Unfortunately for the jumpers and the spectators, no jumps today, except for one fun-load...

We got to the DZ at around 7:30, but the sky was dark and no one was in much of a hurry. We spent some time removing leaves, water and frogs from the tarps and tents, which had gotten drenched after yesterday's rain. We did a quick dirt dive, then went on an indefinite weather hold. After about two hours, BJ made an announcement - we had found another airport 30 minutes away (30 minutes by C130, that is) and the Thai air force was willing to drop us there instead. The captains piled onto one of the smaller planes, a DC3, to go check it out.

A few hours later BJ was back on the microphone. We were going to try to jump into Korat instead; the weather here now looked a lot better, and the alternative drop zone was a bit narrow for landing 400 people. A lot of jumpers were relieved. BJ would send the G-222 up first with a load of packers, local Thai jumpers and tandems, and then we'd make the jump. We dirt dived, then waited until the captains got back before we loaded up the C130's.

We climbed to altitude with the full 372-way for the first time. We got to 20,000 feet and started our long jump run. A few minutes out we got the word - weather had moved back in and we'd be landing with the plane. We stayed on oxygen (fortunately, we had the ability to change tanks in flight if needed) and started to descend.

We flew around for about five minutes, picking our way through the overcast that had sprung up during the climb. Water dripped off the tail as they opened the tailgate after landing, and we hurried back to the tents in a steady drizzle. Looks like a lost day. The packers did manage to get a jump in, and there were jokes about how they were more current than some of the people on the A tracking team (outer wackers) who have been mostly on the ground for two days now.

Tonight we go to the Korat Resort for dinner, which is one of the two hotels we're using. The resort is supposedly the nicer of the two, but it's pretty far from town, and the people there complain about long bus rides to get into Korat. It's far enough that taxis and tuk-tuks won't come out there. By comparison, the Sima Thani hotel is next to an irish pub, about a mile from Tesco's (think Thai Walmart) and two miles from the center of town.

The biggest difference between the Korat Resort and the Sima Thani is the air. In Korat, the two-stroke tuk-tuks, the constant burning of trash, the old diesel buses, and the unreleting humidity make the air a dirty gray haze you can smell as soon as you get to around 2000 feet. (Makes a good backup to an altimeter.) In the resort, 30 minutes outside Korat, you can barely smell the smoke. There may be a few people here who could stop taking drugs for congestion if they moved over to the resort.

Tonight we had a quite excellent dinner out at the resort, followed by a fire eater show and a sarong competition. Duffy Fainer did an excellent job as MC, singing "girl from Ipanema" as he tried to get actual women in sarongs to come up on stage. Instead a procession of guys in drapes, dresses and sheets came up to compete for the prize, which according to Duffy was a year's supply of Lee press-on nails. There were best disabled-skydiver sarong, best old guy sarong, and youngest sarong categories.

Side note - a few days ago, a camera flyer was landing by the radar antenna in the center of the field, and had his cypres fire just as he was flaring. Apparently it was an old one without the EMI shielding, but people have been avoiding it ever since anyway. It's probably a good thing, since getting a canopy edge caught on the spinning reflector would definitely not be a good thing.

Weather report for tomorrow isn't great so we're waiting until 8am to head over. Tuesday things should improve.

End-of-the-day video (6.2 Mb)