winsor

Speedy Gonzales sings the key part of "La Cucaracha" in one episode: "marijuana par fumar..."

I have a Jason refractor and some kind of Jason reflector. I'm unclear on the nomenclature, so I voted for the first (and likely cheapest) reflector category. Starry skies, Winsor

If you consider that every skydiving discipline can be seen as a set of lifesaving skills, it's all good. Freefly is a marvelous skillset for an RW jumper to have up his sleeve. Whether tracking steeply to a big formation on your back so you keep your eyes forward, or being stable in the position in which you're thrown if a formation funnels, getting comfortable with all the elements of freeflying can only improve your abilities as a bellyflier. Since a nice, stable belly to earth body position is conducive to good openings at pull time, being able to get into a solid RW position NOW is a skill that can only serve to make the next jump that much more likely for a freeflier. There are many positions that are just fine for freeflying, but having bellyflying kinesthetics wired can save your ass. Then you have CRW. Whether it is simply bumping end cells or doing stacks and downplanes, I think low-time jumpers should take the time to fly canopies together with seasoned CRW dogs at the earliest possible opportunity. A jumper who has done a lot of CRW and finds himself in formation with another canopy on short final may just yell "Hi, Tommy!" and land. The people who react by burying a toggle and impacting in the middle of a panic turn are usually those who have never flown in close proximity with another canopy. Style? Learning to fly in an unstable body position is good for developing an intimate feel for your personal column of air and learning to use it to your benefit. Instability is the handmaiden of maneuverability, and a style series is all about riding the ragged edge of controllability. Accuracy? When you have to land somewhere with no outs, being adept at accuracy means never having to say you're sorry. Just because your home DZ is somewhere without a tree within 100 miles doesn't mean you won't ever find yourself low over a place with only a few places where it's possible to land without injury. If you have shot accuracy repeatedly, you are more likely to be able to go into the mode and focus on doing what you have done so many times before. If all you know how to do is go for 100 meter turf-surfs, you're screwed. If you have the opportunity to do something new, particularly if it is done with someone who is very good at it, by all means do so. You never know when you might need that extra skill that you added to your bag of tricks. Blue skies, Winsor

1:1 is consistent with what I've seen of the Golden Knights tracking demonstrations. IIRC it is called a "diamond track," and results in two smoke trails crossing at about a right angle, which indicates 1:1 in an established track for both jumpers. Blue skies, Winsor

Remember the Maine!

Let's see, I picked "Winsor" because, uh, my name is Winsor. The Avatar, however, is "Snappy Sammy Smoot" as drawn by Skip Williamson. I couldn't find "Coochie Cootie" by Robert Williams, and everything by Robert Crumb has been done to death (Mr. Natural, Keep on Truckin', etc.). Blue skies, Winsor

Kennedy wasn't there. Joanne was driving away from the Senator, to keep the police from discovering them together. He knew the island, she didn't. She took a wrong turn and drowned. The rest is all spin. Blue skies, shallow water, Winsor

Statistically speaking, they would be right. This has been thrashed unmercifully, but the short form response is: bullshit.

Money is analog - you would not say "I have seventeen money," so you have less money. Currency is digital - you have fewer dollars. The grammatical principle applies. Blue skies, Winsor

When someone prangs an airplane, the last transmission is usually on the order of "oh, fuck!," and I suspect the reaction while skydiving is often the same. Very often, when facing a near death experience in an endeavor in which one is well trained, one is very busy executing Procedure A, Procedure B, Procedure C and so forth until the clock runs out, and there is no real awareness of how close one came until later - assuming one survives. I have seen people screw with mals too long, and execute emergency procedures too low to be useful. My impression is that at least some of these people were working under the impression that they were "saving their life" until their life ended. I have come an RCH shy of dying on a number of occasions, and my reaction has varied. None of the options in the poll covers my reaction to imminent death. Blue skies, Winsor

A week ago I came across an energy drink at the Pribram drop zone in the Czech Republic. After I stopped laughing, I bought all they had to bring back. I have no idea how it tastes, I just like the name. SEMTEX

I support abortion until the fetus can vote.

