When you live near a state and it’s just “right there”, it seems like it would be easy to jump it and cross it off the list. This wasn't the case for me. I had been to the drop zone in Delaware twice and didn’t jump. On my first trip to Skydive Delmarva, I arrived with my gear and my older sister, Ruthie. It was very windy and I didn’t have that much experience at the time, so I decided to sit on the ground and watch. The second time, Matt and I stopped by on our way home from picking up Emma, but we didn’t have our gear with us. We just wanted to get an idea of what it was like.
During the visit, we met Dave Matchett. He was the drop zone manager and friends with my first tandem instructor, Paul. The drop zone had a bunch of places to pack and plenty of areas so socialize. There were little areas along the side of the main building and they had a second building adjacent to the first. It looked like the drop zone was doing well as it was very crowded and there were people packing everywhere. The weather was fine and we could have rented gear, but we decided we’d just come back another time.
Another time just happened to be more than five years later! For a number of reasons, we just never made it there. When we had the time, the weather wasn’t cooperating. Delaware became part of my “Last Minute List”. Basically, a list of states we could drive to if we didn’t have other plans and the weather was looking good.
I'm always thinking about our momentum. I need to keep working toward the goal of all states. It's easy to push it to the back of my mind and just go to our local DZ and jump. It's far cheaper to rack up the jumps than it is to travel. It was a Friday night and I was on the way home from taking Emma to her dad's office. I started thinking about places we could do in a day. Delaware was the closest and after our long road trips to Tennessee and South Carolina, it would be nice to do something shorter. When I got home, I mapped it out. 3 hours and 32 minutes without traffic. I checked the weather and things looked good to go for most of the day. I talked to Matt and he was on board! Delaware here we come!
After a good night’s sleep, we set out at 8:12 am. We grabbed breakfast at Panera, filled up the tank, and got some drinks from McDonalds. It was early so we had high hopes that the traffic wouldn’t be bad. Unfortunately, when we got off the Bay Bridge, we got stuff in a huge back up. It seems like everyone was trying to get on 404. It was lunch time and we still had another hour of driving to go. We were both hungry, but neither one of us wanted fast food. We found a huge gas station with a deli and ordered some turkey sandwiches. It was a nice change of pace from fries and a burger. They rest of our drive was uneventful. We arrived at the drop zone around 2 pm (almost two hours later than we had hoped).
After we parked the car, we made our way over to the hangar. I immediately noticed that some of the old packing areas were looking unkempt and over grown. In comparison to our first visit to Skydive Delmarva, this was far less impressive. They skydiving community is small and we know of quite a few people that jump at Delmarva, but on this particular day, there was only one person we recognized. His name is Gregor. I remembered him from Bridge Day. He was one of the guys checking our gear just before we jumped off the bridge.
We went to experienced manifest to get our waivers and to ask for a drop zone briefing. The waivers are standard. One of the local guys showed up to give us the briefing. He asked how many jumps we had. I’m not sure if our response affected our briefing, but I sure hope so. With nearly 2,000 jumps between the two of us and D-licenses, he didn’t spend much time with us.
As we walked along the side of the hangar, he pointed out the landing area. Then, he pointed to the corn. “Don’t land in the corn.” Okay…that seems sort of like a given, but I guess not everyone realizes that landing in corn is a bad idea. At Delmarva, they have a grass runway. “Don’t land on the runway”. Again…something that is a given. He went on to say if that you landed on the run way you should move off of it as quickly as possible. The last thing he told us was about the landing pattern. Honestly, I don’t recall what he told us at this point in time. Matt and I were doing low passes and I really wouldn’t have to worry about the pattern other than not flying over the runway under 1,000 feet - another given. “That’s it?” I asked. He went on to say that they are very laid back. We asked if there was an aerial photo of the landing area. He walked us into the hangar and showed us where it was hanging.
Briefing complete, we put ourselves on the next load. The clouds were starting to come in. We asked for low passes. The woman at manifest informed us that the price is the same no matter when you get out of the plane. Regardless of the price, my first jump at any new drop zone is going to be a low pass. While I was putting on my gear, one of the local women approached me and introduced herself. She was excited to see another woman in the sport. With the exception of this one person, no one else started a conversation with us. I am a conversation starter and I initiated conversations with some of the people I encountered, but no one approached us.
When we were waiting at the loading area, we ran into the women an second time. It turns out she was from Germany and she came to Skydive Delmarva to work for the season. She is a videographer. Once the cold rolls in, she will find somewhere else to go. She mentioned that she might head to Australia. I wondered if we will ever run into her again.
As we boarded the Super Otter, we let everyone know we’d be doing low passes. They told us we’d be exiting at 5K, but at 3K the red light came on. Not a problem, but we were both feeling a little rushed. Apparently, the pilot decided to put us out below the clouds that were coming in over the drop zone. I guess that was easier than taking us up to 5K and looking for a hole. We were right over top of the drop zone. At 3K, it’s pretty easy to see everything. Matt exited and I followed pitching pretty much out the door. Skydive Delmarva has a bunch of outs because it’s surrounded by farm land, but you need to be on the lookout for crop dusters and power lines. I watched Matt land and it looked like he was very close to the peas.
There wasn’t much wind. I was prepared for a butt slide, but I managed to pull off a sweet landing. Matt was walking a little slow. He said that he got target fixation on the peas and flared a little lower than normal. Even with 1,100 plus jumps, not all landings are perfect. I myself had target fixation a few months earlier and ended up with a huge bruise on my forearm to remind me that the earth is unyielding.
As we walked back to the hangar, we discussed our options. Did we want to pack our rigs and do another jump? If we did a second jump, we probably wouldn’t get home until around midnight. There was a big blue hole right over the drop zone, but what was it going to be like in 30 minutes when we were ready to go again? We walked into the hangar with our gear. There really wasn’t much packing space. I suggested we take our rigs home unpacked and we could get on the road faster. Matt put our stuff in the car and I went to manifest to pay for our jumps and to buy a t-shirt ($65.00). We took a couple pictures around the drop zone and it was 4:02 when we pulled out of the parking lot to head home.
We decided to take a different route home. Instead of taking the Bay Bridge in Maryland, we elected to take the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel. Matt had never seen it. I’d been over it a few times and it is quite amazing. It’s such a long bridge that they have a man-made island in the middle with a restaurant and a pier. We stopped there for dinner.
I’d been to the restaurant before with Emma and she and I really enjoyed our food that day. I was happy to discover that they still served grilled vegetables and seasoned potatoes, but I was a little disappointed with my crab cake - it seemed like it has mostly filler. While we were eating, we watched the birds outside. The pigeons were flying in and landing on the rocks. We could also see the people fishing from the pier. From the looks of it, one family was going home with a big catch! It was very exciting to watch them reel in the fish.
I was back behind the wheel cruising down the bridge and Matt was checking on the traffic. It’s so great to have a co-pilot looking being proactive so we don’t get stuck in traffic. It really paid off this time because he discovered an accident just past the end of the bridge. We got off one exit sooner and avoided the mess! Being re-routed added a little extra time to the trip, but it probably saved us time in the long run as who knows how long we would have been waiting for them to clear the accident!
It was just after 10 when we got home. We unloaded the car and I came up to the office to color in Delaware on my map. Delaware is so small. It really didn’t seem like we accomplished much on this trip because coloring in Arizona, California, and Nevada felt so much more gratifying! On the plus side, we’ve got a new state and we had another road trip together! Woo hoo!
