skybytch

A what?

Gag. edit to add - Nagini. Even if you don't like Harry Potter.

I LOVE the Banff Film Festival Tour. It stops here every year; it goes for two nights with different films each night. Usually sells out too; the shows are next week but we got our tickets a month ago.

Although I'm sure HH will be bitching out the ad company for sending those through, you can solve this problem for yourself very easily. Use Firefox instead of IE, and get the Ad Block Plus extension.

Found out yesterday that the B52's and ZZTop are playing at a local county fair soon. Tough choice. Rock Lobster or Pearl Necklace? Love Shack or Legs?

Why wouldn't he be? If you're confident that you can safely land whatever size reserve in a worst case situation, then it's probably a reasonably sized reserve for you. Note that by safely land I mean "land without hurting yourself," not "land without getting dirty." Your main is what you intend to land with on every jump. It should be sized so that you can land standing up (nearly) every time. To some extent, the size of the main matters too. My 143 reserve with my old 170 main was not unreasonable for me. A 106 reserve with a 135 main would be unreasonable for me - when/if I go to a 135 I'll stick with my 143 reserve.

My Asian Civ teacher likes to start the day with current events in Asia. Today she told us that China announced this morning that due to reactions from around the world to the current situation in Tibet, the Olympics will be postponed until 2010. She would have totally had some of the class if she hadn't immediately given it away.

Yes. Skydiving is NOT a theme park ride, and dropzones are NOT theme parks. Dropzones are usually run by small business people with shallow pockets as opposed to big businesses with deep pockets. Dropzones don't have large insurance policies like theme parks do. One lawsuit - even one brought by someone who did everything wrong - could easily financially ruin a dropzone. Thus came the waiver you'll sign before you jump and in a big way the culture of personal responsibility that still exists in the sport - the culture that makes it the students "fault" that they panicked or spun or whatever, and the culture that makes even students responsible for their own decisions and errors. Good. It's much better to come into the sport already understanding that it is not safe than it is to come to that realization when one or more people that you've come to know and love die doing it. I don't think that a public internet forum is a good place for discussions in which a person's words could possibly be used in legal actions.

You were far too nice. You can't be a good supervisor if you go and get all compassionate and shit. Underlings will only respect you if you come across as harsh and authoritarian, even if you are a big marshmallow inside. Next time give the slacker double duty. That'll teach him to come whining to you.

After all the jumpers except the tandems had landed, I was walking off the landing area when "someone" told me there were tandems coming in. In my best laden with sarcasm voice I said "so?" Then he reminded me that they make good subjects to practice on. So I went back to the peas and took these. Worth the effort, dontcha think?

Time for some new pics! First three were taken at Skydance on March 30th. The subject of the third one posts here as Ironmanjay. Last two are from a recent camping trip. Let's see some of yours!

There you go again, trying to apply logic to how things are done in the United States. You should know better by now.

I assume that with this attitude you won't be doing a tandem at any dz, but will instead do an AFF or static line jump where you are not putting your life completely in the hands of another person. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when you read the waiver.

LMAO!!! No all nighters here. I'm trying to get stuff done ahead of time - like the 10 page paper due in a month that will be mostly done by Monday - and keep up on the reading so I don't have to cram for tests. That sounded really mature and responsible, didn't it?

LMFAO!!! Haven't talked to many jump pilots or sponsored jumpers about their income, have ya? Haven't met many riggers yet either, have ya? You don't have to be a homo to love a rigger. Girls can be riggers too.

And we're seeing scoring from every line. Young Setoguchi, old JR, Little Joe... everybody's getting points. Yup. If they don't sign him, they're nuts. We picked up a good backup goalie in Boucher, too. I can't believe I care this much about a sport.

I've been jumping there for the past three years. Nobody has died since I started jumping there. Does that help? You can avoid that issue completely by doing an AFF jump where you are relying on yourself to save your ass instead of a tandem where you are relying on someone else to save your ass.

As of this morning - x-San Jose 100 points Anaheim 94 points e-Los Angeles 66 points The x means in the playoffs. The e means eliminated from any possibility of making the playoffs. Yeah. Respect this, LA. The Cup will stay on the West Coast this year but it won't be in SoCal. Yay!!! Playoff hockey is coming soon!!!!

It's the new thirty. HBD! I'll have a drink for you tonight.

Thanks for your service.

No way. He should do all that for free. Profit is a dirty word. You shouldn't make money off your skydiving brothers and sisters, that's just wrong.

We're all doing this hoping to see some kind of results, right? I saw some results this weekend. After getting a few miles in on Saturday before the dog started limping, on Sunday we hiked about a mile and gained about 200 feet of altitude. A year ago I'd have had to stop halfway to rest (complete with burning calf muscles and a bit out of breath). This time I just powered on, no muscle burn, able to carry on a conversation while walking. And something strange that I'm noticing lately, which I'm attributing to all this exercise... I've started to crave real food instead of the mostly processed crap I usually eat. Not so good for the grocery bill though, since real food is more expensive than processed crap.

That's what my buddy Jim said when we told him that going to a Katana 170 at 1.5 might not be the best idea considering that he had been jumping a tapered 9 cell 210 very conservatively for the past 1100+ jumps. But he chose to listen to those who told him he'd be just fine under the Katana since he planned to fly it conservatively too. His landings weren't pretty on the Katana, but he was walking away. Until he hit a bit of turbulence on a trip at Perris and the canopy did something strange and he made a small mistake and... well... his orthopedic surgeon is now suggesting that he not skydive anymore. He'd have walked away if he'd been under his 210. Of course, nothing this bad would ever happen to you... What you said was - Reads more like "scared" than like a "slightly higher concern level." Semantics. But then again, you're a guy, nobody would expect you to admit that you might be scared of it.

ADD is not an excuse for anything. It's an explanation. With time, help and structure, some people can learn to manage it fairly well. Medication can be part of that learning process, and it doesn't need to be taken for a lifetime, or even every day while a person is on it (when I was on Ritalin I'd take it only when I needed to be focused; eventually I learned how to focus pretty well without it). Those who don't learn to manage their ADD tend to flail miserably in life if they aren't lucky enough to find an understanding partner. If he's already having problems in the more structured atmosphere of high school it's likely that he's going to drown in the unstructured atmosphere of college. You may want to rethink your stance on this one if you'd like to see him not waste your money for even one semester's tuition...

Those two statements do not add up. If you are scared to land it in no wind, it is too much canopy for your current experience/ability. Good luck with that. Hope your bag of luck doesn't run out before your bag of experience fills up.