MC's Compass Rose T-Shirt

Today was the annual Wings Over Wiggins Fly-in, and once again this year a small group of skydivers was invited to perform at the event. Bill, Joe, Ryan, and I were the lucky ones. We made three skydives over the Wiggins airport in front of a crowd of approximately 400, I'm told.

On the first skydive, I jumped my 70 foot long red, white, and blue streamers while Bill jumped a flag and Ryan (since it was his first exhibition jump) just concentrated on the jump without doing anything extra.

For jump number two, I had prepared some red and blue smoke canisters on a couple of foot brackets and Ryan and I wore those while Joe jumped the American flag. Ryan and I flew crisscross paths to paint red and blue zigzag smoke trails in front of Joe with the flag. Bill stayed on the ground and did the announcing over the PA system. He kept it very entertaining for the crowd, suggesting that we were having problems with our equipment when we started smoking and speculating whether or not we were going to make it back to land at the airport, etc.

On the third and final jump, Joe and Ryan got out on the first pass while I stayed in the plane and gained a little more altitude. As the plane flew upwind on the second pass, I got out a little downwind and flew my R-Bird wingsuit up the runway in front of the crowd. Because of the wingsuit, instead of getting 20 seconds of freefall, I flew the wingsuit for 50 seconds before deploying my parachute at a safe altitude upwind of the crowd.

It sure was a fun day, with three great jumps. Afterwards most of us went to Bill's restaurant in Wiggins and had a great meal (we were starving!) and talked about the day and skydiving in general. After that, Ryan and I drove to the dropzone and made one more jump to finish out the day. Awesome!

Here's a video I put together of the three jumps at the fly-in:
Wings Over Wiggins Skydives

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Model Citizen - Zero Discipline

Finally got the track day video edited and uploaded to my channel on YouTube. Here's the link: TGPR Track Day

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Model Citizen - Zero Discipline

Oh yeah!! Two or three times a year some friends and I pool our money and rent a road course racetrack for a day and get out and run our cars as hard and fast as we can go. We've been doing this for quite a few years. So, fifteen of us rented the Talladega Gran Prix Raceway (TGPR) near Talladega, Alabama. Today was our spring event and it was also a memorial event for our friend Rick, who passed away from cancer after last year's spring event. His wife had tee shirts made for us, attended the event, and took a ride in some of the cars just like Rick had done a year ago.

Talladega Gran Prix Raceway is a 1.4 mile track with a variety of challenging corners and three straightaways. On each of the straightaways I'm able to get up to about 95 or 96 mph before having to stomp on the brakes and get it slowed down to get around the upcoming corner without flying off the track. One or two people with higher powered cars were getting over 110 mph on the straights. We always have an interesting collection of cars attend. Some of the guys are real gear heads and they build project cars all the time and bring them to play on the track. This time Steve-O brought a stripped turbo Miata with an open tube frame, Steve R brought a tube frame car he built and powered with an engine from a Yamaha R1 1000cc motorcycle, Dan P was in a race-prepped BMW M3, a race team brought their VW GTI Rally Pro race car, Larry drove his new Camaro ZL1 (580 HP), and Dan B brought the fastest car on the track: a Maxda RX7 with an engine swap to an LS3 V8 (6.2 liter, 430 HP). We also had a BMW 135i, a Porsche Cayman, my S2000, and a bunch of Mini Coopers.

It was a fun day, with everyone getting plenty of time on the track. Several people spun off the track or had little off-track excursions, but no one hit anything or damaged their car. I got a little sideways a few times but managed to keep all four wheels on the track. Of course, with highly modified cars there are often problems that pop up, so we did have people working on their cars between sessions and one of the cars had to be pushed off the track a couple of times due to fuel starvation issues. But no one really broke anything. All of us left a lot of our tires on the track, scrubbing that expensive rubber off of them in the corners. I was just glad it wasn't raining on the way home because I didn't have much tread left.

Everyone had a great time socializing, riding along in each other's cars, and chasing each other around the track. I can hardly wait until the next event. Maybe I can do a performance upgrade or two to my car before the next one. Oh, and of course, a bunch of travel bugs and geocoins got to ride along with me and experience a high speed, high g-force track day.

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Model Citizen - Zero Discipline

Today, my brother and I set out early from home and traveled to Oxford, Alabama to drive the twisty roads around Mount Cheaha; the tallest point in Alabama, in preparation for our track day event tomorrow. Another friend, Reed, met up with us in his Miata that he's fixed up, modified, and turbocharged. We had a blast doing some semi-aggressive driving on the beautiful, newly paved mountain roads. One of the roads we went on was like a little roller coaster; up & down, side to side. Reed and I even had a little impromptu drag race on a deserted straight stretch of road. It was a fairly close race, but my S2000 was outgunned by Reed's lighter, turbocharged Miata. Next stop, meeting up with some more friends, getting some food, and resting up for tomorrow's track day. Several travel bugs and geocoins came along on today's adventure. More adventures in store tomorrow!

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As we do most years, my wife and I attended the Mississippi Gulf Coast Classic Seniors Golf Tournament near Biloxi. We went down the night before, stayed in the Hard Rock Hotel at the casino, had a nice dinner with some friends, then got up in the morning and went to the beautiful Fallen Oak Golf Club to watch the senior (over 50) golf champions play. The weather was beautiful this year and we spent most of the day walking around, following different groups of golfers. When we got tired or hungry we would head to the 18th green where we were guests in the Mississippi Power skybox. I toted seven travel bugs/geocoins around in my pocket with me.

At the end of the day, the lines for the buses back to the parking lot were very long and moving extremely slowly so I opted for the 1.5 mile hike to the parking lot instead. Along the way there was a geocache to find outside a cemetery. All in all it was a very pleasant, relaxing day. Oh, and by the way, Miguel Angel Jimenez, a Spaniard, won the tournament this year by shooting eight under par on the final round. That 64 score was the lowest final round in tournament history. He shot six birdies in a row on the back nine, with no bogies.

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Model Citizen - Zero Discipline