We went to the Philippines! Buko Pie, aka Crazy Coconut of PieWorks Productions, invited The Ozone Team to his homeland to perform a BASE jumping demonstration from a building in Manila, fly our wingsuits in an Airshow at Clark Field, and help establish and assess new paragliding sites in his region of Luzon.
Overall, the trip was a glorious success. As we were cramming Paragliders, Speed Flying Wings, BASE Rigs, and Wingsuits into our luggage, I thought to myself that the odds of us ever using all of these toys would be slim to none. But, in the end, we completed an airsports mission almost every one of the days that we were there, using all of our equipment by the end of the trip.
We flew a newish smallish local site called Carmona, where they were cleaning out a rice paddy. By burning it, of course. There was a good bit of turbulence above the fire... we went and checked it out.
While we were there we filmed a pilot for a TV show that may or may not ever be sold... it doesn't matter. It was completely awesome having JJ (cameraman) along and the footage we got is truly amazing.
In this photo, Carson is playing with the Governor's cock.
The very same Governor invited us to eat his frogs, too.
This is his most magnificent and highly prized cock.
I was on the cover of a couple of local newspapers... just for jumping off of a building. They find the simplest things to be exciting and newsworthy.
One of the locals crashed and broke his back. We helped with the rescue, which was really kind of a cluster to say the least. In fact, it was an all night junk show of fantabulous proportions, and this photo does not do it justice at all - the 'rescue' crew were planning to just hand-over-hand the backboard up the first cliff, down the second, and back up the third... we convinced them to let me put him on belay.
That pile of blankets at our feet is our victim. Since he crashed at sunset, we all got to spend the night out together. It's a long story.
He was trying to do this. Apparently we made launching from this spot look relatively easy. It really wasn't. Here I am, extraordinarily relieved to be off that stupid mountain, with not a clue that I'd be hiking back up in a couple of hours in the dark to tend to a broken local all night.
At least he got a helicopter ride out of the deal. Here you can see it coming in to land on a hill nearby. It took a bit of effort to get him up and down a few short cliff sections, on a backboard, to the heli.
We also opened another beautiful site which we christened 'Silky Smooth'. Here I am enjoying the evening glass off.
We met this monkey, who loved the local San Miguel beer. So we gave him some, and he just hissed at us. Lousy drunk.
And we finally solved the mystery of where all that salmonella contaminated peanut butter went after the scandal of 2009. They just shipped it to the Philippines. Why not, right?
