult conversation just went to shit.

I ask the guy who recruited me (dubbed “The Quitter) if he wants to take an afternoon stroll over to Starbucks to chat. I start by asking him about where he’s going, what he’ll be doing there and his motivations for leaving. Then I lay it on him.

Me: “So, um, I’m leaving too.”

The Quitter: Laughing and shaking his head: “You’re… what?”

Me: “I’m quitting and moving back to Illinois to do the whole skydiving thing.”

The Quitter: “You’re kidding, right?”

Me: “Nope.”

The Quitter: “Well that is really fucking awesome for you, congrats!”

Unfortunately the decision with the other guy who played a role in my recruitment (dubbed “The Stormy Cloud”) didn’t take it so well. I waited until my friend had worked out his two weeks and then I told my teams that I was outta there. I took another afternoon stroll over to Starbucks with one of the guys who was technically my boss.

Him: “So, let’s chat about why you want to leave.”

The Stormy Cloud: “Well, I am beyond excited to be pursuing an opportunity with CSC, where I learned how to skydive, and I’ll be working with them doing their marketing, PR, social media stuff, etc.”

The Stormy Cloud: “It sounds like more of an obsession than a career move.”

Me: “Well I’m very excited about the opportunity to combine all things social media and marketing with all things skydiving. It’s pretty much my dream job.”

The Stormy Cloud: “Well I think you’re making a huge mistake.”

Me: Silence

Everyone else in the office that I had quickly made friends with in my 3-month stint were beyond excited. Like, so floored they couldn’t stand it. People who wanted absolutely nothing to do with jumping out of planes, who hadn’t known me for very long, saw that this was pretty much a dream gig for me. There were many a cocktail had in celebration.

There was one last dude to tell, and that was my actual boss. He wasn’t on any of my teams, we didn’t really work together, but he is totally heads up. We’ll call him “Sunshine” for the sake of talking.

Sunshine: “So, I hear you’re leaving us. So soon!”

Me: “Yeah, I’d be stupid if I didn’t pursue this opportunity.”

Sunshine: “Seriously, Syd, now’s the time. If you screw up, you screw up, but this sounds like something right up your alley.”

Me: ::wave of relief:: “Thank you! I’m excited, obviously a little scared and kinda sad because Austin is pretty much the best city ever, but excited.”

Sunshine: “Now let’s talk about your decision. Make sure that you view this as ‘total opportunity’ – the knowledge you’ll gain, what you’ll put into it, how much you can get out of it, and how this plays into your overall career goals.”

Me: Thinking: holy shit, I’ve known this man for three months, spent maybe eight working hours with him total and he’s helping me see the big picture instead of bashing my decision. This guy is freaking brilliant. I am so lucky to have this dude in my life right now. 

So the office knows I’m leaving. Now it’s time to get down to business.

The big picture? I’ll start my own company this year, and while I’m working with CSC, I’ll start to build relationships with people who could be potential clients, I’ll figure out what my product offering will be, and eventually, over the course of the year, start putting out feelers for additional clients. This ends up working out perfectly because in my role with CSC, I’m an independent contractor, so technically, CSC is my first client. Not a bad gig right out of the gate. Thus, my RSL. I chopped that job knowing that I had a backup plan that would deploy pretty much immediately and on its own.

I was thinking of all the different ways I could incorporate skydiving into my company name. I had a bunch of bad ideas for a company name before I decided on 3Ring Media. 3Ring is pretty much perfect. It incorporates the skydiving side, as well as the actual sentiment of how 3Ring is a result of me cutting away from my former life in the agency world, and setting out on this new adventure. A whuffo friend of mine said “oh, like a circus?” and originally I was a bit miffed by it. Then I realized, yes, a little bit like a circus. 3Ring Media is my company. My circus? Love. Skydiving. Life. So, on January 17, 3Ring Media was born with the help of my friends at LegalZoom.com. I got my confirmation email that the company was legit. I didn’t know what it would grow to be yet, but it was official.

So fast forward to present day: 3Ring Media is growing. Every day is a new adventure at CSC and I’m learning a whole boatload about this industry, the people in it, and where I could potentially go with this. I’ve divided the services that 3Ring offers into a “skydiving related” and “everyone else” kind of deal. On the skydiving side, focusing on event/boogie coordination, social media and marketing education (I don’t mind doing the execution but I’m much more inclined to teach you everything you need to know about it to do it successfully, like social media boot camp), and eventually, coaching. I earned coach my rating earlier this season and I’m still working on developing and improving my skills so I can be a total rockstar with students.

