misterhand

will somebody please, PLEASE slap this guy silly? don't we self-police? won't someone tell him flatly "no you aint flying that shit while we're around"? obviously you cant take his canopy away but since he's determined to be THAT much of a threat, couldnt we come up with like a community police action protocol for this? people at the dz saying "well we cant stop you from buying it of trying it but none of us will get in a plane with you like that" thus effectively grounding him? we cant stop him from getting in the plane but everyone else can refuse to do so. no load=no nutcase crater. how many fatalities does it take before people will do whatever it takes to save these guys from themselves so they live long enough to earn the skills?? how the hell does someone that oblivious survive his student status in the first place? somebody DO something! -155 lbs exit weight, happily unharmed under a sabre 190 and lovin' it.

hey..... ran off with a carnival age 19, lived in a ford tempo for awhile. packed my life into my car age 23 and crossed the u.s. from boston to sacramento california, 3250 miles in 4 days. arrived with total personal posessions being one 20 year old car with no rear window, 700$ left to survive on till i find income, a pile of tools and spare parts for the ride and some clothes. lived there a year, made out ok, went home same way i came. restarted yet again back home, with nothing but some cash and a car. Nomadic Survival Tip #62: for those nomads who just hate to wear "hello my name is" tags and are even remotely handy with tools , any major city will have several temp agencies, some better than others. if you go to cali, immediate survival can be guaranteed at Labor Ready where you can get horrible and not so horrible labor jobs and get paid cash same day. important when you're living in your car down to half a tank of gas 6$ and yesterday's last donut and your car just threw the alternator. any city will also have an industrial park part of town somewhere with light industry/warehousing. find it, scout it, identify what they do visually if possible, get a phone book. usually good pay, lots of jobs you can live on entry level. drive forklift, unload stuff, fill boxes, push buttons in light manufacturing, fix things. starting upwards of 10-12$ an hour is not uncommon, MUCH better than flipping burgers. living like that is rough and uncomfortable but it IS interesting as hell. do it! go somewhere! try the factories. shortcut to middle class anywhere you go where theres industry. every time i've done this i did it alone and made out ok and learned a lot fast. my .02$ edit: just looked at your profile. you're in australia? i have absolutely no idea how the job market works there or if you even have anything like temp agencies there. good luck.

i just worked 12 hours. i feel like a can of smashed assholes.

i can't resist. i'm His Supreme Superclench Emperor Asshole.

aah. thank you. that was what i was looking for.....its been years since i did a tandem so i wasnt sure where they actually come to a stop after deploy....how long a tandem snivels for. so if i want to do a long range canopy flyby with the tm's ok i'd want to be in the saddle by 3 grand? thatd give me about 1k feet to get level say hi and get out of there. i wouldn't want to be on a level with the tandem for long....shortly after i'd get the hell away from it and land elsewhere....large lz here i can land 4-600 yards away if i want. normally here theres always a large vertical separation between tandems and everyone else. i wondered if there were any other reasons for this besides the obvious keeping the air clear for big slow canopies reason. again, thanks. i think i'll stay the hell away from it in freefall and only get within 1000 feet of it with the tm's ok under canopy. why push it? theres just too damn many horror stories of people who THOUGHT they had it all handled..... i hate statistics. i really hate becoming one.

ok....assuming i don't lurk the tandem then... theres some things i don't know about descent rates, things ive never seen done. question is this: if i exit first, freefall alone and dump canopy at 4 or 5 grand...my dad's tandem exits a suitable delay later. if i hang back in deep brakes parked into the wind at say 3500 feet well below and to the side of their deployment airspace, and i do mean WELL below, what are my chances of chilling out up there and letting the tm catch up with me and fly up to hailing distance? im NOT talking doing CRW with it, not even close to CRW range, just about as close as i'd dare approach any other canopy? a few hundred feet? can the tandem get down that far from where they deploy before i run out of altitude myself? call it 2 grand? (i'm under a 190 at 155 lbs or so, light wing load....) ...or does this also just come in under "bad idea" category? i've never flown near a tandem so i'm not sure how much slower than me they come down. ive never seen it done or heard it talked about so i don't know if flying near tandems is a simple no real problem thing or if its something that is simply not done like a tandem trying to freefly. i'd think it'd be about the same as closing with anyone else except for the initial vertical and horizontal separation being more than usual between fun jumpers exiting after each other and the pursuing canopy being unusually large and slow. what DON'T i know about what im proposing here? whats the highest i can deploy before i'm intruding into the airspace of the tandem behind me?

now...you know whats the most phenomenally awesome spreadable quasi-food substance in the known universe? (in vast deep echoing godlike voice of thunder) "MARSHMALLOW FLUFF." thats right kids, its alternately edible, entertaining, adhesive, abrasive, more aggressive on furniture surfaces than battery acid but somehow doesnt upset your stomach. carrying no nutritional value of its own you can nonetheless live on it for months if need be. nobody has yet identified it as a solid or a liquid and its not too sure itself. it makes a great projectile, property marker and pet food and its cheaper than gasoline! its useful for practical jokes and sight gags, has made several guest appearances in a variety of industry leading pornographic movies! some believe this miracle mystery substance still holds the locked keys to the secrets of nuclear fusion and genetic drift control. only further studies can tell us what the future holds with FLUFF.

