I have now managed to send off the container to the manufacturer Aerodyne in Florida. I have just driven back from Swansea where I send off the container through a DHL ServicePoint location in the Parc Tawe Staples shop. Great service, if you ask me, as you don’t have to pay a high price to have your packed shipped and you also choose what boy its going to be sent in – the price of shipment depends on the size of the box, but with a upper weight limit. I sent in a large box which has an upper weight limit of 5kg – even though my container weighed only 3.5 kg. There are currently about 750 ServicePoint locations in the UK.

When the lady in Staples was helping me pack I kept on thinking that I am forgetting to post something, but I could not put my finger on exactly what. Considering I still had an disassembled container this morning I had to move fast so I unintentionally forgot to send the Aerodyne form that should be in the DHL package.

What can I say, ooops for the second time?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Where’s my container? (martinmcdowell.com)
• Ooops, or how I ripped my container on a Cessna 206, part 3 (martinmcdowell.com)

My recent visit to the motherland gave me the opportunity for yet another skydiving session, I joined my instructor and mentor Aleš Debeljak from the Paranoia skydiving school.

All went well and on the third jump of the second day just as I exited the Cessna 206 I apparently managed to hook my rig on the side of the door which resulted in a nasty tear in my container on the reserve parachute flap. I am suspecting poor stitching but will have to send the whole thing to Florida to be fixed.

Here are photos of the my sad-looking Aerodyne Icon Sport container:

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ooops, or how I ripped my container on a Cessna 206, part 2 (martinmcdowell.com)
• Ooops, or how I ripped my container on a Cessna 206, part 3 (martinmcdowell.com)

This is the name of a 7 mile (11 km) stretch of sandy beach located on the south Wales coastline between Tenby and Swansea. The most impressive feature of this beach is its flatness and straightness at such a long length. You can see the satellite view below.

[umap id="10608" size="m" alignment="center"]

In the early 20th century the sands were often used as a racing course and later, in the 1920s, it was used for land speed records. It was even used as an aircraft runway. Durine the 2nd world war the sands were taken over by the British MOD who used it as a firing range. It owns it to this day, but it is open to the public. There are, however many signs that warn visitors about possible unexploded devices. From 2004 the Sands are closed to vehicles due to safety reasons, but, on occasions, there are some rally car events staged there. Some episodes of BBC’s Top Gear were filmed there. Is an example…

To see the photos taken on this trip click here to enter Picasa.

For more information about Pendine Sands please visit the Pendine Sands Wikipedia page.

There is a good parking area by the entrance to the Sands. There is a Speed museum there as well. When I arrived there I could see many horses in the car park that were used for horseback riding on the Sands. As mentioned at the top the Pendine Sands are 7 miles long and I certainly didn’t really want to walk the whole length. Don’t get me wrong, they look spectacular but after walking for 10 minutes it feels a bit like a damp sand desert. But you can see a huge stretch of water – slightly reminded me of Daytona beach. However Daytona Beach beach is about 23 miles (37 km) long.

I later moved down the coast and visited the litle village of Laugharne. First I stopped at St. Martin’s church on the northern part of the village in which grounds the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas is buried in. After that I proceeded towards Laugharne castle in the southern part of Laugharne.

St. Martin's church in Laugharne

Laugharne castle

As mentioned in a previous post, this is the DZ (dropzone) where we will do our skydiving in Florida in 2008. There are quite a few of us booked for the SkyDragons tunnelcamp and all will skydivers will also be doing jumps as well. Why on earth would you miss skydiving in Florida and the prices compared to the UK, where I live at the moment, are much lower.

Here are the basic details of the Deland DZ:

• airfield ID: Deland Municipal Airport (KDED)
• website: skydivedeland.com
• address: 1600 Flightline Blvd., DeLand, FL
• aircrafts: twin otter, skyvan

The DZ is about an hours drive (50 miles / 80 km north) from Orlando, where we will be using the Skyventure wind tunnel.

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!