Ok then, how many times have you actually THOUGHT you were about to die?

[ACMESkydiver 0]

Well then? Kinda goes with the other post...

4 times that I recall right now.

*First time when I was 12 years old and the Jeep Cherokee I was in began to roll (<--actually I did die on the scene...they brought me back. Some people would argue that that was a bad decision on the paramedics' part )

*Once when I was 22 years old and 6 months pregnant out on a boat in rough seas with 20+ foot swells.

*Once when I was in a car on a freeway on-ramp with my mom (still have no idea how we lived through that)

*During my cut-away.

I was terrified every time but the last.

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[GravityGirl 0]

Once when I got stuck in downtown Oakland late at night wearing club clothing (or lack there of) and had to walk all the way to Alameda.

Once when an ex-boyfriends roommate put a gun to my head.

Once when I had no RSL or Cypres and ended up with a hard pull on my reserve.

Once when I got hung up on a power tower and had four hours to think I was going to die. Actually, I only really thought that for about 20 minutes, then I just realized it was going to be a long night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peace and Blue Skies!
Bonnie ==>Gravity Gear!

[bobsled92 0]

Hit by car towing camper
stuck in 5 feet of snow at age 6
shot with rifle
hit with high voltage while digging for cable at work
had gun pulled on me 3 time in 2man area of the city.
while at the top of a telephone pole the bottom broke out and over I went.
and worst= my wife spent my jump money that I hid
(I thought for sure "I was gonna die then")

_______________________________
If I could be a Super Hero,
I chose to be: "GRANT-A-CLAUS". and work 365 days a Year.
http://www.hangout.no/speednews/

[ACMESkydiver 0]

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and worst= my wife spent my jump money that I hid
(I thought for sure "I was gonna die then")

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

1) My brother tied a scarf around my neck and pushed me down the stairs when I was a toddler. If my mother hadn't heard my yacking and spewing, I might have chocked to death.

2) I was in a car accident (I was a passenger) in the 80s which if it happened a split second earlier likely would have taken my life along with the lives of my friends.

3) I came inches away from hitting a tree at a very high rate of speed while mountain biking back in the early 90s.

4) I low sided my motorcycle on an extremely sharp switchback turn in the mountains of British Columbia back in the late 90s. If I had highsided it, or missed the turn completely I would have crashed off of the mountains and likely would have died.

5) I did a 180 degree hook turn two years ago with my reserve bridle dangling out of my container without my knowledge. If the reserve had come out and entangled with my main ... well I don't think I could have recovered from that.

So it's kind of amazing that I'm not dead ... yet. Give it time though. I like to swoop, I'm a BASE jumper and I'd like to do more Ground Launching. Of course these activities aren't going to kill me. I'm going to have a heart attack or something like that.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[ACMESkydiver 0]

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Ground Launching.

?

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

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Ground Launching

Ground Launching is when you launch a canopy off of a hill or a mountain, fly down the slope and land somewhere. It's not a safe activity. Check this link out. It speaks of the Ground Launch Center in CA. By the way, you'll see a picture toggling on and off of three guys kiting their canopies on this page. I'm the guy on the right.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[ACMESkydiver 0]

Yeah, that's what I thought it was. Never seen it done.

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[hookitt 1]

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Once when I got hung up on a power tower and had four hours to think I was going to die.

Thank goodness for custom harnesses :)

There's been several times I was pretty certain. This one stands out in my mind more than just about any others.

3 of us were down at a waterfall jumping off the small cliffs into the water. When it was time to leave, rather than taking the easy uphill trail out of the canyon, we thought it wise to climb straight out.

The climb wasn't so bad but I was 6 inches shorter than my friends and at one point I couldn't reach high enough to get over a ledge. It took me several minutes longer to figure out how to get up that part and my then they were long gone.

At that point I couldn't see them any more and farther up, they went left, and I went right. You know that feeling when you're climbing and know you're pretty screwed because there's no way to go back down and up seems impossible? This was one of those times.

Now the good part.

Near the top, there was a burly thorn bush at a ledge that I needed to stand on. I'm on the side of a nearly verticle wall standing on a nice foot hold. I was reaching over the top of the thorn bush to get my hand on the ledge and the foot hold broke and I fell. The only thing there was the thorn bush so I happily grabbed the trunk of it with my right hand, then my left.

At this moment I understood what people meant by their life flashing before there eyes.

Adrenaline took over and without hesitation pulled myself up and was now standing on the ledge. The very top was at my fingertips so I simply pulled myself up and was then standing at the very top breathing heavy.

My buddies were about 50 or 60 feet off to the left where they found an easier way up. They sat there tossing small pebbles down thinking I was below them. They looked over and saw me and said .. .Oh.. where did you come from? ... uh.. what happened to you?

That's when I realized I was all scratched up and had a whole bunch of thorns in my hands and a few other places. It didn't hurt a bit at the time. There was a first aid kit in the car with a pair of tweezers so we started pulling out all the stickers and thorns.

I just looked and there's still a very light scar on the inside of my right arm from that one.

There are plenty of other times and I find it odd that one stands out so much. It was 23 years ago when I was 18.

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[ACMESkydiver 0]

That's a cool story.

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[Deuce 1]

Bunch of times.

It taught me what I think is an important lesson: Equipment can kill you, but only people can murder you.

That will make sense to some folks, but not others.

[CieloDiosa 0]

too many to count
the ones that stick out though:

1. getting locked in the freezer on my 2nd day of work

2. airplane engine dying on way home from west virginia

3. tripping and falling, rolling down the hill, on the way to class running across the street while an un-seen semi was about to plow me over

honestly i've had some pretty crazy skydiving experiences, but none of them made me actually THINK i was going to die except these

~boogie ho!!
pull before impact!
L.A.S.T#14, PMS #309, Ci EL O DI O SA

[DexterBase 1]

More times than I care to remember. I've been rock climbing since I was twelve, BASE jumping since I was 18, and did a combat tour in Iraq last summer.

