I love skydiving in September and October.  The temp drops, the winds seem just right and the days are just long enough.  Don't get me wrong, I love long summer days, but I don't like to have dinner at 10 PM.  Nate's birthday was at the beginning of September and he had plans to go to Carolina Sky Sports located in Louisburg, NC for the long weekend.Both Matt and I had been to CSS before, but not together.

In 2004, I met Nate at Skydive Orange.  We were both doing the AFF student program.  After we got our licenses, we tried to coordinate our trips to new drop zones together.  It was a blast!  

Since we living in Maryland at the time, we drove down the on Saturday night and slept in the van. When you put a mattress and some blankets in the back, it's really comfortable.  In the morning, we got showers before most people were up.  We grabbed some breakfast, came back to the DZ and filled out our waivers.

There were so many fun jumpers with campers and tents!  It took us awhile, but we eventually found a group of our friends. Nate was hanging out with Tom and Jennifer at Tom's camper.  After a quick round of hellos, we planned a 4 way with video.

One of the benefits of dating a guy that has a video camera, he doesn't charge me for video!  This jump was 166 for me and 574 for Matt.  He'd been jumping with a camera for a long time, but I still didn't have enough jumps to wear one.  The USPA requires 200 jumps.

I have a love hate relationship with the CASA.  I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE jump out of the CASA, but I really hate the climb to altitude.  In comparison to the PAC or the Super Otter, it takes FOREVER to get to 13,500.  But once you are there....OMG!  It's Awesome!!!  You get to stand up straight in the door and it's pretty easy to make the exit work.  

When we came off the plane, Jennifer nearly went over top of us!  She was almost doing head down!  We held on to her, and pulled off the exit, but the jump went down hill from there.  As soon as we let go of each other, Tom and Jennifer went low.  Nate was spinning me around, but my goggles were coming off.  Matt saw I was having an issue and he came over to see me.  It looked like I was saluting, but I was just trying to hold my goggles down so I could see what was going on.

CSS was an AWESOME drop zone.  We had a great day hanging out and jumping with our friends.  The facilities were awesome including a huge air-conditioned packing space!  With sloping sides, the landing area wasn't perfect, but once you knew where to land, it was just fine.  Unfortunately, CSS closed in September of 2008.