USASJ Story Project- Dec 5 CRAWFORD

Keeping the streak alive!  Ryan "Crash" Crawford logs another one on the K25 in Lebanon, NH.

STORY No. 44
RYAN "CRASH" CRAWFORD

Age: 39

Town: Van Wert, OH now Sunapee, NH

Club: Lebanon Outing Club

Being born and raised in NW Ohio...very little snow most winters and one of the flattest parts of the country. I never even went snow skiing until the winter of 1994/95 when I was 21 years old. The nearest ski area, a 300 foot hill, was 156 miles roundtrip from where I grew up. But I didn't really want to alpine ski, instead I wanted to ski jump and the only possible spot around me was Ishpeming, MI.

At 24 years old I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and then in 2000 moved to western New Hampshire.  I was looking up information on the local area when I saw the picture of the Newport, NH ski jump and I ended up meeting Bob Rollins, former jumper and long time judge, at his house. It was a couple of months before I would actually see ski jumping for the first time ever in person...at the ripe young age of 27.

The first winter of jumping turned into the first summer of jumping. The first summer turned into the second winter. I just kept on coming out and jumping each and every month. It became a challenge to see how many months in a row I could jump.  In the end my streak lasted for 111 months- almost 10 years!  And as far as I know the Lebanon Outing Club still has a smonthly treak alive from 1997.

In the middle of this streak- the winter of 2005 I wondered about upping the ante- seeing who many WEEKS in a row I could jump.  I knew this idea was totally crazy. I knew I would have to find a "victim" to take with me. There was only one I could thnk of- Dan Brown... and I didn't even have to ask.  We were taking our last jumps on the K50 at Lebanon late in March that winter. After practice we were walking out to our cars and Dan said that he was hoping to jumping every week this summer.  I knew I had already jumped every week since the beginning of winter, mid December. I also knew the problems were getting off snow and onto plastic and then off plastic and back onto snow without missing a week.  In the end I did manage to jump all but two weeks, the first two weeks of September (due to car problems!) clear through the spring of 2006. Out of a 68 week stretch, those two weeks in September were the only two I didn't jump.