A few thousand miles, a couple new states!

I just got back from about a month of traveling around not just the US, but a bit of Canada as well! Sarah and I started out by heading up from Denver to visit her friend Heather in Great Falls, MT for about a week before we continued on to Lethbridge Alberta. We stopped at Waterton national park just over the boarder and kayaked around a gorgeous lake that was probably over 8,000ft high cause we were surrounded by snow! After spending almost three weeks hanging out in Lethbridge and Calgary and some boonie-ville town called drumheller seeing all of Sarah's family and friends we drove back down through Montana to take some main highways all the way to new york. The first day of that drive we got about half way through north Dakota trying to find a hotel with a room available for about qpp miles before finally giving up and buying a tent and air mattress from Walmart at 4:30am and camping right in a grassy patch in their parking lot! It was very hot and humidity so we needed to shower in the morning but all we had access to was the sinks in Wally world's bathrooms so we took all our bath supplies and got as cleaned up as possible before making it to Fargo.

Fargo?!?! Sounds familiar! So we meet again... This time around the fields weren't completely flooded and we met some awesome folks at the Fargo dropzone! The jump was awesome and I should be having video of the great three way sit flying action that ensued... I ha en definitely been slacking in the video blog department but this time I got some great footage and some half-way decent video blog worthy commentary so I promise I will get a video put together!

Aaaanyway... After a fun night hanging out with the peeps in Fargo we headed off to Indiana to stay with some of my family one ast time before Thailand and to get some rest before one last push to New York where we stayed in Quogue which is on long island right next to the Hamptons! A few days into the stay with Sarah's grandma we decided to go to the Long Island dropzone where I got to jump out of one HUGE ASS PLANE!! It's called a carribu... Picture of me after the jump next to the plane at the bottom of the post... There were about 25 skydivers inside and it probably could have fit 20 more... 13,500ft later the huge taigate lowered and two strangers and myself were the first out the door! Landing amidst that many jumpers that didn't seem to have experience landing near more than one other skydiver seemed to be a zoo... But we all got down safely and I threw my unpacked gear into the car and made the whole dz trip take no more than 45 min!

So now here I am a short flight away from Long Island in Denver writing this up waiting for the video of the ND jump... Sarah and I leave for Thailand on the 15th which is only 6 days away and we have a lot of preparation to do before that trip... That's all for now folks!!

Road trip ended a bit early...

Well that was an interesting few weeks! I got to jump in 2 new states... not as much as I was going for, but I came back to Colorado for a very good reason and it made the 3,500 miles worth just 2 states.

The first jump in Minnesota went very well and a huge thanks goes out to West Side Skydivers for making sure I was able to get my reserve repacked in time to make one jump on a day that they did not have any other skydivers out there for! (The weather wasn't good at all...)

I then went up to North Dakota for about a week trying to get a pilot to take me for a skydive because the only drop zone in North Dakota happened to be flooded while I was there! Long long story short, I wasn't able to find anybody that could take me :( So, I left for Wisconsin, jumped in the early evening then took off for Indiana right after. That was a really fun hybrid that didn't work out very well but it was still a blast!

After spending a day with some family members in Indiana, I decided to head back to Colorado for a while before I leave to visit more family in California. So here I am, all packed up with everything I own in my car, bound to be living on the road until I am moving to Thailand in August. Look for more updates soon! I will get the video blog up for this trip as soon as I'm done editing it...

Road trip #3 begins tomorrow!

Well, this is a bit of a surprise, but I'm leaving tomorrow to start road trip #3. I have to be back in Denver for a train ride to California by the 28th, so I don't have much time at all. I HOPE to be able to make all of the states on this map (Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky) but depending on the weather and time constraints, I might have to skip the last dropzone that would cover Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Any and all couches are appreciated! The offer still stands for anybody willing to sponsor me a bit to do something personal for you and cover it on my video blogs :)

Here is the map:

Starting to plan for Road trip #3!

So here I am, chillin in Denver... I decided to pick up the pace on this whole adventure a bit and try to take on the entire northeast part of the country (and the 4 states that I missed on my last trip) in one final epic road trip. Also, I plan on driving up to visit a friend in Canada with my girlfriend who grew up in the town of Lethbridge, so that adds a bit of time to the trip but not very much when you look at the entire route.

Here it is folks, my rough plan for road trip number 3!! Click on it to view the full google maps route...

Places I've been, and jumped again in Colorado!

Howdy folks! Been a while again... Not much has been happening still as the weather all over the country isn't exactly permitting jumping, nor do I have ANY money what-so-ever. Since I moved out here to Denver I've been trying to make some $$ to get back on the road as soon as the weather starts to warm up... I was lucky enough to get out to Longmont, CO for another jump (one of the places that I did NOT have pics/vid of) and did a great 7-way tracking dive! Check out the video of that below...




Also, here is a pretty cool little map that I've been keeping up with TripAdvisor (a Facebook app). Crazy!

• Create your own travel map or travel blog


• Find vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

I've been slacking a bit in the blog area... more video though!

Hello again, world.

It's been far too long since I've put an update on here, but not TOO much has happened. The weather was so crappy up north in Minneapolis that I decided I would call it quits for that road trip, and I drove to Denver instead. I ended up meeting a really cool skydiver chick that is now my girlfriend and I am calling Denver my home for a while.
Unfortunately, with this bad of weather, it looks like I will be waiting till the spring to do the remaining 23 states. Since I am finally on a better internet connection, here is my video blog from Wyoming and South Dakota, along with the video that Lindsey did for her class project that is acting as my Nebraska video blog!

Billy Purta & His Mission to Skydive 50 States from Lindsay Nystrom on Vimeo.