I got certified to SCUBA dive in 1968, and a lot has changed since then. At that time there were very few people in the sport who weren't very fit, strong swimmers accustomed to the idea that if you fucked up you drowned. Sometime around the '80s dive shops realized that they would go broke serving the needs of customers like me. I get my tanks filled and inspected and/or hydrostatic tested when necessary, regulators overhauled occasionally, and pick up the occasional bit of gear, but generally have been set since I was in High School. By getting yuppies off the ski slopes and tennis courts, dive shops found a lucrative new market. Color coordinated gear with all the bells and whistles is now the rage, though I don't know what it does for people that my gear won't do. Since Muffy and Biff want to be assured of a safe environment in which to drop a lot of bucks, there are all sorts of gizmos such as electronic dive computers to guarantee safety, and reports of people screwing up and dying are actively quashed. The rate of people screwing up and dying does not appear to be greatly reduced from when I started SCUBA diving, but the availability of information regarding an incident certainly is. The skydiving community has made steps in the direction that SCUBA took, with magic boxes to guarantee safe operation of the color-coordinated gear, and many yuppie-friendly skydiving venues that charge for damned near everything, but the immediacy of the dangers inherent in skydiving may have kept this mentality from prevailing throughout the sport. It is still a given that a cold analysis of someone else's demise may well save my ass, so I limit my sentimentality to tears shed for friends lost, and try not to make excuses for the errors on their part that contributed to their passing. I hope that if I fuck up and bounce/drown there won't be anyone who pretends that it wasn't my fault. None of us are immune, from rank neophytes to world champions. Blue skies, Winsor

I'm my own rigger, and I don't drink. When I get a bottle from a save, I donate it to the DZ (I have nothing against the stuff, it just didn't agree with me). I have had heartfelt thanks for a number of saves, however. That counts in my book. Blue skies, Winsor

QuoteJust curious..those who are single and have been in relationships that weren't quite right...have you put together a "list" of what is important to you for the next relationship and what are red flags? My list is slowly coming together and I'm just curious if there is more I could include... So far...... 1. Is spiritual...believes in God. More of a nihilist than atheist - Orthodox Infidel - so a big no there. 2. What is/was their relationship with their mom? Get along great in small doses. 3. If there's an ex, how do they get along? First - fine, second - no contact (not sure if she's still alive). 4. How does he deal w/small dishonesty?character Q. No use for liars whatsoever. A lie is a lie. 5. Addictive personality? gambling, drugs, etc. 17 years without intoxicants, don't smoke or gamble. Way addictive personality. 6. How I rank? Are friends more important than me? It depends on the relationship - I'm a sex fiend. 7. Do they miss me after a week of being apart? See answer to #6. 8. Do they smile? Are they Funny? Truly sick sense of humor, so I smile a lot and think LOTS of things are funny. 9. Are they playful and know how to have fun? Yes. 10. Do they take care of themselves? After a fashion. 11. Are they self sufficient? Pretty much so (see answer to #10). 12. Are they a momma's boy? meaning do they call mom before making every decision? Not hardly. 13. Supports the fact that I jump from planes... If you don't jump, you don't count - unless you're REALLY good in bed. Blue skies, Winsor

I'm pro-death. I want a tee shirt to wear around RightToLifers that says "Thank God for Abortion." The back should read "Prenatal, Postnatal - Whatever." I'm sure that would go over big. Blue skies, Winsor

Bright blue skies...absolutely perfect temperature,,,wide open spaces, that particular growl of a Trabant...that special whistling sound of the wind coming over Vojvodina past the Carpathians...I'm playing at WORK...in SERBIA! On Saturday I'm going to bag it and spend a couple of days in the Czech Republic jumping a Turbolet from 4,000 meters before going home. Then I'm going to Cross Keys to jump whatever is flying. This being groundbound will have to give way to getting some altitude in. Blue skies, Winsor