All I know is I want to help people, small businesses, DZO’s, whoever – get up to speed on all things social media and marketing. There is too much power in the tools available today to not be taking advantage of it. Oh, and I’d like to earn my AFF rating someday. But I should probably make time for skydiving if I ever want to get there.

The Beginning of the End of My Flourishing Career: Is it there? Square? Landable? 

Originally published in the August 2011 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. 

Remember that one time that skydiving changed my life, I started dating one of my instructors after I graduated, decided I wanted to move to Texas so I could get paid more and thus skydive more, declared my love for the state of Texas, then I decided I didn’t really love Texas all that much and at the ZHills New Years Boogie I decided to quit my job, start my own company and CSC was my first client and holy shit I’m running out of breath because this sentence is the longest sentence in the history of sentences? You don’t? Oh, well let me tell you all about THAT.

Where do I begin? Girl meets skydiving, skydiving changes girls life, girl meets instructor, girl starts dating instructor, girl wants to skydive all the time and chase the sunshine like all of her friends that skydive all the time.

I decided early that this whole “working-60-hours-a-week-and-getting-paid-peanuts” thing wasn’t for me. At least not working 60 hours doing PR in an environment that makes me dread getting out of bed in the morning. You can only write so many digital content calendars for that hot dog company that has a car shaped like a hot dog before you get tired of all the puns and late night crises when someone finds out that the processed meat isn’t all that tasty and blows up the Facebook page about it. See, people, getting paid to save the world one Facebook post or tweet at a time isn’t all fame, fortune and glamour.

So, right, working sucks. Isn’t that what we all discover after we discover how awesome skydiving is? I know I’m not the first Corporate America worker turned skydiving bum, but holy shit did my eyes open fast.

Fast forward to September, and we’re road tripping to SkyVenture Colorado for a tunnel camp. Five skydivers, packed in Robin, my Civic Hybrid, trucking it across the midwest to the majestic mountains in and around Denver, Colorado. Day one is full of hiking and non-tunnel activities, and we wrap up the day by me accidentally mentioning that I was hopefully interviewing for a job in Austin when we got back. See, the boy was scheduled to go to Spaceland in November and I had been talking to a certain agency in Austin since June and didn’t want him to think that I was looking to get a new job in Texas because he was going to be in Texas because I didn’t know if we were actually together let alone serious. So, I didn’t tell him about the interviews.

The morning of day two starts with the boy borderline screaming about his neck and how he needs to go to the hospital. Earlier in the season he had a whacker of an opening and had continued to jump on it all season long. Apparently 16 hours in a car and hiking led us to the tipping point, where the pain was so excruciating and he could barely walk. So I take him to a hospital in Parker, Colorado, and spend the rest of the trip there. He has surgery, all is well, we go home and I go to Austin for an interview. I get the job. I move to Austin at the end of October. Now the boy is out for six months to recover from the surgery so no jumping which sucks but is also awesome because he can come stay with me in Texas and then roam around Florida for a bit.

Between me moving to Austin around the end of October and season wrapping up at CSC, I don’t see the boy for almost a month. Which is like, a third of how long we’d been dating at that point. Surprisingly, it seems I’ve grown up a lot since the last time I dated someone and it all works out. I’m not a hot mess this time. Things are working out well, despite the fact that I’m not there with him or vice versa. He comes down around Thanksgiving, we tear it up in Austin for a month, and then we take Christmas-New Years off and galavant around Florida.

We had coordinated a Freefall University trip to Skydive City in Zephyrhills for the New Years boogie. Seven 2010 grads and two instructors, rippin’ it up in the sunshine. My parents were coming out to watch the skydiving action and experience a day at the DZ after New Years. I was so pumped for them to finally see what all the fuss was about. The boy and I are walking around the trailer park at Z-Hills and he said “so, what do you think about getting a trailer and coming down here in November?” and I stopped and smiled. I had never been more excited to live in a trailer in my entire life. The thought was exhilarating. I had discussed an opportunity with the DZO at CSC to join the team and do the marketing and events, but had turned it down because I had let other people convince me I wasn’t ready. That I couldn’t handle being THE marketing department, that I wouldn’t have anyone to teach me anything, and that I wouldn’t learn as much as I would if I stayed at my agency job in Austin.

