Martin McDowell's Blog

And finally I got around to actually purchasing the airline tickets for my first ever skydiving trip abroad as well as my first transoceanic trip as well as my first trip to the US.

I will be going in mid-February and arriving at the beginning of March 2008. I will be flying with Virgin Atlantic from London. Hopefully the weather will be stable enough in Florida as it usually is that time of year. Compared to my fellow skydivers who will be traveling from Slovenia, I am quite lucky as I have a direct flight to Orlando and only have to bear the drive from Johnston to Gatwick. My Slovene friends will have to either go through Trieste (and then via Munich and North Carolina) or Munich (via Philadelphia) to Orlando.

No all that is left to do is to specify exactly what to do after the tunnelcamp. This week I received news that I will be in the first group to go in the tunnel so I will do my skydiving and traveling round the southeast US later. Exactly what to do when and where is still up for discussion.

One of the things I always wanted to do was to swim with wild dolphins in the ocean. And by that I do not mean some commercialized scheme where the dolphins are regularly fed at certain locations and we are then brought there to swim with them later. And if all is done “dolphin friendly” I really won’t mind if they don’t bother to show up. Its their lives

There is a program called Dolphin SMART that was put into place to do just that, protect the dolphins against harassment and disturbance. If it turns out that swimming with them is to disrupting, I wont do it.

UPDATE!
I have heard from the organizers of the Tunnelcamp that we have now made reservations for the hotel in Orlando. Its called Orlando Continental Plaza Hotel (formerly known as Riande Continental Plaza). It seems quite comfy. The problem we faced was that the Daytona bike week will be held in that general time period (29. Feb – 9. March 2008) – so hotels are booked up and prices much higher than usual. This is the venue where OCC has also been known to make an appearance.
The other news is that we have finally agreed on the dropzone where we will do our skydiving jumps when we will not be in the tunnel. The DZ will be Deland, so come and see us if you are in the neighbourhood. I will use a separate post to tell you more about this DZ.

Blue skies!