Bigways with Pete Allum

Bigways with Pete Allum
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Keep the focus..

We’ve had a couple of brilliant weekends over the Victorian surf coast recently, thanks to everybody keeping their focus on what’s important and seizing the moment when they can.

As a team, we’ve shrugged off a lot over the past year; bad weather, a tunnel that’s still incomplete, a few injuries and some financial challenges. Through it all, we’ve kept our sights firmly on the main game, and we’re now unstoppable on the march to California! Two recent weekends of team building are perfect examples.

Barwon Bigways 2.1 – with Pete AllumPete Allum on bridge b heads mar 20191

Pete Allum Event Video

There’s a reason Pete Allum is known as the nicest guy in skydiving. Because he actually is! The man is also a total guru, with 34,000+ jumps, countless tunnel hours, 35 years competing at world meets, and a beautifully nurturing style of coaching. (Oh, and he gets the notice of the others on the DZ too when he jumps his 75ft canopy.)

Our event was two days of 15-ways, focusing on unusual slots for people, different fall rate techniques, different floater lines to what we’re used to, and really nailing those 1 second stops between any points. We achieved some great multi-point 15-ways, even while adjusting to those small differences and subtle challenges that were set on each one.

Pete took us through an excellent bigway safety seminar, and he used a couple of weather holds to really finesse exit pack ups.
Highlights included Fergs’ 1100th and Greg Coman’s fashion parade trying on John Winkler’s entire bottomless bag of jumpsuits. I had worked hard on event bags with all the right things in them, but I soon realised that all they wanted was Kit Kats. Lesson learned.

We secured fantastic media coverage in three newspapers and a radio station, getting the region excited about our coming adventure. While we were all transformed into local superstars because of his presence, Pete remained as humble and lovely as ever. He quietly did the dishes at the share house and he cheerfully emptied the rubbish bin at the DZ. Suffice to say, he ticked every box and we would LOVE to have him back!

Tracey sent down an Aussie Bigways cap for Pete and he wore it proudly, to the point where he had a severe case of hat hair at the end. He farewelled us with a lovely pledge that he’s a new follower for Aussie Bigways and he’ll be cheering us from afar as he watches our efforts in Perris.

Star Crest Saturdays – Series 8 done and dusted

What a way to finish the annual summer star crest series. A hellish week of changes gave way to a magical day of jumping. It started with perfect morning light and a ripper 4-point zipper-zipper.

One Star Crester completed his third successful SC jump with a 5 point ‘Stars and Stripes’ dive. (It was sort of 6 points if you count the camera coming in at the end. Even if was a rather, ummm, ‘assertive’ arrival.) A second Star Crester overcame some fall rate issues to complete his final one on a three pointer.

Congratulations to freshly minted Star Cresters Paul Grocott and Branden Duberry! We’ve now helped 16 successful Star Cresters over the summer and 104 since we begam this mission after the 2010 Aussie Bigways record.

Congrats also to Greg Coman and Ross Shaw who did their 400th jumps.

A cheese platter is our normal end of day fare, so Rowan Salger helped us up the ante with a 3.5kg crayfish for the final gathering. It was massive. And delicious. The bar has now been raised.

scs8 mar 17

Back to the main focus …

So, we’re now just over 60 days out from Perris, and the team is feeling strong. We’re helping each other out, we’re sharing plans for the trip, and we’re working on our A-game for the event.
We know that bigway is all about lifting each other to help the whole.
And we’re making some special memories on the way too!

Kelly Brennan – Aussie Bigways Mentor

Kelly Brennan1

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