DrewEckhardt

Look for idiots, harness turn back towards the landing area once I've found the preceeding groups, stow the slider, loosen my chest strap, look at toggles to avoid grabbing any brake line that might have escaped from the keepers, unstow toggles.

They're checking passengers for drugs, getting people and the courts used to warrant-less searches in public areas, and giving people an illusion of security. Hostile operatives would never demean themselves by getting low-paying airport jobs where that was possible.

It's not about looking cool and it's unrealistic to expect new jumpers to know better when their instructors are telling them differently. Smaller parachutes are more fun until you run into problems. New jumpers lacking both exceptionally bad luck and judgement haven't had a chance to personally experience those problems. In a world where we repeatedly tell them that they should listen to their local instructors instead of people on the internet, when their instructors tell them they'll be OK under a small canopy they listen.

While I've lost count of how many people I know who broke themselves exceeding Brian Germain's Wingloading Never Exceed chart I can only come up a couple new jumpers who managed to hurt themselves within its limits. While the odds of breaking someting exceeding the chart may only be 1 in 4 or 5, you don't want those sorts of odds when it may mean being out of skydiving for a season, arthritis, nerve damage, or worse.

Motorcycles, guns, cars, skydiving, snow sports, your favorite spectator sports teams, the government loaning $16,000 per tax payer where the collateral is questionable. A lot of guy friendships are built around shared interests. While getting older changes how much money you can spend on your hobbies (getting farther into a career nets more money; breeding and sending kids to college means less money) a lot of the interests don't change.

akydiving in 2008. sad. Is it? If i didnt use a packer i would not get 1/5th of the jumps i get in! Unless you have at least two rigs, packing for yourself can often mean jumping more. With a 6-7 minute pack job and turbine aircraft taking 20 minutes to turn around, if a trailer or bus ride isn't involved you can usually be on every other load. With a packer who is also taking care of other people it's probably every third load.

Generally no, and even where you do have 2 weeks of vacation a year it may be impractical to actually use them if you don't manage to get sick. Taking a day or two a year plus paid hollidays is not too atypical. I've taken one day off in the last year for my anniversary.

Non-counductive.

The American consumer is to blame too - if they would just buy 'Merican, there wouldn't be a problem. In most caes the average American consumer can't afford to buy American because American semi-skilled laborers get paid a more for one 8 hour shift than Chinese workers do a month worth of labor (for example, Chinese auto workers get about $150 a month while non-union Americans still manage at least $20 an hour). Robots help narrow the gap but it's still there. For example, you might pay $500 for a Chinese pair of speakers parts labor and shipping a 40' container at a time, $1500 for mass produced American goods parts and labor, or $4500 labor only for a furniture maker's time before you factor in markups. At the high end putting that much labor into cheap parts isn't a good value so you use expensive parts for a total of $6500. Factor in markups based on how much effort it takes to sell at those price points and you might be $1000, $4500, and $25,000 out the door from your local shops. When it comes to cars, we can afford to buy American but in a lot of categories the American products just don't stack up.

I don't see anything.

I sold some video projector parts to some one in a foreign country and the shipment got lost after it left the country. It took something like 30 days before they'd consider it "missing" and about a month to get an insurance settlement. Hopefully you insured the package for what you paid.

You don't need to pay to stay alive. You can grow your own food, hunt for meat, scavenge food from trash cans, or beg for food on the street. Most of us prefer the variety and convienence that go with working for money and buying food.

We owned a Tempurpedic Deluxe Bed in one home, bought an Angelbed for another because it was the same foam weight at less than half the price, and sent it back because the imitation simultaneously provided both less support and a harder sleeping surface.

We Americans are giving other countries money (in the form of interest on T-bills) because we're too stupid to balance our budget. In fiscal year 2008 we paid $451 BILLION dollars in inerest on the national debt.. 25% of our debt is in the hands of foreign countries meaning that we're already paying foreign countries over $100 BILLION a year for being stupid. Paying the Japanese a small sum like $50B to take over the American car companies would be less than the annual expenditures we already send over seas for being stupid.

While customers would buy them, people would be unwilling to pay the German luxury car sticker prices that provide the margins high-overhead American car companies need to survive. People are willing to spend a lot more on SUVs than comparable quality small cars with average MSRPs of $40,000 for large ones and $30,000 for mid-sized ones. Selling cars with those sticker prices means producing products that compete successfully with companies like BMW which isn't going to happen overnight.

The market is working. Gas got expensive, people stopped buying the SUVs and trucks which were the bread and butter of American car makers, and the American car companies are on the verge of bankruptcy. Allowing them go out of business will finish letting the market do its thing. In a free market, gas prices are going to go up a lot. There are two billion people in China and India who want cars and products made from plastics derived from petroleum. In an unfree market we have an arguably anti-American cartel which can adjust supply to increase prices. Stricter CAFE controls would have produced products that suffered less than the inevitable price increases happening for either reason. If the government is going to be stuck bailing out the car makers when the market changes, the central planning committees should be telling the car makers what they can build to limit the impact in the future. That means strict CAFE standards must be imposed so we don't have to bail out the car companies the next time gas gets expensive. Or the government could just let market forces do their thing.

