DexterBase

I agree with Tom. There is enough ambient light from the shopping center and the bridge lights to illuminate the large landing area every night. If there's a full moon, then it's much nicer, but generally, you can jump even if there's no moon out. If you're very familiar with the landing area you can land on the beach but I almost always land in the large landing area for night jumps. If you want to do it super cruisy style, you can have someone hike in from the park with a light and you'll have all the light you need.

Very strong gusts. I hereby move to change the big BASE boogie to Labor day weekend. Anyone?

That may be ther perfect place to construct the BASE trebuchet!

Yes. If he was my protege, I'd have looked him straight in the eyes and said, "This jump is far too technical for your experience level. The conditions are crap, even for an experienced BASE jumper. There is no reason for you to exit now. Let's go to the bridge and we can get you some more experience before we jump this together." This sport is about free choice, but we have a duty as members of the BASE community to look out for the ones who don't have enough experience to make sound BASE decisions yet. This includes experienced BASE jumpers who are operating out of their normal comfort zone. If a jumper is more experienced than me in a certain area, I will carefully evaluate their advice and make my decision. I wonder if this jumper was given a no bullshit assessment of the conditions and how they relate to his experience level. A carefully stated piece of advice could have probably prevented (or maybe just delayed) this accident.

Sure, so how do you go about starting it? Do we have to give a 30 day (or more) grace period for people to apply so we can figure out the order? I already have an idea for a certificate. hehe....

You can come to Seattle and run ground crew for us. Anytime. I have a tradition of always buying my groundcrew dinner if we go out to eat afterwards. (Or breakfast as it sometimes turns out to be.) So, come to Seattle. You will learn about BASE.

I am qualified for Chicken BASE. Where do I get my number? I'll rock that number on a t-shirt.

Yeah, that's my Bro!

What could have been worse, and totally possible, is for one crew to jump an object and be seen by pedestrians or even authorities. The second crew comes along after attention was called to an object but since the second crew knew nothing about the first load, the police are either waiting or very closeby. It doesn't matter if you're caught, you only need to be seen. There's a super nice object very close to me (10 minute drive from my apartment) that gets jumped pretty regularly. Whenever Kmonster and I are going to jump it, we call the locals (even though the object was opened by us) to invite others on the load and get the latest information about the heat factor there. It always bothers me a little to hear locals were there jumping it and never bothered to give us a heads up. It's not that they need to ask my permission, the whole BASE community can come jump this thing if they wish, it just shows a lack of communication. This communication only takes a few minutes and it can keep someone out of jail.

PUKE!!!!

Go to www.acronymfinder.com it has them all. Pretty cool, I think.

Here's an excerpt from a PM I sent to a friend a couple years ago. I experienced the same exact thing. For some reason, I didn't need to jump that day. There doesn't even need to be a reason. If the little voice doesn't say "jump" then it's totally fine to just go home. I've learned a lot since then, why I really jump for example. At the very least, I got to go hang out on a nice bridge in the early morning hours. Not something most people get to do before sunrise. edit: Brand new BASE jumpers don't have the little voice yet. They haven't been in enough BASE situations to know when something is off. The fact that your little voice is becoming audible means you're starting to identify with the inner part of you that is really driving your need to BASE jump. Become intimately familiar with that little voice. He's your friend.

I tend to agree with you. My "default setting" is armor on. I jump with a Dainese Wave2 Safety jacket, fullface helmet, and fox knee/shin pads. Unless there's a compelling reason to leave the armor behind, I wear it. Technically easy spans are pretty much the only time I feel totally comfortable without armor. I pretty much always wear a helmet. I figure it may be easy to justify not wearing armor before you exit. Sitting in the hospital, possibly injured severely for life, you might find it a little harder to justify. My decision to jump or not is not usually based on the amount of armor I'm wearing, but there are certain sites I will absolutely not jump unless I have my battle gear on.

It totally happened. It happened here in Washington. A jumper with no previous BASE experience purchased a BASE rig off the internet. This person showed the rig to a BASE jumper from the area who pointed out that the shrivel flap had some stitching on it that made the shrivel function inoperable. The shrivel flap was repaired and the would-be BASE jumper headed out to find a well known bridge in this state. Unfortunately, he went with his girlfriend who also had no BASE experience or knowledge. On the way to this well known (and completely obvious if you're looking at it) bridge there are several shorter (non-jumpable unless you're spence) bridges that you drive over. Instead of driving and making sure he had the right bridge, he chose to freefall one that lasers at 103 feet. He thought he had the right bridge. He impacted at linestretch in the very shallow water below. He survived but ended up in the ICU for a while. Looking at it from another angle, it probably would not have made much difference if he would have found the right bridge. It's still a fairly technical landing area for a beginner BASE jumper, and impossibly technical for someone with no prior experience. He would have probably ended up in the ICU anyway.

Wow, that sucks. That pretty much leaves me no reason to stay there anymore. So where is the best place to pack indoors if it's windy out?

Motel 6 is definitely the best deal for a room with a bed. If you're looking to have a nice, big packing area and a hottub then you need to splurge and stay at the shiloh. I heard if you stay at the Shiloh, you get a free breakfast at Perkins. I've never taken advantage of that. Anyone know if it's true?

Russell, Heal well brother. We'll figure this thing out. There's a system we can create that will help you make cleaner freefalls. We need to get together and brainstorm over a few drinks. Until then though, just focus on getting better. Two second delay... Russel, you're a fuc**ing animal Dude! Love your work, can't wait to jump with you again. ---Chad

Kmonster and I talked about that too. What a cool way to shortcut the ropes section. I think some races would actually permit you to jump, but carrying a BASE rig on the course would definitely offset any advantage of jumping down, except, the massive amount of cool points you'd get from other racers and getting to make a BASE jump. I wonder...

Okay, Thanks to everyone that voted. We need to send in our registration information tomorrow so unless we ger a bunch of new votes, it looks like we're going with "Raw Feat" Any last second votes? edit: typo

I wish they had gingerbread all year. Hard to beat a soy gingerbread latte. Wow, that was a manly thing to post.....

Looks like Raw Feat is winning. Any more ideas?

Brent, you know you're always welcome to play with us!

We're doing sprints, training, and building up for the Trioba series here in Washington. Thanks for the contact info though, will definitely send him a PM soon.

Regarding the new vs. old BlackJack slider, Old dimensions: 17 1/2" x 23" New dimensions: 19 1/2" x 26" edit: add picture

I'm at work right now so I can't measure but it seems to be roughly a couple inches longer on both dimensions. Maybe if Kmonster logs on she can measure them real quick. My rig is unpacked and the old slider is next to the computer in the big "bin-o-pilot chutes".