DrewEckhardt

Move your job or home so there's less distance between the two and ride a bicycle there. Or find an arrangement that makes public transportation pratical. When enough people do that gas prices will drop but it won't matter - I spend less than $50 a month with $4 gas and < 17 MPG. Otherwise you're not going to change the demand and the price is going to continue increasing with real and perceived supply pressures.

A new rig is about $5000 these days. Through the tail end of last year, high yield savings acounts were paying over 5%. Assuming uniform witholding on average the IRS has had that money for 8 months. So you'd be about $150 richer before taxes if you'd just put it in a good on-line savings acount or short term CDs. That's a nice meal for two or 20 minutes of 2 and 3 ways in the win tunnel. I'm too paranoid to game the system (that whole willfully false or fraudulent form w-4 thing) but made sure I didn't give them a dime extra and was as happy as you can be paying taxes when I sent them $250 on April 15th.

Source: Tribune The M4 Carbine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Carbine So let's see, the citizens of Chicago are not allowed to own any guns for self defense, but the criminals get them anyway, and the mayor wants the cops to carry assault weapons with three-shot burst capability. Uh-huh. Does that sound like a police state to you? Since we pay police officers to take greater risks than other citizens, they don't need any additional weaponry. In a city where stern words and fists are enough for citizens to protect themselves, the police shouldn't even have hand guns.

In the same body position + jumpsuit drag you'll fall (much) slower than a larger person. Terminal velocity is a function of cross-sectional density. Since mass is a cubic function of size and surface area only square, people-shaped objects have a higher terminal velocity when they're the same shape just larger. You'll need to reduce drag through body position (non-gymnists have limits here) and tighter slicker jump suits; or add weight to up your sectional density. Your instructors need to be able to match your speed if you get away from them, and your speed is going to be really slow if you get tense and stiff like a board which is a lot more likely for new skydivers than expierenced ones. So they'll probably stick you in a skin tight suit and wear their baggiest suits. You might get lead weights. You may also get a smaller rig that will be less expposed to the wind and therefore be less likely to affect your flying. Once you're experienced, you just have to dress for success. I've jumped with people over 250 pounds and under 110.

Skydiving is a yuppie sport Judging by that fact that nobody is complaining, I guess a lot of you guys must make a lot of money. It's more a question of priorities. Before I became a Yuppy, I split a three bedroom town house for $900 a month total or $300 per person when I'd have spent $650 on a one bedroom apartment. Savings: 17 skydives a month not having a one bedroom apartment. Lots of skydivers have room mates. Before I became a Yuppy, I drove a 26 year old car. A decent used car at the time would have run about $200 a month. Savings: 10 skydives a month. People like to joke that you can tell when a skydiver started jumping by the age of their car. Before I became a Yuppy, I didn't have cable or satellite TV which later ran about $60 a month. Savings: 3 skydives a month. IOW by not doing the things "frugal" people usually do I saved enough to make up to 360 skydives a year; although I usually only made 150-200. Annecdotally, I don't think the yuppies out number the non-yuppies. I've know plenty of skydivers who were teachers, construction workers, fishermen, military guys, bar tenders, etc.

Instead of moving straight towards your partner you're moving diagonally opposite the direction of the orbit and then turning to face them as you go by. IOW, if you're orbitting clockwise you're always moving towards a point to your left of the other jumper. Since you're always moving towards a point a few feet to one side you never actually get there. Wind tunnels are completely unambiguous. Stopping might help. Trying to move inwards (IOW, if you're orbiting clockwise, move more towards your right) might help.

You can't call a friend who has a working water heater??? That works when you really really need a shower, but when you really really really need to shower you can't drive or ride in a car without contaminating it :-)

No, you need actual measurements for that. Even when they start out at a reasonable length, spectra steering lines can become too short in a few hundred jumps. Instead of just replacing the brake toggle lines to get more slack, you should measure the existing brake lines and replace both the lower steering and brake toggle lines so you have something close to a factory brake setting.

Yes. You just have to jump a big canopy that opens really fast and descends slowly in a spinning malfunction. A lot of older F111 designs loaded under a pound per square foot do that. Larger Sabres and Monarchs are getting close. Obviously, if you're jumping something that takes longer than 200 feet to open you need to pull higher. If you're going to try to deal with spinning malfunctions where you're dumping 80-100 feet per second you need to pull higher.

I was born that way. After college I learned that being wierd could be lucrative so fitting in to corporate America wasn't a reason to change. Eventually I met a woman as eclectic as I and she eggs me on instead of telling me to grow up.

Don't do it. I did that back in '95 when I was living in IL. Got home in the ugliest mood imaginable, because I had to come back to IL. Solved that problem a year later when I moved. Junior or senior year in highschool I spent my spring break in Colorado, moved there after turning 18, and only went back to Missouri two or three times in the following decade.

Most of the country is not worth seeing. Corn field. Corn field. Corn field. For over 500 miles. Some places might be as exciting as corn field, bean field, corn field but even that doesn't compare well to Europe. Of course, that's preferable to places with the cattle feed-lot scenic detour. Especially when you're down wind. Yuck. OTOH, having jumped at dropzones located close to both cattle feed lots and turkey processing facilities I have to say the birds stink more. If you're used to them a little bull crap won't phase you a bit.

I'd pay for reservations if you could guarantee I and the rest of my group would be on a load at a given time. Too much of the time the load doesn't go because it's not full, we move to a different one to make room for students or a larger group....

