Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Kevin Burkart completed 100 skydives in one day and raised over $40,000 for Parkinson’s Disease.
View these photos compliments of Daniel Rens:
http://aeternaphotography.com/100perfect/
View video compliments of Team Flew-Id:
100 Perfect jumps: |
Thanks again to all of those who helped make this event a success.
The day started at 5:45am with the minimum 2000 foot ceiling. We were on 5 minute turn pace for each jump right away, completing 22 jumps by about 8am when the weather got worse. We then intermittently picked up 10 more jumps by 2pm. At that point I knew if the weather didn’t clear soon we were 50/50 on reaching the goal.
The weather did turn. And I executed 68 jumps in a row, the 100th being at 8:30pm with a formation load of 15 skydivers from full altitude (13,000 feet), we formed the number 100 in freefall. I landed last and got “pied” by my fellow skydivers (whip cream pie in your face when you do something significant like your 1000th jump, a tradition in skydiving).
Weather makes skydivers do stupid things. And that happened to me. Our intermittent jumps during low ceiling periods caused me to make some bad decisions. I got away with it but it was lucky. Jumping from too low of an altitude with very little time for an out is a bad idea.
The media was very kind to us. We were the beneficiary of a slow news day, an exciting, visual event, and a good story. Here’s a partial list of news outlets that covered the event
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
KARE 11 Saturday morning in studio
Channel 5 Twin Cities Live in studio
Paul Harvey radio national
CNN national TV and radio
Fox News Twin Cities, Chicago, Houston and Milwaukee – live feed interviews on-site via satellite hook-up – both on the ground and from the air (that was one brave cameraman)
WCCO Radio
Channel 4 TV onsite live interviews
KARE 11 on site live interviews
Pioneer Press
Chicago Tribune
AM 1500 KSTP with Tom Mitschke – multiple interviews including date of event
Comcast national cable channel live TV – Big Idea, Small Town
Southwest Publications (multiple cover stories south metro Twin Cities)
Osakis Herald cover story
Octane Magazine from Entrepreneurs' Organization worldwide publication cover story and center spread
Numerous other publications and Internet outlets picked up the story.
Thanks to everyone who helped, our sponsors, and my dad, we achieved the objective in raising $45,000 and a lot of
awareness for Parkinson’s Disease.
