Treejumps

*** "I think they serve an economic purpose" THey do serve an economic purpose, for the employers who exploit the mostly uneducated Mexicans who continue to pour into OUR country. These rouge employers enjoy higher profits, and do not pay taxes that they would otherwise were they using legal labor. The whole system of using illegal mexican labor hurts our economy in a myriad of ways. The bottom line is that we don't need them, they are not welcome here, and that they are IN FACT, ILLEGAL. Thank goodness there are still plenty of Americans who are willing to stand up for the USA and defend its borders. Mexico is practically a third world country, so we can see what how Mexicans manage their own country. With enough illegal Mexicans the US is only going to go one direction, DOWN. I am going to contact the Minuteman and find out what I can do in my own community to help the INS weed out these illegals. They are breaking the law and it is incumbent on the citizens to step up when our spineless politicians fail to protect our interests.

It sounds like a pitch problem, coupled with an unusually stiff PC material packed in a less than optimal method caused this near death situation. When in doubt, have someone (more experienced) check your new gear. Specs and materials change all of the time, and a veteran's eye may have raised and eyebrow. One little mistake and there goes your whole day. I'll bet your neck is sore from that opening.

I agree that the burble effect is an unlikely culprit sub-terminal. It also seems pretty unusual to me that the PC packing could have held itself closed unless it had been left packed for a long time. What make/model PC was used? Any unusual catch points on the fold backs on the bridle? Have you thouroughly checkd the PC construction for snag points at the base? As this was one blip away from a fatality, as is any PC malfunction, finding out why, or at least eliminating each possiblility is critical. Cya,

Were you packed slider down?

Interestingly enough, I was not aware that this jumper had a double amputation. I had heard of the accident, but only limted details. As a local to this site (as local as about anyone nearby) I can tell you that it isn't even close to burned and has seen the usual level of activity this season. Johnny, I'm not sure what you think you are saying, or if you are even attempting a very thinly veiled attack or what, but Tom's atendance to this accident, assuming what he posted is true (I have no reason to believe its not) is well above the call of duty. Would you have stayed with a guy you knew 20 minutes if his friends were there? Would you have stayed if he had payed you a thousand bucks for a course, if his friends were there and you could have skated? If you are going to asseil someone's character, just do it. It appears you have made a poor decision to bring up this incident as it was handled as well as anyone could have, and with as much character as could have been displayed . If you are going to get paid to teach people base, you are responsible in some way for them. Personally, I don't think that people should pay for BASE instruction and I don't think that people should want to get paid for BASE instruction. Whether or not to teach someone was always the little safety lock to keep things cool in the sport, and to make sure someone really wanted it. Now we have people with no skills or brainwaves throwing non-jumpers off of "safe" bridges. If you chose to hold someone's PC whom you just met, you choose what kind of person you are by how you respond in crisis. For anyone who has ever been injured, you're glad to have someone around who thinks only of you and your injury, not of the consequences of helping you.

I have been saying for years that we should put up a big wall around South East DC, install some bleachers, and sell tickets to the ensuing show. We could earn enough in ticket sales to pay to raze the leftover mess, and get a fresh start. If you don't live around DC, South East (Easst of the Anacostia River) is where 90 percent of all of the murders take place. The rest of DC is a decent place to live.

I think the rule is that people try things at thier own pace. These days, for better or worse, new base jumpers starting doing flips very early (under 20 jumps). This is not everyone, but it is more and more common. The big difference between basic front andd back flips, and aerials, is adding the second axis of rotation. A gainer is very easy to execute and pitch stable from. It is a whole different level to do a back diving 1 1/2 into a front loop 1/2 back and pitch, all in under 4 seconds, and then pitch stable. So while doing flips has become very common, even with low jump numbers, areials are still pretty rare, as they should be.

Yes, people do aerials much earlier in their career these days. Its a simple fact that when people see a lot of something like aerials, they want to do them and believe that they can. Aerials (basic ones) are not hard to do, so visualizing them and having the confidence to try them is hald of the game. Five years ago veryfew people did areials at all, and a few did basic flips. Now by the time a jumper has 20 jumps there is a good chance they can do a gainer. Its the evolution of the sport. SOme will pay a price for starting early ( I have a friend who broke 2 vertabrae on a failed attempt at a slider down front flip), but most will do fine. YMMV

To start with, and canopy with a logo generally must be manufactured new. Logos are typically applied during the building process. there are ways to apply a logo to an existing canopy but they are not going to look as good and will not last very long. Expect to pay as much for a logo as you do for the canopy, maybe more for a detalied logo. As with canopies, rigs usually must be built from the ground up to have special logos and colors. very little can be applied (effectively) after a rig is built. Your best bet for canopies with logos is PD. Any rig manufacturer can build a custom rig with umpteen embroideries. Good luck.