Winsor, with all due respect, thats incorect. You can still have a horseshoe with a POD, as any part of the main canopy assembly having contact with the jumper's body is a Horseshoe. You do eliminate one way for a HS to happen, but its still possible to get, say, the PC to hook itself on a arm, a leg, a grommet. I cant find it right now, but there's a discussion between Bill Booth and someone lese that was posted on the forum on POD vs throw out. I'd link to it as a counter agrument of your preference to POD. You are, of course, right. I was unclear, since I was thinking specifically of horseshoe malfunctions related to premature opening of the container. With a BOC throwout, it can be nigh impossible to locate and extract the pilot chute by means of the handle without the D-bag in place, though it may be extracted by means of the bridle if packed properly. If a closing loop breaks or pin is dislodged with a pullout, it generally results in an inadvertent deployment at a higher than expected altitude. Agreed, there are pros and cons with each system, and neither is perfect. I have been impressed enough by the potential for disaster presented by a prematurely open container that I wasn't addressing the other horseshoe modes. FWIW, I have rigs with both systems. I generally lean toward the pullout, but think both are just fine if properly maintained and implemented. Blue skies, Winsor

If you mean PUD, then by all means go for the pullout. Hackey (by which I assume you mean throwout, likely BOC) is capable of hoseshoe malfunction. This is not true with a pullout. Blue skies, Winsor

I got a legitimate 247. If I still drank and took drugs I'm sure it would be a tad higher. Yes to everything was 276. Blue skies and eternal damnation, Winsor

"Old soldiers never die. Young ones do." General Douglas MacArthur

My Master's is in Electrical and Computer Engineering - an MS. Undergrad is a BS in Chemical and Mechanical Engineering. Having hired rather a few people for computer-related jobs, I advise strongly against taking any kind of a watered-down curriculum. There is a big difference between someone who achieves their results by means of brute force and someone whose solutions are elegant. Familiarity with mathematics has often been a make-it-or-break-it issue in my career. I have been able to tune controllers to achieve "impossible" results because I could derive the appropriate control law on the spot and use either continuous or discrete transforms. Even though people are spoiled by computers with fantastic speed and memory these days, there is still a difference between a hack and a kluge. Someone who is intimidated by the fundamentals is much more likely to author a kluge. If you can make it through the math at all, you are better off going for the BS if you intend to work in a technical field. It is better to work for someone who knows the difference, and sometimes the degree path you seek says it all. Blue skies, Winsor

I have a rather thick skin when it comes to hurting people's feelings instead of letting them hurt or kill themselves. I have been the one elected to give someone "the talk," and let them know that they had best take up another hobby. This sport is not for everyone, and some people simply don't have the attributes that make it likely that they will develop survival skills by the time they need them. Better to need a band-aid at the bowling alley than a life-flight at the DZ. I have seen one too many people get hurt or killed where I had already thought they were a crater looking for a grid reference, and my goal in pointing out the error of their ways is not to be able to say "I told you so" later. The biggest problems I've seen are arrogance and denial. Like any aviation-based activity, the ideal balance is to have sufficient ego to take off and enough humility to routinely effect a safe landing. Skydivers, like pilots, have a tendency to mistake luck for ability. As a pilot and skydiver I'm no exception. Some years back Mike Mullins gave me hell for pushing my luck flying around weather systems, and I owe him for that. I trust Mike's judgment, and appreciate him showing enough concern for me to let me know that I'd already had my share of dumb luck. I had someone call me from across the country after witnessing a near-death-experience of mine that wound up on videotape, to the effect of "You ASSHOLE! Sure, you made that look intentional, but I know you FUCKED UP! If you bounce, I'll never forgive you!" I've had people look out for me, and my real friends have paid more attention to my safety than my feelings. Since I'm alive and in one piece as a result, I show my gratitude by trying to pass it on. Blue skies, Winsor

Pinto.

It is a fool's quest to attempt to legislate safety into existence. The USPA should follow in this instance (if they do anything at all), and codify the results of hard-won experience. The last time they had say regarding wing suits, they banned them. Not exactly a visionary approach. Blue skies, Winsor