Personally, I don't care if the idiots and hotheads can get guns. Even if I had an average chance of being black, in a youth gang, involved in the drug trade, and in a love triangle I'd be more likely to be killed by a drunk driver. Just being white (but still with an average chance of joining the Crips or Bloods) means I'm about three times as likely to be killed by a drunk driver as I am being murdered with a gun. If the government is going to protect people from each other, I'd like to see strict drunk-driving laws, limits on alchol purchases, and restrictions on cars weighing over 3,500 pounds before guns since all that will be more likely to keep me alive. If they want to protect us from ourselves, more people commit suicide slowly with artery clogging fast food and cancer causing tobacco than firearms. Waiting periods on Big Macs and Marlboros would do more for public health than waiting periods on guns. It doesn't. In most cases criminals switch from confrontational crimes to simple crimes against property. Where confrontation occurs, merely brandishing the firearm is enough to stop hostilities. Barely 600 justified homicides occur each year in the United States and there are few (on the order of 1000) accidental shootings compared to other problems (many times that are poisoned by household chemicals). The big thing is that people resisting with handguns sustain fewer injuries than when they don't resist, offer unarmed resistance, or resist with any other weapon. It's not. Although our black residents kill each other too often the white people don't. Seattle's murder rate among the white population is lower than across the border in Vancouver, although in Seattle any law abiding citizen can cary a gun and in Vancouver they can't buy handguns. We are. Although internationally there is no relationshp between legal gun ownership and murder rate (switzerland: high gun ownership, unusually low murder rate. jamaica: almost no legal gun ownership and one of the world's highest murder rates. japan: low gun ownership, low murder rate) increases in gun control almost always correlate to higher violent crime rates. Increases in concealed cary permits preceed a shift from crimes against people to non-confrontational crimes and reduced violent crime rates. In California I can't carry a gun legally. Since my first responsibility is to my wife and step children, I didn't risk my own safety when I saw a woman being harassed by a crazy person although I would have called the police on my cell phone if it got too out of hand so he could have only gone at her for a few minutes. As the guy was leaving one of the other people said that the dude had grabbed her has (which would be a form of sexual assault) but none of the bystanders had done anything. Where only the criminals are armed the risk of inervention is high and you have to look after your family and self first.

It depends on where you go. In low crime areas more people have legal concealed handguns. In high crime areas fewer people do. In cesspools like Washington DC only the criminals (elected and otherwise) have guns and there's an unusually high chance you'll be murdered. Disney Land is in California where people don't like guns and generally only the politically connected can get concealed carry permits so you have to be careful. California has problems with take overs where armed criminals walk into businesses, rob everyone there, and wait around for more victims to show up. People don't get shot too often though. In more sensible places like Texas and Florida where all law abiding citizens can carry concealed firearms there are fewer problems. When Florida passed its concealed carry law, many criminals limited their activities to victims driving rental cars. Florida then got rid of the distinctive rental car plates to keep the tourists safe. Confrontational crimes went down and the criminals switched to stealing from unoccupied homes and cars but that's OK - something gets stolen, you file an insurance claim, and get it replaced. You don't suffer any sort of lasting physical or psychological damage from the experience. Places like Disney World don't like guns. I'd be more worried there since criminals prefer unarmed victims. Practically speaking, if you're white and only have an average chance of being involved in the drug trade, love triangles, and youth gangs you're less likely to be murdered in an American city where any law abiding adult can carry a concealed handgun than a similar sized city across the border in Canada where they don't like handguns. Avoiding those risk factors (don't join the Crips, don't have an affair with a married person, and don't do drugs) makes things a lot like Europe. But that only tells part of the tale. In gun-free places like the UK you're 50% more likely to be a violent crime victim (including minor things like assault and rape) than cesspools like DC, 4 times as likely as someplace like California, and 10 times as likely as rural gun-owning states.

In terms of speed and recovery arc it'll be like jumping somewhere between a 120 and 107 depending on how hot it is - since standard temperature is going down with elevation a hot summer day gives you an 8000-9000 foot density altitude. If you like fast landings and try to do your maneuvers at your usual altitude you will be surprised in an unpleasant way. I only personally witnessed one out of town jumper leave in an ambulance after we warned him that things were different and to take it slow but there were probably others.

Because Phillip Morris (Miller), Anheuser Busch (Bud, Michelob, Busch), American Brands (Jim Beam), and legal drug companies like Bristol-Meyers-Squib, Merck & Company, and Proctor and Gamble don't want the competition from a product anyone can grow in their yard which doesn't cause hang-overs and can't be pattented. These guys all used to be big contributors to a Partnership for a Drug Free America, although they stopped accepting the alcohol and tobacco contributions in 1997.

Ack, no. Stone Arrogant Bastard is the best.... I think. I've never made it to the bottom of one without risking jail. Yes. Arrogant Bastard is by far the best. Alcohol content is 7%+ which can be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. I've had the Oaked Bastard and Double Bastard too, but don't like either as much as the original.

When some schmuck stole my camera helmet at Quincy, my renter's insurance covered it. The insurance pay-out was about 10 years worth of premiums. Two things to watch for are: 1) Coverage off-premesis. I've had insurance policies that limited coverage outside my dwelling to some fraction (10 or 20%?) of the policy value. I might have spent $20 a year to get a policy with enough value (like $50K in contents to cover a $5K theft at a boogie). 2) Replacement value coverage. The default is often the depreciated value which may be calculated according to some formula. It was a few dollars more to add a replacement value option so I can actually replace whatever gets stolen next (hopefully not for a few more decades).

Nose zits hurt the most. Earlobe zits can hurt too, and are especially hard to pop because they're so deep under the skin.

Depends on the dropzone. Some dropzones will make you pay for the temporary 30 day USPA membership even if they fax your renewal back themselves.

One of you should cimb out facing the tail in the front of the door, one in the back. The guy at the back of the plane gives a count and you both step off and sit. You should be close enough to dock on the hill after the rear floater turns 180 degrees. If you're better, the front floater can face backwards and the rear floater forwards but that's harder for the rear floater. Better still, you can do that with one flier's outside foot on top of the other's. Exit together and adjust drag so you stay parked like that.