It is geting close to the time when all good Americans who believe in this great country are going to have to pick up a weapon and defend what is ours. Voting by illegals? Disolution of our borders? There is no such thing as an illegal person? Borders are illegal? These people are fucking crazy. It is time to start doing something about this, while we still can. If this keeps up the US will end up looking and acting like Mexico, which is to say a giant shit heap of a country. Thanks for posting this.

*** "If you -really- wanted to stem the tide of illegal immigration you'd do something to make them want to -stay- in Mexico to begin with" Now what am I supposed to do to make the Mexicans fix their country? You have got to be kidding? Perhaps you are suggesting that all us hard working, innovative Americans pack up and move to Mexico for about 50 years. When we are done, their country won't suck anymore and they will quit coming to America. So all of the hard work we have done for the last couple hundred years to build America into the single greatest nation on Earth should now just be handed out because the Mexicans have failed to do the same? They can immigate leagally, or they must not come. It is up to Amreicans to determine their destiny and decide how many immigrants should come and when. No matter how you look at it the are illegal, and they eat up American resources. If we do not defend our borders we lose our rights as a sovereign nation.

OK Bill, I'll rephrase that to better suite the sensitive nature of the SC. "Perhaps you do not understand that which I have written"? "I think you do not understood the contect in which I wrote my reply". It appears that you did not read the reply to which I was referenceing"? Please replace the offending post with the NewSpeak version you prefer. No attack was meant, but I thought sarcasm was still good to go.

Clearly, reading is not a strong suite of yours, so I can see why you would be easily impressed. I was agreeing with Stratostar who actually said "shoot the motherfuckers", which I shortened to "muthafukas" to give it an edgy street sound. I am all in favor of defending our borders with lethal force. It is our problem and we can easily solve it. It would be far less expensive to build and defend a wall than it is to provide health care and other services to the existing 10 million and additional 1 million mexicans that come across our border illegally. Thank for your interest in my opinion. I'm all warm and fuzzy now.

STRATOSTAR for President! I agree, shoot the muthafuckas. Illegal is illegal. BTW, it seems that virtually everyone in AZ owns at least one gun so I am sure that all of the volunteers will be armed. Best of the luck to the modern freedom fighters.

Hey whats up Liz, A timing belt replacement is anywhere from $250 - $500.00 depending on the car. Catastrophic converters are very expensive and can sometimes run $600 $700 for one, again, depending on the car. Given that you need two and a timing belt the $1,300.00 probaly is not that bad. Get a second estimate, and a third. Good luck

No permission slips are needed. Whenever JT's mom lets him eat too much sugar he gets all wound up and posts a lot of foolish things. He was trying to "stir the pot", but like many adolescents, he doesn't realize how much smarter the adults are. Your best bet is to ignore him.

Hi JT, I sure hope you are in TF May 12 through 17th. It would be the highlight of my trip to get to meet you in person.

Hang tuff Nick. If you beat it once you can beat it again. We need you around here. Tree

Since I only got back on here this morning I'm sure I missed the really good jabs at me. No worries though, the misses gave me a briefing. I fully expected to be flamed over this. When people cannot refute an argument they resort to name calling to pull you off topic. I think that this is important enough to becalled a few names over. I got an PM from someone asking if I thought I was god (no) and why do I care? I guess the whole problem is that I DO care. I care about BASE as a sport, I care about people being introduced to something that without proper preparation they cannot even fully assess the risks, let alone hope to do well at. I belive very strongly that teaching a FJC (even a good because as Tom points out and I have no reason to beleive otherwise that Miles teaches a technically good course) to whoffos is simply a bad idea. I have no idea what actually caused the accident, body position, bad wind, bad luck, who knows. I do know that had Scott taken the time to make the reccomended 150 skydives, he would have been better off. If you disaggree with that, post your point of view. If you thinkt that marketing BASE to whuffos is cool, then tell me why. As I said before, this is just my opinion. After 7 years of base jumping I feel that I am a stakeholder in what happens to the sport. I want to keep doing this for a long time, and I wnat to help others from making avoidable mistakes. I'm not against anyone getting into BASE, but I do have strong feelings baout doing it correctly. Cya.

