I’ve been thinking about my recap of the World Freefall Convention the past few days and have been drawing a blank. Maybe it’s the continuous lack of sleep over 10 days, maybe it’s that I’m still reeling from it all. Maybe it’s a little from column A and a little from column B. Not that the convention was uneventful - I had one of the best times I’ve had there in years. I have a hundred stories begging to be told, but before that, there are other things I want to say, and am not sure how. So I went back and looked at my entry from last year and, as I am surprised to find out accurate of a prediction I created for myself - that is EXACTLY how I feel… again. The same unexpected feeling of loss and sadness over the end of the event. The same confusion over not having a microphone in one hand and the balloon manifest in the other.

When I stepped off the plane, I felt like I’d just left and had been gone forever all at the same time. It’s the same every year, the convention is tricky that way. You find yourself in a completely different world for 10 days and the longer you are gone the harder it is to remember how the real world functions. You have a job back home? What job! You have a car payment back home? What car! All I need is a golf cart! After living differently for just long enough to start to get used to it, it’s hard to come back home and not have the post-convention blues. I check the WFFC message board every day and have read through Keith Abner’s journal to still hang on to the feeling. I try not to think that it’ll be a whole year before I’ll see you all again. BUT - I’ve decided the wait is worth it. In the end, it gives us all time to remember how to live in the real world so next year the convention will make the same unexpected impact on us as it did this year. We need the time to forget, so next year we are surprised again.

And it’s true. I’m surprised again. At the overwhelming comfort in DZ culture and reminiscing with several thousand of my closest friends. When I got back to Austin on Sunday night all I could think of was that mom had been alone in manifest a long time, I should probably get back in there to give her a break. But then it comes crashing down on you that it’s over. And then all the stupid, funny things that happened over the week come flying back at you and you can’t stop laughing at the fact that you made an announcement about a Polka tournament one night when really it was a POKER tournament but the guy who asked me to announce it was from Boston and he didn’t say his ‘r’s. Or that Bruce Turner was giving me shit about how stupid it is that I didn’t go to college, all while he’s looking at me thru one eye since the other is swollen shut from the golf cart accident the night before that gave him that and 8 stitches in the back of his head. Who’s stupid now, babe? Or golf cart polo in the landing area after dark. Or the cross sections of runway 18 and 9. Or standing on the tower every morning listening to the songs. Or the bonfire of couches on the last night that kept me up until after 5 a.m.. And it goes on and on…

Please don’t let me forget how lucky I am to experience this every year. How fortunate I am to have met the people I have and to reconnect with the ones I’ve known for years. I am so grateful to know you. Again.

.¸.·´¯`·.¸¸. Blues skies .¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.

Pictures posted here

(There are also a ton of pictures on the freefall.com site)