I’m back from the Knowledge Management conference, with great hopes of staying in California for nearly three weeks.
On my flight home from Chicago to San Jose, I had the great pleasure of sitting next to Dana Bowman, who is a professional skydiver with a difference — he is also a double-amputee, having lost his legs in a skydiving accident. Dana was on his way to San Jose to parachute into the opening ceremony of the National Junior Wheelchair Games at San Jose City College, to demonstrate the difference between someone who’s disabled and someone who’s unable. Talking with Dana was amazingly refreshing and inspirational — not that he was preachy — far from it, but I was impressed that he had taken such a hit and didn’t let it slow him up.
So yesterday (Saturday), we found ourselves at San Jose City College, waiting for Dana to drop in. The drop was supposed to happen at 7pm, and we just barely made it on time — but, unsurprisingly, things were running late, so we were quite comfortably settled when the plane began flying overhead. It made a few laps of the area, waiting for the parade of athletes, but eventually, we caught site of a distant parachute. A few minutes later, he was close enough for us to be able to read the ad on his parachute; then he was only three feet off the ground. And then he’d landed and was (briefly) addressing the crowd. Then everyone started to disperse, and we went home.
Other than that, things have been quiet. More later, perhaps.