My parents show up on the 2nd, and after a tour of the place, introductions to my friends, and seeing a couple loads land, my dad pulls me aside.

I will never forget the scene. We’re sitting on the long bench sandwiched between the swoop pond and the spectator deck. It’s a bit cloudy, so I grounded myself because clouds make me nervous, and he’s just taking it all in. He turns to me, with a little bit of a misty eye and says:

“I finally get it. For the past six months all you’ve been talking about is skydiving, skydiving, skydiving. I totally get it. And you’d be stupid to not pursue that opportunity at CSC.”

And so it was. My “someday” plan was to quit my job, start my own company and take clients and spread the love and education that I have for all things geeky and social media and marketing. My “someday” plan was to work at the DZ, jump my ass off, learn as much as possible, get my coach rating, and eventually become an AFF instructor.

My “someday” plan went into effect on January 2nd, 2011. I started making plans on when to quit my job and how much money I’d need to survive. I started posting my furniture on Craigslist, looking for someone to sublet my apartment, and started to check out what I needed to do to start my own company so I could live life the way I wanted to live it.

Fun jumping in Nevada? You betcha. And not just fun jumping, but some amazing talent met up at the Blue Skies Boogie for hard hittin’ record settin’ jumpin’.

Without further ado, we present the Footie Pajama World Record, set in Mesquite, NV on January 14th, 2012. Congrats to Gunnar Jeannette, Mike Steen, Thomas Hughes, Dan Drage, Sean Hennessey, Jason Powell and Sher Drage for a brilliant performance.

If you didn’t get one for Christmas (poor thing), these cozy little jumpsuits can be ordered here.

Many thanks to Gunnar Jeannette and Mike Steen for sharing!

Enjoy the holidays, hug your friends, love your family, make lots of jumps (if appropriate) and pay homage to SkyGod for getting us through yet another year.

Best wishes from the Blue Skies Mag team,
Kolla, Lara and Pierre.

A quick Dubai update from our Chief Mischief maker Alastair, who didn’t jump much today. He did however put forward a solid effort towards increasing his wingloading at the lunch buffet.

It’s been a frustrating day at the competition site. First up was classic accuracy. The WDI* was thrown and the drifter load was about to jump when the winds came in. It’s a shame as it would have been pretty funny to watch those guys getting blown onto the beach. We sat around for most of the day, waiting. This was only the official training day so not too much was lost and the boredom that can manifest itself in to mischief has yet to set in.

The lunch was a feast. Skydive Dubai certainly knows how to look after the competitors.

At 1500** the CF and CP were stood down and the planes went up with classic accuracy and FS. The freefallers were landing out on a branch of the Palm while the accuracy competitors were shooting for the tuffet on the main DZ. The winds were still a bit cheeky and occasionally gusting over competition limits making a challenging round but spirits were high.

The opening ceremony, which is meant to be amazingly impressive, starts shortly so we’re about to head out to that.

We hope to have some more pictures to share with our readers tomorrow – we have a few people on the ground in Dubai madly clicking their picture making buttons!

* For our readers that were not around in round times, WDI stands for Wind Drift Indicator.  Para-Gear can sell you the ingredients needed to make your own high-tech version.
** That’s military time,  because Alastair is hard core like that.  That translates into 15:00 for Europe, 3:00PM for America. Just deal with it, I’m sure there is more to come. 

Heads up, all you Skydive Radio fans, the new show is out.

We all love the soothing and sexy voices of Dave and Karry, and in this episode, guest host appearance by SkyVan pilot extraordinary, Mark Vicker, and then our favorite – a chat with the midwest legend, Sandy Grillet.
And those of you looking to do some used gear purchases, there is a coupon code for  ChutingStar’s used gear section hidden in the show… well, not really hidden. It’s in plain view around 15 minutes into the show, for those of you in a hurry

A couple of topics covered in this months show:

• Is dry brushing your gear okay?
• Is setting the brakes part of a paid pack job?
• Safety First with Brian Germain discusses canopy visibility
• Conversation with Sandy Grillet on progression in the sport.

