D-Day - Ground school training. Guess picking mid August wasn't such a great idea as I ended up being the only student, so no-one else to bounce ideas off, or to ask the stupid questions, lol. But at least it meant we rattled through the basics and focused on my weaker areas. Though having started at 8:30, by 11:30 my brain was pretty fried... I had no idea how I was going to remember everything, and I was only halfway through! Time for a break....
The next session didn't really lessen the pace, but at least some of it was going over the first part of the day. Luckily I have very good memory skills so it was starting to get fixed into my brain. And once we got to early afternoon, the plane had come back from its service and tandems were going up. My instructor went off to take some passengers and I had a proper break to review and revise what I'd spent the previous 5 hours learning. We still had a couple of final things to go over to finish the course but the key stuff was there. So I spent most of my afternoon sitting on a bench in the sun, watching jumpers landing and working out landing patterns and orientations. I also must have looked like something of a looney to the friends and families of tandem jumpers as I sat muttering to myself, and moving my hands to mimic the various steps of my first jump, rofl.
The winds were too high for students to jump so it seemed likely that I would need to wait until the following day to actually go up, which allowed me to relax a bit and let all the new information try to sink in. Towards the end of the afternoon, the wind did drop a little and then I wavered - would I or wouldn't I get the opportunity do my first jump today? Did I want to or did I want to sleep on it? Back and forth I went, first one way, then the other. I will jump, I won't jump, better to get it over with, better to rest and be fresh in the morning - arrghh! In the end, I didn't get the option. The winds picked up again and that was it for the day.
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