Maybe I am the only one who sees this, so maybe I am wrong, but I believe very strongly that dragging wuffos (Yes all you PG pilots, this means you) into base is wrong. I believe that if soemong wants to base, great, but that they should go the establiched route. You learn a lot about jumping in general (it people, culture, social norms, heck, maybe you even start to care about jumping iteself) by going to the DZ and learning to skydive. There are transferable skills and thats whay EVERY other FJC requires skydiving backgrounds. That should be enough to make these PG pilots think that just maybe, they should go that route. But no, we've got this one guy who thinks he knows better than the entirety of the established base industry/ sport. Whether you like to admit it, being sposored by Redbull does give that opinion, as udderly stupid as it is, some additional value in the eyes of said wuffos. It would be easy to say nothing and figure as long as one of his students doens't come into my area, what do I care? As we havce seen at the Perrine one or two people with poor attitudes and ethics can really fuck things up for lots of people. I choose to say my piece so if the shit does come down I'll have every right to grumble. In the mean time, I'll do what I can to educate those drawn in by this guy's antics. Simply put: I'm not knocking anyone for teaching base. There are many fine instructors with excellent curriculums willing to teach it correctly. Marketing base to whuffos, however, is wrong. Teaching people that base is easy is wrong. I find it hard to beleive that the majority of base jumpers disagree with this. BTW, if he jumperd in 20 to 30 mph winds... well that pretty much makes my case one way or another. Enjoy your day. edit to remove PA's, and continued response to inflammatory exchange ~TA

Nice! I din't know that there was an E tall enough out there to get. I guess that was better than the 75' S. Looking at this makes me think that it is the lowest total altitude used to get BASE. 821 feet for the whole word. Very nice.

It does not matter that I saw it coming, but it does matter that a significant number of experienced jumpers saw this coming, said it was a bad idea, and that the few can and will fuck it up for the many. It is my opinion and I am free to share it. Many others agree but choose not to speak about it. Miles' attitude is poor, and Redbull is part of that. (I'm a cool sponsored jumper, I'l do whatever I want you can't tell me what to do) Scott has demonstrated a very poor approach to BASE, and since Miles is his paid instructor, I fail to undertand how that is not relevant. Scott does not appear to have followed a path to BASE, rather he has tried to blaze his own trail under the tutelege of Miles. Its a hard sport to try to make your own way or do the hard (stupid) way. The hard way has been figured out by those who came before us, and we benefit from their trial and errors. That is why there are reccomemded prerequisites by all of the established and reputable first jump courses. I doubt you will ever see BR, CR, Vertigo, or Morpheus teaching non skydivers, and for a good reason. It is very shortsighted to attempt to get into base without skyding, given what is common knowledge today. Whether Scott took the shortcut because of bravado, ego, or just becasue there was that one person telling him it was OK, I don't know. He will, however, serve as an example of what not to do for some time and at least he wasn't another statistic.

Hi Ray, You hit the nail on the head. The real story that all of the media types are missing is how Scott came to find himself in this spot in the first place. How can the media miss the many posts Scott made on this board and the PG pilots board about how great a "teacher" Miles is and how easy they both think base is. Rememember Scott, base is so easy a bag of dogfood can do it. The fact that Scott was out SOLOING A BUILDING demonstrates Miles' so called teaching. This was not an accident. This was the predictable outcome of teaching BASE to those without the proper and accepted prerequisites. This is what happens when those driven by ego and the desire to earn a few bucks while feeling and looking cool, shrug off all accpeted base ethics. There were many, many very experienced jumpers who told Miles this was bad, and look how quickly that has played out. This is incredibly bad and avoidable PR for BASE, and we can all thank Miles D, and Redbull for it. Without Redbull's stipend Miles might have to actually get a job, and perhaps would not feel so cavalier. I hope that Redbull will now realize that they must select thier sponsored athletes more carefully, as Miles has put them at legal risk with this. Who are the deep pockets to go after for the emotionally traumitzed janitor who was in the atrium cleaning when Scott crahsed in, covering him with shards of glass? Redbull. Who subsidized Scott's training with Miles? Redbull. Who pushes their sposored athletes with an attitude of "any publicity is good publicity"? Redbull. Who uses BASE for its own furtherment with no regard for the sport or its participants? Redbull. So now Miles, you have proven exactly what we told you would happen. You should not "market" BASE to anyone, let alone those without proper prerequisites. You clearly did not teach Scott correctly, or this would never had happened. I really hate to see base accidents, I've had them myself, and know all to well that shit happens. But in this case it was not just shit happening. This was an untrained, unsupervised whuffo in so far over his head that he could not of possibly understood what he was doing, and the facts bare that out. While I sincerely doubt there will be many PG pilots lining up to train with Miles, I will bring many copies of the newspaper reports on this with me to TF in May, and sharing them with any of his would be PG students. We'll see what happens once this real story gets out. The fun is just beginning.

So whats up with this? No one knows who this guy is? Where are the locals with the real story? Do any of the Canadian locals know who this guy is? Was he an out of towner? Surely someone is friends with this guy who can tell us how he came to such "world wide" fame so quickly. Perhaps his mentor could shed some light on this. This is the "Greatest Base Jumper" accident in recent memory, and nobody has a clue? Its as if he just strolled in in and started jumping yesterday.....

You should be fine from the roof of your mom's house.