* misterhand steps aside with nac, stands close listening intently. suddenly looking a bit green he walks away making this gagging sound...*

besides....in a bottle in a distilled form thats like saying your propane grill is running on fart gas. distilled spirits are clinically proven to be free of actual fungal fecal substances. but concentrated shroom shit on toast? thats got to be the most culturally bizarre thing ive ever heard of. you brits manage to get into a lot of weirdness after 10,000 years on the same island. must be the weather or something.

i know this is going to sound like heresy coming from a jumper and all, but....I DONT DRINK EITHER! (ok, a few shots every once in a great while but thats different.)

just when i thought i'd never envy another man again in this life, YOU come along with this announcement. i WILL have your job someday. well, maybe not YOUR job, but THAT job. professional skydiver......grrrrrr congratulations sunman, you've made it to the top. hows it feel?

that stuff makes my peanut butter and banana pizza look positively normal. i repeat, ICK.

in between when i last posted and when i checked back here i DID ask the net to tell me about marmite. verdict: thats disgusting folks. really. "waste products of yeast fermentation" its fungus shit in a jar, in other words. ick!

so long and thanks for all the fish, said the dolphins. im still no closer to understanding the concept of marmite. what IS this substance what is it composed of, how do you use it what is it for where can i get some and why would i want to? help me out here folks, EDUCATE ME!!!! or are you all actually going to force me to look it up myself? "search engine, tell me about marmite...."

i prefer to celebrate earth day by getting off the damn thing and looking at it from a distance....say about 3 miles, give or take a few thousand feet. unfortunately the sky was in a bad mood today and wouldn't blue at me, so i remain on the planet all day. oh well, it'll blue soon enough.....

i'm working on it.

i still think marmite is a newfangled exotic carbon alloy. best rigid bike i ever owned: diamondback sorrento. ALL the cool options. neon green. living overseas (philippines) i used to take it on the south superhighway, grab ahold of a truck tailgate or the rails on a jeepney a'la "back to the future" and get an insane fast ride to makati or the mall. i have NO idea how fast i was going but i went through tires and brakes like you wouldn't believe. if i tried that here in the states id be arrested before i made it up the on ramp. a pity. never mind that it was possibly the stupidest way to get around ive ever used for a prolonged period of time, it was a blast. just for gods sake don't lose lock on your tow vehicle at 55+.... note: knobby offroad tires wear FAST on the highway and even faster when you exceed their max speed rating by 3x and the tire expands so much from centrifugal force the center of the tread hits the inside top of the fork. think autogovernor. more than once i rolled off the interstate shaking covered in bits of half melted rubber trailing smoke off the front tire....

yeah but its the marmite tube reinforcement that makes it so strong.... personally i still ride cold steel, and its gotta have a decent suspension. i was pretty good on a bike when i stopped riding for years....then when i bought a newfangled one with actual springs i was ecstatic. i couldnt believe what springs did for reflexes tuned from childhood for a rigid frame. i used it like a cross between a bike and a pogo stick, popping and hopping all over the place like a wombat on crack. it made even riding the clay banks on the american river in rancho cordova easy...i didnt used to dare take a 75 degree angle dropoff, before.

Didn't you guys kick off that party by chucking all the available tea into the harbour at Boston? Which is what any self respecting coffee drinking person really ought to do! yeah and over 200 years and a multibillion dollar cleanup effort later we still havent got all the shit out of boston harbor.

ok, complicated picture. i'll run it past the tm again, he knows my skills and lack thereof, but so far from whats been said i won't push for this. at my skill level i wouldnt think of docking with a tandem, i just don't like docking, period. im sure i could DO it, but sure enough to risk 3 lives? hell no. i am absolutely certain i could hang out safely 100 feet out and absolutely certain i could punch it and get the hell out of there fast if the tandem headed my way or closed the distance any. certain enough to risk it? yes. but not to insist. if the t.m. doesnt like the idea i'll drop it at once. besides which my dad'll have enough on his mind as it is without watching me flip around out there. its not as if NOT jumping with him will detract from the experience any. itll be cool enough just to both be skydiving and give him the thumbs up going backwards out the door. conservative skydiving=survival

i dunno, am i a nut bar? im snickering so bad i can hardly type right now....

that sounds appalling. but then i grew up eating only 3 types of sandwich...bologna with mayo, tuna with mayo, and occasionally when the parental units felt generous, peanut butter and mayo. my tastes therefore are naive. but i still think that sounds appalling.

the only thing i know about vegemite is some guy in the band men at work mentioned a vegemite sandwich in that tune land down under.

hmmm....recursive series here..... whats vegemite?

yo i just picked up my new ultralight pro-grade mountain bike. its got titanium cobalt sprockets, magnesium alloy rims, an aramid and carbon fiber frame with graphite filament cored marmite tube reinforcements, oil shocks and a gel seat. cool huh?