Lawndarter

It was a crappy post on my part, so I deleted it anyhow.

Stipulated that you're not a very intelligent person, but he was 13 when the war ended. And a Hungarian Jew, fortunate enough to have been hidden by his father with a minor Hungarian functionary to escape being slaughtered by the Nazis. To suggest he was an "ex-Nazi" is ludicrous.

Also toddlers. Toddlers with guns kill more Americans than Radical Islamist Terrorists.

It's amazing how quickly it's going down in flames. I can't make popcorn fast enough to keep up.

When I'm away from home I always seem to want to get a Tim's as soon as I get back, then I remember that it's not good coffee and that I usually go to Starbucks or McDonald's for coffee instead... I spent eight months in Afghanistan and when we got home at the reception there was Tim Hortons coffee and donuts, I was grateful for the coffee to be sure, but it actually made me realize I'd miss the coffee from the little place the locals ran on our camp - it was really good.

It was always one of those things I wanted to get around to, but never did. Then I was at Army Staff College and one of the other guys on my course had just finished his tour as Team Captain of the Skyhawks, the Canadian Army Parachute Demonstration Team. It sounded like it was a jammy go. During one of the exercises for the course we were on we were up near the airfield where Skydive Gananoque operates and he mentioned being a TI there. I decided I needed to try it and told him to hold me to it. Couple weeks after the course ended I went and made my first tandem out of a Skyvan. I was hooked immediately. I took the extra allowances I got from the course and paid for my PFF course. And then on the second jump of it I got myself pretty banged up, broken fibula. I made two tandems while recovering, one because there was a Skyvan in town, and once with a friend wanting to make her first, and then about 10 months after the break resumed the course. It took a while to get over the fear of reinjuring myself, but I've now got my own gear, made two skydiving based trips to jump at new DZs, got a number of firsts, and am looking forward to starting to really progress in the sport. The motorcycle comment made me chuckle. Part of the challenge after I broke myself on a jump was figuring out how to get my motorcycle back - the DZ is three hours from home. I wound up getting a friend to go retrieve it for me.

All the preparation in the world sometimes can't do it, either. I was in Kabul, Afghanistan that day. The whole city was in chaos over some stupid "movie" purportedly on YouTube that there were riots over. The whole thing was a lesson in the power of social media, of text messaging, and so on. A weird video, that few people saw, made by some idiot in California, sparked riots halfway around the world. Riots of such a degree of threat to our safety that the whole city was shut down for NATO personnel there. We were told to hunker down in our camps and wait it out. And be prepared for it to turn nasty. The guys in Benghazi were thoroughly unlucky. Whether a video prompted the attack, or it was just some bad guys who decided it was a good time to strike, or whatever it was, the folks at the consulate there didn't stand much of a chance. And the nearest help was too far away (though activated immediately - a USMC unit in Rota, Spain) to change the outcome. Even the guys in Tripoli probably wouldn't have changed the outcome, and the local commander there made a good call not to send them, because he would be losing his own ability to defend himself when no one knew what might happen next. War sucks, generally. And contrary to what it seems Trumpsters and Tea Baggers think, Chuck Norris isn't on standby on a helicopter ready to be anywhere in the world on minutes' notice to save the day. Sometimes the bad guys win, it's just reality. What did matter that day is that a number of people worked really hard and fought bravely to try to keep it from ending how it did. They weren't able to, and it's an insult to their memory and sacrifice to use them as pawns or props for some shitty political hatchet job.

Can confirm that that pool is really, really cold. And people looked at me like I was a lunatic. But it's done, and I got a couple of great jumps in at Perris, and got my 67 year old mom to do a tandem too. Iced the cake with a balloon jump the next morning.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with your assessment of who is at fault, here Heal fast, anyway. For future reference, ChutingStar has a pretty solid return/exchange policy...

I really hope Alec Baldwin goes in character. I'd also take seeing President Obama go - he was always entertaining.

