FlyingRhenquest

I wear jeans and a T-Shirt. I would very specifically avoid things you might commonly keep in your pocket -- car keys, wallet, One Rings, that sort of thing. Find somewhere else to keep those during the jump. The DZ will probably be happy to hold them for you. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I was told by an instructor that AFF students are exempt from the beer rule. Except they owe it upon graduating the course. I brought beer a couple times anyway. Because beer don't need no excuse. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Ok, OW! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Kind of reminds me of someone's response to an unsolicited phone call for a cleaning product; "Can get get blood out of the carpet? A LOT of blood! How about drapes?!" I never thought I'd see the question in an (ostensibly) legitimate format I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Heh, I can arch like a mother-bitch. Much to the chagrin of my instructors. They spent all that time teaching me how to arch. They did a really good job. I'm now having to learn to de-arch. Is 70-some-odd jumps perhaps a little early to be getting into freeflying? I only have a handful more, but I felt like I was being rushed into it. I'm working on back-flying a bit in the tunnel but think if I tried it in the air I could easily end up spinning in a similar situation. With a couple of hours in the tunnel, I told my tunnel instructor I wanted to work on belly skills until they're rock solid. So instead of going down the freeflying road, I'm working on stuff like mantis and side sliding and stuff like that. I feel like I'd have missed all this if I'd gone rushing into freeflying. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Pff. it would have come out on its own sooner or later... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah, I know, I felt like that each time with my ferrets, too. You always think there's something more you can do. And losing sleep over it, too. It'll get better. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I was listening to a Buddhist give a talk on love, and he makes the point that all the things we love, we will one day become separated from, but that just because they are gone does not mean you have to stop loving them. Mortality is something we have to deal with, but you will have memories to cherish of your cat for the rest of your life. I hate having to put pets down. I used to keep ferrets, which don't live very long at all. They still come to visit me in my dreams, from time to time, and I wake up smiling. They'll never really be gone for me, as long as that happens. I'm not looking forward to that day with my current kitty. Neither of us are getting any younger. But when that time comes, I can't really be sad because I gave him the best life I could, and that's really all you can do. That's really kind of true whether it's a pet, a child or yourself. You never know what fate's going to deal you, but you can make the most of the time you have. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've noticed a couple times when skydiving, I feel like I have sunburn for a few hours afterward, but I don't think I do. Is that from the wind or something? I'm in Colorado where my skin's already destined to turn into leather by the time I'm 50. Do you guys moisturize or anything? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Because people tend to run away when you tell them the sport will take ALL of their available money, and then some I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah...gas to the DZ & one jump! Better than just giving it away, and that's assuming you stop at one $1 ticket a week. Kick a pack-a-day smoking habit and put that $5 for the pack of ciggies in the bank instead, you'd be $1800 richer at the end of the year. Once you actually get in the habit of doing it and realize how quickly it's accumulating, it gets to be easier to sqirrel a little more away every now and again. Pretty soon you have enough for a new rig (Or a down payment on a house...) 'Course if I had $1800 sitting in savings, I'd start thinking maybe I should make that money work harder for me than it would be in a savings account, and start looking for under-valued stock. Maybe get in on the ground floor with some diesel powered nuns! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Just open a bank account and every time you would have bought a lotto ticket, put a dollar in the bank account instead. If you planned to buy 1 lotto ticket a week, at the end of the year you'll have $52 more than you would have if you'd done that. If you have other bad habits (Smoking comes to mind) you could kick them and put those funds into that bank account, too. It adds up pretty quickly. Spend a buck a day on a vending machine soda? That's a really good candidate for that, too (And another $365 at the end of the year.) I did my first skydive in July of last year, at 42. I'm 100 jumps in now. Making up for lost time. I did try hang gliding back in the 90's, so a life of adventure wasn't completely unknown to me. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Somehow over the last couple of decades I seem to have mostly avoided those. I don't know if you just don't see that so much in software engineering or if it's something about me in particular. I've seen a couple of people get walked out by security over the years, but they never tried to drag anyone down with them. One guy was apparently over the line of defrauding our client company, falsifying logs to make it appear that he was doing work that he wasn't. Software engineers seem to often have a lone gunman mentality and rise and fall on their own. This seems to lead to a workplace that's reasonably free of fuckery. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

My first really stable solo exit is the one that sticks in my head the most. It was actually after I got my A license. I'd done a fair number of fairly stable linked exits with coaches and wasn't really looking to make a stable exit this time. It was a dark, rainy Friday afternoon and we spent 15 minutes between 10 and 8 thousand feet flying around looking for a hole in the clouds. I'd been planning to fling myself out and do some flips but reconsidered mid-fling. We were only at about 9000 feet so I didn't have a lot of time to screw around if I wanted to get anything else done on the jump. So I just turned a shoulder up into the relative wind instead, felt myself turning to the left and knew if I did that I'd go tumbling, so I just steered right and distinctly felt the transition in my flying when I'd got to the bottom of the hill. That was the first time I really felt the relative wind. Prior to that jump my head was always so full of dive flow and was mostly exiting with dudes hanging on (My coaches couldn't keep up with my fall rate without linked exits) that I didn't have a lot of attention left over for that. My exits have been stable every time since then, even on that tracking jump where the guy I was following dove out facing the back of the plane. I felt the relative wind trying to flip me over on that one, but I didn't let it! I started in July of 2012, 103 jumps now. I prefer skydiving videos with wind noise rather than music (Plus if you add music Google's more likely to crap ads into your video.) I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