Head on over to the Skydive Radio website and have yourself a listen, or listen to the show via their Facebook page.

The Beginning of the End of My Flourishing Career: Avoiding the Black Hole

Originally published in the June issue of Blue Skies Magazine. 

So last month we touched on how being a chick at the dropzone is awesome because you don’t have to worry about having people to jump with. That is true, until you have like 30 jumps and then you’re not a student but you’re not awesome yet. I think it is this “black hole” in our careers in the sky that seems to put some people off and discourage them from continuing in the sport. So what can we do to make this better? How can we keep people in the sport after they’ve earned their A-License?

Obviously I’m still here, so let me tell you what has kept me around CSC after graduating from student status. No, I’m not going to say that you should start dating your instructor and that will keep you around, though it has helped for me, it’s not entirely realistic. So we’ll skip the part about the convenience of having someone to shack up with on the weekends while you’re at the DZ. That point is painfully obvious. But if you aren’t shacking up with someone, here are some things that kept me entertained enough to stick around.

Have a “newbie” program. For example, Freefall University (the AFF school at CSC) has a bunch of events for newbie skydivers. Wednesdays are the discounted jump days and fun jumpers come out of the woodwork to jump for really cheap – which means it’s a fun day for newbies because we’ve dubbed Wednesdays as F.U.N.days (Freefall University Newbies). On these days, the AFF instructors jump with students, but also organize low-timer jumpers. Mostly belly stuff, but there’s a hula hoop in there somewhere too. Making sure everyone feels included and part of the community is a must. Underlying message: Jumping with newbies is good karma and is good for the sport. We don’t all start with thousands of jumps.

Have “low-timer” organizers. One weekend last season, we didn’t have anyone available to organize the low-timers. One of the AFF instructors took himself out of rotation to jump with us. When you’re stuck in this sub-100 jump group, you’re in between a rock and a hard place – you don’t have enough jumps to be on awesome dives, but you aren’t learning anything if you’re flopping around in the sky with your other sub-100 friends. This is why it’s essential to have a low-timer organizer – we all want to excel in this sport and become better, safer, more alert skydivers, sometimes we just need the chance to prove ourselves. Underlying message: Some LO’s don’t want to organize newbies. That’s fine, but be nice about it. Knock it the fuck off with the SkyGod act and jump with us – you have even more expertise to offer us and you’ll probably learn something too. And to the newbies: don’t be offended if you don’t get on the dives that are beyond your skill level. The organizers have a method to their madness.

Be nice when we screw up. When we’re students, you know what we’re flying, you know you should steer clear of us, you know we may overshoot or undershoot our landings, and that we’ll flare too high or too low and PLF our faces off. Shortly after student status, we’re still developing those skills. I’ve heard horror stories of egomaniac skydivers yelling at students or those freshly off student-status about “I saw you coming and you totally cut me off!” or bashing the newbies after they screw up an exit, etc etc. I will speak for myself, and hopefully a whole boatload of other newbies when I say I am desperate for your feedback. If I can be better, safer, more alert, quicker out the door, whatever it is, I want to be. But I don’t want you in my face yelling at me in front of other students, other staff members, or worse, my friends. Fortunately this hasn’t happened to me. I’ve been greeted with a pat on the back and a “do you like baseball?” when I came sliding in on a landing, followed by constructive instruction on how to improve my landings. There wasn’t a scene in the landing area. There wasn’t belittling on the packing mat. Just offering suggestions for how to be a better skydiver. Underlying message: when you start yelling: our ears turn off. When you approach us in a friendly manner, we listen and retain information. Stop being a dick.

And we all know one or two 100-jump wonders that think they know everything, are ready to start wingsuiting tomorrow and want to BASE as soon as they’re off student status. Personally, I’m in no rush to start trying other disciplines, jump in questionable winds, or downsize. I’m in the sport for (hopefully) the long haul. My line: “I have the rest of my life to skydive.” So how can we, the low-timers, be the best we can be? Disclaimer: I’m probably one of the most conservative, chicken-shit skydivers I’ve ever met. I’ll ground myself if I get spooked on a jump so I have time to process it, I have a very strict wind limit for myself, and I have a list of people that I avoid being manifested with at all costs. That being said, let’s continue.

