Keeping the dial turned up.
Beer and chilli at the Knights Templar with the usual suspects. A warm spring night encoraged me to prolong the ride home with some diversions to breathe the air and feel the breeze on my face.
Surfing in Woolacombe. The waves were small and the sky overcast. The company was (as ever) good. Tasty pasties, plenty of time in the gentle waves, hot chocolate in The Red Barn. Home in time for Dr. Who.
Went to see Inside Man with Jimbo. The film is entertaining enough. Much more mainstream and accessible than Spike Lee's movies usually are. Filled with vingettes outlining the issues of race and prejudice you would expect. The plot has some whopping holes in it but in a completely forgivable way, it is not taking itself seriously enough for them to matter.
Home after midnight in no mood to sleep was still up at nearly three am watching Veronica Mars.
Woken Sunday morning by the sun streaming into my bedroom. This presaged good weather so I was out of bed to phone the man about the pottential for throwing myself out of a perfectly good aeroplane at 8.30. The man says "yes" and I am off out the door for a speedy drive to the airfield (NMA's 125 and empty roads encouraging rather too much breaking of the speed limit.)
A brief training session and a sausage sandwich does not seem to be enough to fill the next cople of hours. It passed fast. Suddenly I am strapped tight to a big man called Dave packed in an aeroplane with 12 other jumpers watching the ground fall away. That was one of my few butterfly moments, as the ground gets to the point where you realise you are up high but before it gets map like and abstract, when the feeling cleared. Up toward the broken cloud cover and a guy hops out at 4000'. No worries. A couple of circles later we are well and truly above the clouds and the moment is coming. There are some more butterflies then. The formation teams bail out leaving us and 1 other to go. Dave is butt fucking me along the bench toward the doorway as the last jumper waves at me and slips out of the door. By the time I am sat on the door ledge, feet dangling over 12,500' of nothing he is a small dot almost at the cloud line. I glance around to see the earth's curve, look up and push out. A slow roll over, looking up at the plane getting rapidly smaller as it cuts across a crystal clear blue sky and then roll back to see those clouds coming up really fast. The goggles get washed so hard I wish I had wipers. I have to remember to breathe. That last gulp of air was 20 seconds ago and it is hard to get a proper lungfull at 130mph. Another gulp and I settle into a sufficiently calm state to enjoy the rest properly. 30 more seconds of exhillarating speed, some glances about to see clouds rushing by. We burst from a cloud and the ground is suddenly big and near, the canopy opens and everything goes quiet. I realise the ground is not that near after all, (we dumped at 5000') and we have plently of time to pull a few corkscrew spins and steer around the airfield a bit. The canopy ride was a serene contrast to the seconds of sensory overload that preceeded it. We came in with a stately 3 step landing right on the spot. The buzz takes a couple of hours to quell enough to drive, and even then I am hardly sensible on the way home.
I spent the evening with Richard, drinking a particually good bottle of St. Emillion and the first to be opened in Richard's crate of Cahors. That bottle was very good now and still has some growth in it. In a couple of years it will be magnificent.
All in all a few of days of living life in the way it should be lived. Friends, flavours and experiences both new and familiar. What more to life is there?