Are people still clinging to this nonsense? What happened in 2012? The bad guys got themselves a big win. Nothing that "progressive liberals" or anyone else did or did not do influenced that. Millions of dollars were wasted on "investigations" that were blown hack jobs which failed to show anything substantial. You could make an argument that substantial cuts by the GOP to the State Dept's budget for security of diplomatic missions might have contributed, but that's doubtful too. What did we learn that day? Sometimes, the bad guys get the upper hand. See also 9/11/01.

The humourous irony is that it was them that started calling it "Obamacare", and the name stuck.

I get the impression that this is how some people in the skydiving world operate down there - using their corporations to provide services. It isn't even necessarily illegal to do so. A US DZ could legitimately state they contract, say, a Canadian corporation to provide services (coaching, packing, video flight, tandem instruction, whatever) and the proprietor could legally enter the US declaring they're going to carry out those services.

You just won dropzone.com!

Ignorance, mostly, and being in a the position of trying to dispose of a complete absurdity in the American justice system, the worst outcome of which we've just seen and those who study radicalization and insurgency would find utterly unsurprising.

My Foretrex will display glide ratio and seems to calculate fast, and the tracks are pretty accurate, but it comes down to how often it makes the calculations. Flysights are specifically designed to gather the data very quickly. The Foretrex a bit less so - it has an altimeter but its refresh rate is much slower, too slow to use for that purpose - and it's also only ASL, not AGL.

Finding the water isn't the problem - it's the person who can give me an old rig for the purpose, tell me what to do, and throw my into it. It does, however, sound like Skydive Monterey Bay (which I am visiting on the way home) may be able to hook me up. Unless they are completing your B license there wait till after. B only there. They don't seem like a place that's would do you training but idk. Not even fun jump friendly most of the time. Are you thinking Oceanside? I know they're B only. SMB isn't B only, I emailed to ask them about jumping there, and with a A no problem. I'm finishing everything for a B except I'm missing water training before I get there.

No. We cut a hole in the ice at the nearest lake when we want to go swimming. And that's in the summer! lawndarter: My wife and I will be at Perris Feb 11-15. Not looking for water training, but always happy to meet a fellow countryman, and we would be more than happy to jump with you. Awesome! I will be at Elsinore on the weekend doing Flight 101 and 102, my folks are snowbirds in Arizona and they plan to come up on the Monday (the 13th), I was thinking of going across to Perris on the 14th since Elsinore is (sort of) closed on Tuesdays and I haven't been to Perris yet. I'm then heading north to Monterey to visit friends (and jump) before I head home. Tuesday in Perris it'd be great to meet some Canucks for sure!

Finding the water isn't the problem - it's the person who can give me an old rig for the purpose, tell me what to do, and throw my into it. It does, however, sound like Skydive Monterey Bay (which I am visiting on the way home) may be able to hook me up.

I have a Garmin ForeTrex 401 I've used for exactly this purpose, or at least, I have taken it up for that a few times. You can export the tracks to Google Earth, but as yet I haven't figured out how to be able to use the altitude data, it just shows the track as 2-D. I'm sure there is a way to get more data from it, I just haven't found it.

The real question is: How long before he gets impeached??? For what? Part of the fun will be seeing what exactly it is he goes down far. And whether he just leaves the White House after impeachment, or if we'll see him in an orange jumpsuit.

Well, you do have the following SCUM plotting the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8&feature=youtu.be You really need to go find out who James O'Keefe is. A criminal, a serial liar, a pathetic joke.

Well, you do have the following SCUM plotting the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8&feature=youtu.be Project Veritas has zero credibility. None. Proven bullshit in the past and no reason to believe they've changed their ways. Exactly. They've produced nothing at all credible, and only appeal to those who remain in the echo chamber.

I'm going to be in Southern California from February 10-15 and I'd like to get water training for my B out of the way while I'm there, but it looks like Perris does it first Sunday of the month (unless they have a few people interested) and nowhere else I can find on the Googles schedules it. Would anyone happen to have any idea if it would be possible to find some - or failing that, want to go to Perris to do it with me, though I don't know what they consider enough people to run it...

Priceless! I'm an army officer. I just have a sense of humour.