I've been using some trial version of a Windows printer driver which prints to a .PDF to get stuff to people who can't process the original (example: 2005 Tax Cut income tax records). Something like $19.95 for the production version. (My laptop is not Windows) "Produced by xxx trial version" shouldn't be a legal impediment to filing if $19.95 is too much (in which case the filing fees definitely will be) Also note that it's less expensive to file provisional patents which hold for a year. You may be better off filing the provisionals and only getting full patents for ideas that generate enough commercial interest.

At $2.50 for a new pin (Q1 from Para Gear) and $12.50 for rigging (at $50/hour billed to the nearest 15 minute increment) I'd have a new closing pin sewn on if I didn't just take it to a buffing wheel with a little polishing compound (maybe Novus #3) When I firrst saw the article, I thought "Para Commander" and would have said "Jump it!"

I paid $850 for one of my Cyprese-1s and $875 for the other one in 1998 and 2000. Accounting for the Dollar to Deutschemark ratio changes a Cypres-2 which requires no battery replacements is a deal even at $1500 +.

Why would you want to pack at home? It doesn't take much more work to pack a rig (about 6 minutes total) than it does to just stuff a canopy in a gear bag, takes a lot less space, and means you won't be rushing to replace broken rubber bands or whatever when youo get back to the dropzone.

I agree - it was not a standing army, but it was able bodied men able to come together in a militia when necessary. This is one of the biggest sticking points - is the right individual or collective. The Militia Act defining it after the fact has no bearing on what the founding fathers intended. But my point is, it is not clear now what it means. There are many arguments on both sides. It's collective, just like the other rights. The right to free speech is the right to a single free paper Pravda in which all citizens can jointly express our thoughts. The right to due process is a collective right, which applies to the law abiding citizens and not individual terrorists. Etc.

4300 - you should have broken off from a free fly jump 2800 - you should have pulled 2000 - you really should have pulled when you have a small elliptical canopy and big beer belly With break-off and pull altitudes set above where you should have done something it's too easy to be reacting to the dytter and find yourself in trouble when it dies. Watching the ground and then a visual altimeter is a much better idea (for flat jumps, it's nice when people have a chest mount you can read across the formation)

Yes. It lets you shoot your guns without irritating your neighbors as much and with a lower risk of hearing damage (with supersonic bullets you can't get rid of the sonic boom, just the muzzle blast). We restricted (put a $200 tax stamp on them, which was a lot of money in 1934 when the average annual salary was $1368 among the employed) them because of concern over poaching during the Great Depression. Shooting rifles is a relaxing zen sort of sport. Breathing correctly has a huge impact on accuracy - a .01" misalignment between front and rear sights means you're going to miss the X ring at 100 yards; .02" moves you out into the 9 ring. Loud explosions on either side of you make that harder to do. Silencers on the entire firing line would be nice.

Conservative people (Brian Germain, 10000 skydives, teaches canopy flight) would recommend at least a 230 at your weight. Since you have a lot more kinetic energy than a small guy and your bones aren't correspondingly stronger you might do well to respect the limit. You'll probably want a smaller main within your first year, but however many you go through (three sizes often fit well in containers that have the closing loop on the bottom of the reserve container or floor of the main container) you should only be spending $1/jump on depreciation.

Yeah, but you only get a $500 discount for buying a new shadow racer and it means you'll be paying close to new price for one of the few used reserves sold without a rig. Buying a used rig can knock $1000 off the container price and get you a half price reserve for a $1400 discount. Advantage: used rig, $900. The average male skydiver will get dump his first rig after the first two down sizes which can safely happen in 250-300 jumps. An inexpensive used rig can be resold for about what you paid for. A newish used rig may have lost $1/jump. A new container has to compete with a crowded market and is going to loose more than that. Advantage: used rig. This assumes that Racers have the same market as other rigs which probably isn't the case (for better or worse).

Head for the WAYBAC machine. I think I paid $850 and $875 for my Cypres-1s in 1998 and 2000. Ah, those were the days when the Dollar was STRONG against the Deutsche mark. While the number looks small, it does correspond to a Cypres-2 price of $1275-$1300 since you're not paying for 5+ battery packs. Today you might ask around at your local DZs if you want a new one. Back then a handful of DZOs thought that having an AAD was a good enough idea that they'd sell at their cost and I know of at least one who had some sort of financing program.

I'd think I was exceptionally stylish. It could happen accidentally too. I had a black and white checkerboard Reflex made when I was in my monochromatic phase (I've since added royal blue to my jumping ensembles) and one of the guys in Colorado Springs had a black and white checkerboard Reflex. When I went down there from Boulder some of the DZ locals were suspicious.

This assumes you were already planning on a new car in 2010/2011. Otherwise keeping your current gas guzzler could be a lot less expensive. For me the Volt would be 55% more expensive than a car that gets 17 MPG in the city with gas at $4/gallon. My out of pocket expenses would be 4X higher with the Volt. Assuming a projected MSRP (the minimum you'll pay as an early owner) of $35,000 and depreciation over 10 years something like a Chevy Malibu to 16% of its original value, at 8000 miles a year you'd be spending 37.5 cents on depreciation over that time. If you finance $30K of that at 7% for 5 years you'll spend another $5640 on interest or another 7 cents a mile for a total cost of 46 cents a mile. I drive a 10 year old car with another 80,000 miles left on it. In theory it could depreciate from $5000 to 0 or 6.25 cents a mile. With gas at $4 a gallon and 17 MPG around town gas is 23.5 cents a mile for a total cost of 29.75 cents a mile. This is a worst case scenario - I've managed 29 MPG on the highway. The Volt would cost me 55% more. Out of pocket, a purchased Volt would set me back $604 a month for the loan and electricity versus $156 a month for gas alone. Comprehensive and collision coverage on the volt would also be higher. If you were already in the market for a new car the Volt would be a fine choice.