It's... just something else you pull... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Given that it's been blizzarding on and off for the last couple of weeks (Which is very rare this late in Colorado) and despite a crappy forcecast, I got three very nice jumps in this weekend. Is there anything better than a day of skydiving followed by a well-cooked hunk-o-beef and a glass of Left Hand's Wake Up Dead Imperial Stout? I don't think there is... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Hey! The mother could go skydiving and the baby could go bungee jumping! Oh! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I know what you're saying, Andy, but I still think tunnel time is HUGE. I've trained tunnel rats to skydive, and their stick-and-rudder skills (to borrow a pilot term) were off the chart. That left so much more time for training exits, procedures, altitude awareness, canopy control, etc. I've had no problems caused by students with tunnel time. In fact, I was just in the tunnel last weekend getting some coaching on my side slides. I agree; the tunnel forces you to learn to stay in one place. For a newbie like me who might not be aware of backsliding (in particular) this is a tremendous advantage. I was watching a VERY experienced skydiver I know practicing his transitions in there the other day and even though his control is amazing compared to mine, you can see a clear difference between even his ability and his instructor's. Five or ten minutes in the tunnel might not go a long way toward freefall skills, but a guy with a couple thousand hours in there will fly rings around all of us on the way down (And then open up a gigantic granny-panties canopy when it comes time to pull heh heh heh.) I think even a few minutes in there will help with the sensory overload of those early AFF jumps. It doesn't teach you altitude control or canopy skills, no, but at the very least you're not like "Oh my God how do I stay upright?!" while trying to remain focused on paying attention to your altimeter and stuff. Everyone I've taken down there is able to stay upright and stable in just a few minutes of practice. It won't guarantee you an error-free AFF, but it might save you a repeat or two. It was at least enough that my instructors noticed a difference in my freefall, which I think is pretty big at that stage of the game. Of course, I'm a computer programmer and just view the brain as a computer made of meat. A meatputer. It's massively parallel, but it's easy to overwhelm. I think breaking out the individual components of a complex experience like this and letting the meatputer digest them one at a time is helpful. You wouldn't ask a first grader to do long division on his first day; it's a new and complex task he's got to work up to. Historically it's hard to break up a skydive into its individual components, and you can tell that AFF is structured to try to prevent information overload. If you already know how to control your body while falling, you can devote your meatputer's attention to other things. Like paying attention to the altimeter. Funnily enough it still feels weird to step into the tunnel with all my gear on but no rig. I kind of feel naked without it, with my jumpsuit and goggles on. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Dude that's like 5 years ago! That's like two thousand in internet years! You may as well be talking about this new-fangled Jesus fellow! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Poor guy just needed some cash for acne cream... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

It doesn't feel like that either. Everyone always thinks it's going to feel like a roller coaster. It doesn't. I guess it feels closest to swimming, though that's not really correct ether. I think that's why my sister and I had problems with kicking early on. We both swam a lot when we were young, and were instinctively trying to treat the air the same way. That doesn't work so well. You need to make more powerful motions when swimming, too. I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple of wind tunnel instructors move just by twitching a couple of muscles. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah anything that can get lift can fly for a while. One day back in the 90's I got up a little late for a hang gliding lesson and drove a couple hours to the runway they were doing their tow operations out of. I showed up around noon and said "I'm ready for my lesson!" but the instructor had just got a high performance glider and before I arrived he'd towed up to 1500 feet, caught a thermal to 7900 feet and flew 40 miles to Wilmington. He landed at the Wilmington international airport -- radioed the tower for clearance and everything! This was back before 9/11 and they didn't get too bent out of shape about it, but he had to file some paperwork with the FAA promising not to do that again or something. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

There's like a foot of snow on my lawn right now. I was going to build an igloo this afternoon... alll sarcastically... It's supposed to be up to the 60's by the weekend. The landing zone will be muddy as hell at some point. If I can get in there early, the snow would make for a few interesting landings before it all starts to melt. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I just hit 100 jumps (And a good bit over an hour of wind tunnel time) and I feel like any instruction coming from me would be half-assed at best. I'll probably start it at some point because I think helping new skydivers learn would be fun, but I'll know when I'm ready. Might be 150 jumps. Might be 300. Might be even more than that. I've spent a lot of time in the wind tunnel, and felt like I was being pulled in a headlong rush toward freeflying. I told my instructor I wanted rock solid belly skills before going too far down that road, so the majority of the time I'm spending in there is on belly exercises. I am working on backflying and am starting to feel comfortable with it, but I'm taking this at my own pace. I feel like I would have missed a lot of really cool stuff if I'd gone with just enough back flying to bail to my back in an emergency and then moved on to sit flying. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

There is that; Even 10 minutes on a high pull can get pretty uncomfortable. I always have to kick my legs out to make sure they're still getting circulation. If I could stay up longer I'd probably be tired of it in 15-20 minutes and come down anyway. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?