Be a sponge. Last season I was weathered out for a good portion of the season. Winds were too gusty, clouds were too low, it was raining, or, on the flip side, I was out of money. I can tell you that I learned as much, if not more so, on the ground as I did in the sky. Old timers, instructors, fellow experienced jumpers, all sharing stories over a couple of beers or during a weather hold was as educational as getting up there. When you get feedback, listen to it. If you ask 10 skydivers how to pack your parachute, you’ll get 10 different answers, but listen to what people have to say and then see if it works for you. By nature, we all have an opinion in this sport, but people with thousands of jumps have thousands for a reason. Underlying message: Soak it all in, baby birds. When the winds come up and you’re on the ground, you’ve got nothing but time to soak up as much information as you can.

Don’t be too eager. This is a tough one. There are always exceptions to the rule. There are skydivers who are naturals, who can come off of student status and on to a four-way team, learning to freefly, etc. But we don’t have to rush! For the love of the sky and all things that are holy, learn how to fly your body and on your belly before you get all hopped up on freeflying or the next discipline on your list. For some of us, that may be 10 jumps, others, 100 jumps. Point is, know what you are capable of and fly with some experienced people that can tell you what you need to work on in order to progress. Doing solos and trying to teach yourself how to sit fly isn’t going to benefit anyone. Fork up the cash for some coaching. You’ll be better for it and safer in the sky when you start jumping with other people. I was on the plane with a guy in Texas this spring who had 40 jumps, a full camera set up and no shoes on. Seriously? Get your shit together. Underlying message: I’d rather be having beers with you at the bonfire or local watering hole than visiting you in the hospital. Slow the fuck down and enjoy the learning curve.

Know your limits. Different drop zones have different rules for wind limits, be it a DZO thing, or based by licenses or jump numbers. I heard that “you’d rather be on the ground wishing you were in the sky, than in the sky wishing you were on the ground” and I hold that very close to me. Yes, I need to be expanding on my limits and pushing them as I see fit or I’ll never grow, but at the end of the day, if there is a guy with thousands of jumps sitting it out, you probably should too. This ties back into the “be a sponge” bit – because there is likely a story behind why Mr. Thousand Jumps is sitting it out. Ask them a question. Introduce yourself. Make friends. Underlying message: Nobody is impressed with you suiting up and spanking in. People are impressed when you stick to your guns and play it safe.

It’s that time again, where we are reminded that most of our problems are kind of “First Wordly” and that we do in fact have a whole lot to be grateful for. At this magazine, we are reminded of that fact pretty much on a monthly basis, when it’s time to get the next issue off to the printers.

• We are thankful for our subscribers, because without you guys, nothing much would be happening.
  If you would like to help us stay in this state of gratitude, please feel free to bust out your wallet and become a subscriber.
• We are thankful for our advertisers. Without the companies and individuals that continue to advertise with us, we wouldn’t be able to pay our awesome printers or buy lots of stamps so that your local mailman gets paid to bring you your copy.
• We are thankful for our contributors, columnists and photographers. They are the ones that make the magazine interesting to read, pretty to look at and always fun to get in the mail. On occasion, these are also the people responsible for you learning something new and interesting (unexpected side effects of subscribing to Blue Skies Mag).
• We are thankful for having the most kick ass graphics guy ever, responsible for that utterly cool look of Blue Skies Magazine.
  The very same guy is also a freelance graphics guy, so hire him if you need an ad, logo or something made pretty.
• We are thankful for Red Bull, coffee and tea that help us get through one deadline after another.
• We are even thankful for SkyGod, who makes us blush and giggle on a very regular basis.
• We are thankful for being a part of the organizing team for the 2012 Skydive Expo – getting to organize an event that brings people from all over the world to hang out in person with the people that make their gear is pretty awesome.
• And lastly, super thankful for family and friends that support us chasing this wild dream of publishing Blue Skies Magazine.

Thanks for stopping by and reading – and thanks for sharing the magic with us

I like to play with the website. We updated the events calendar, added an easier way to send Letters to the Editor, made a spiffy archive timeline, and coming soon: online account management! Yep, this is how I like to spend my weekends

Cold thieves strike again.

I couldn’t make this up if I tried, but the Blue Skies Mag air conditioner has been stolen right out of the ground – along with all of our neighbors’.

Visitors are still welcome to the office, just don’t expect to be cold if you stop by. Unless we open a window, because it’s…November.