So, many, many, many times. I'm not talking about being scared, I'm talking no B.S. "you're about to die right now" situations.

I had a 7.62 tracer round fly so close to my face that I could feel it snap past my head? (this happened probably 20 times in about half an hour.)

I had mortar rounds impacting around me as I was hugging the earth in the open. After the incoming stopped, we found craters less than 40 meters away. (if you don't know, a 120 mm mortar will kill you if you're standing up within 70 meters of the impact.) As they come in you can hear the round cutting the air with a very destinctive hum/whistle.

I could go on for a while but I won't.

BASE is pretty scary too.

[mjosparky 4]

More times then I care to remember. And none of them had to do with skydiving.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[gordy 0]

Came through the cloud after my third backloop in a stand up, looked at the ground and realised I could make out people, pulled and had a 10 second canopy ride. Not my finest moment.

[Winznut 0]

1. When I felt into a river during winter at -5°C as a 10 year old boy.

2. When I was climbing a 30 Meter wall free solo and found no grip near the top...that was the most scary moment in my life.

[FIREFLYR 0]

I know I am going to die.
I have thought; I am going to die, maby 30 times i my life.
I have been afraid,no terrified, A few. it's hard to tell the difference once you are alive again....
~J

"One flew East,and one flew West..............one flew over the cuckoo's nest"
"There's absolutely no excuse for the way I'm about to act"

[Thijs 0]

Happend when I was ten years old.
At an airshow an airplane crashed about 200 feet away from me. Just ran my ass of to get out of there.
About ten people died there. I was very lucky there. The crashed airplane came to a stop right between full fueled aircrafts, a bunch of F16's and some tankingvehicles with fuel.

And one time a guy tried to kill me. He tried to drown me. Unfortunatly, he failed.

[Hooknswoop 19]

Was riding the wing of an airplane from the ground up, at night, and had a pre-mature deployment, which ripped off 1/2 the elvator and severly damaged my canopy at 500 ft.

Wrapped my BASE canopy around a guy wire at 500 feet.

Got dragged into a turning propeller while rescue diving on a live accident at a boat race. Managed to get out of my BC just in time, but the prop still managed to hit my knuckles.

Had a knife pulled on me, but I pulled a gun.

Hanging off a single ice ax, dry tooling, with no other hand holds/footholds on the North Face of Long's Peak without any rope, pro, etc.

Diving in on a student that stated spinning and flipped oont heir back at pull time. The D-bag went by close enough I could have grabbed it and his elbow hit my hand as he spun around and was pulled upright by his deploying canopy.

Another student, which I had a leg grip on, started to deploy just as I was checking my altimeter, so I missed the arm grip. He trried to front loop, and the bridle was wrapped over my wrist. I pulled him back from a step-through as his canopy deployed.

Had a mal on a FX-79 and couldn't believe a canopy could spin that fast. I couldn't lift my head or arms. I watched my toes as everything went to tunnel vision, then black. I woke up under a good canopy. I think it was a line-over that cleared. Another facter was the brakes hadn't been set because PA told me to pack that way.

A tandem canopy folded up in turbulence at low altitude. It made a very loud 'slapping' noise as it unfolded just prior to flaring. We dropped 50+ feet and if it hadn't re-inflated, we would have hit very hard.

Got caught chasing a free-bag too long and set up for an off DZ landing way too late. 90-degree hook, under power lines and through a gate that, fortunately, was open.

There's more, but I'm tired of thinking about them.

Derek

[diverdriver 7]

TMTC

[WrongWay 0]

Non skydiving...um....I'm not sure of any. There were definitely a couple of times like bike wrecks, car wrecks, and other stuff of the sort when I thought "oh shit this is REALLY gonna suck", but I don't think I actually thought I was gonna die.

Skydiving.....twice. Once was a near canopy collision (shit that was close!! ), and the other was that moment when I was holding my silver in my hand, looking at it, and there was nothing above my head yet.

Wrong Way
D #27371 Mal Manera Rodriguez Cajun Chicken Ø Hellfish #451
The wiser wolf prevails.

[lauras 0]

Cave diving - once. I quit scuba altogether. Not my can of Spam.

Skiing - a couple of times. Occurred to me that they wouldn't find my body until the spring thaw. Bummer.

Driving - a couple of times. I even had the cheesy life-flashing-before-my-eyes slo mo sequence and everything!

Skydiving - not yet. But I've had several moments of "this is going to suck so bad."

[Darius11 12]

More times then I can count.

Lets just say it is not very unusual for the Iranian religious police to open fire or point a gun to your head and tell you there going to shot.

But the only time I was actually afraid was when I totaled my dads car I mean totaled it as I was racing. I was not hurt but I thought for sure I would be once my dad found out.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[Mikki_ZH 0]

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I had mortar rounds impacting around me as I was hugging the earth in the open. After the incoming stopped, we found craters less than 40 meters away. (if you don't know, a 120 mm mortar will kill you if you're standing up within 70 meters of the impact.) As they come in you can hear the round cutting the air with a very destinctive hum/whistle.

Why are you using the metric system to describe distance? Your the first American I know who does so??

Michi (#1068)
hsbc/gba/sba
www.swissbaseassociation.ch
www.michibase.ch

[Hooknswoop 19]

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Why are you using the metric system to describe distance? Your the first American I know who does so??

The U.S. Military uses metric for some things.

Derek