gjhdiver

I've jumped it precisely once, at the WFFC, and it was very fast indeed. The only King Air I've ever been in that was as fast or faster was Dave Norcutt's B-200, and we took that puppy to 36K in 18 minutes. It's not available for jumping any more though.

I basically took over from Jerry as the manager of Z Hills after he left. I saw him there briefly last April, but didn't get a chance to say hello. He was driving a cab the last I heard. He turns up at the DZ to shoot the shit and hang out, but he doesn't jump any more from what I can make out. I get the impression that he's just had anough of jumping now. He's getting on, his health took a turn, and he's the sole support for his two boys. He could just keep on working as a jumper, but I think that after a lifetime of firsts, he's got other priorities in his later years. Ona personal note, I'm proud to say that I learned just about everything I needed to know about organizing from watching him work. He was the first guy to give a lurking Brit a job as an organizer at Z Hills, and it quite literally changed the whole course of my life from that point on. I became a professional full time organizer, emigrated, and I'm still doing it today. I've never seen anyone take a crowd of people the way that he did and corrall them into a skydive. It's a skill I'm still working on near on 20 years later. On a personal note, him and I could never be described as close, mainly because we are very different personality types, but that does nothing to diminish my enormous respect for him and what he's accomplished. I'll stand off a load on any day to give him my slot.

Doing everything in my power to make Jodie Foster love me.

I agree. Mine's still stuck up there.

No, but I was married, and the experience looks probably about the same.

I have space available on mine if you'd care to plant your lips.

Thank you for rinsing that off before you posted it.

I misread that as "Jizz on Rabbit" and was therefore expecting a much different picture.

Ahhh. A bit of British pride there. We are a very sexy race of people though, so it is understandable.

Sweet Jesus. Look at the size of the head on the thing. I sincerely hope that she had a C Section, otherwise her husband should just start practicing throwing a hot dog up a hallway to get used to what he'll be dealing with from now on.

Your rabbit sucks. My rabbit kicks ass.

Ditch Pig Swamp Donkey JP

Now this seems reasonable at first glance, but it's flawed in it's execution, and I say that from the experience of managing one of the world's largest drop zones. I'll agree that good relations are important as far as a drop zones survival is concerned, but that is almost without exception accomplished on a local level. No matter how good a DZ is, it cannot survive without the goodwill of the local community. We put a huge amount of effort in at Z Hills to restore the image of skydiving in the local community, right down to supporting candidates for the local elections, and for the airport management board. We eventually got the local public on our side after they had become severely jaded with the whole idea of skydiving after years of infighting between the two dop zones that were on the airport at the time. Our survival as a drop zone depended almost entirely on that local effort at one point. If drop zones are poing to expend that kind of public relations effort, you'll normally see it going into the local community. If it's done right, things like access issues and the like go away, and you'll build up a reserve of goodwill for the occaisions when you might really need it. As for rehabilitating skydiving's image to the general public at large, it really isn't worth the effort. It's in the nature of the beast to thought of that way, and in the final analysis, the public have it more or less right. It is a thoroughly insane way to spend your leisure time if you think about it. Part of the trick is to give customers a safe and exciting experience, whilst paying lip service to the extreme image that it has for them. It's how drop zones attract tandems. We wouldn't get half the business if we managed to convince the public that the whole activity was as wholesome as bike riding or hiking.

Probably as soon as I opened my mouth to organize my first skydive, if not before. Well, there is a reason for this. I've seen a lot of this come and go over the years, and as far as I'm concerned, the sport is growing at the rate that it can support itself. We really don't want it to be bigger than it is right now. It's kind of like the army in a way. They really would like more recruits, but they resist the idea of a draft, because they really are conerned with quality, not quantity. I don't believe trying to flood the sport with new recruits will do any of us any good. At the very least, the sport doesn't have the infrastructure to support it. Right now, you're paying a couple of bucks more to jump at a place like Eloy than I was to jump out of a Cessna with no door in 1986. We're in a golden age right now. Let's not fuck it up by being greedy. Let the sport develop as it is, and in 20 years, we'll still have one.

Let's narrow it down quickly. 1. Person makes skydive. 2. Person is overcome by evangelical zeal. (Smart DZO will get said person to do odd jobs for free until this wears off usually). 3. Person becomes crashing bore to all non jumping friends. 4. Person lies awake at night thinking of how to convert the rest of the world to their new belief via marketing schemes. They dream of a world full of happy cheap turbine DZs and thousands of jumpers. 5. Person becomes crashing bore to skydiving friends. 6. Person realises world in general doesn't give a flying fuck about skydiving, other than to read accident reports for vicarious thrills. 7. Person wises up and just enjoys jumping, or gets disillusioned and gives up, making room for next batch of missionaries. 8 Go to 1. Any questions ?

[replyso my question is were is the money going??? why skydiving is not as popular as surfing or snowboarding or some other sport? when will be the day that a skydiver is in the front of a Wheaties cereal box and is getting paid for it? Probably never. ESPN dropped skydiving for a number of reasons. One of these is that skydiving is not readily accessible to the public to try other than through tandem. You can run, ride a bike, ski, or do any number of other sports fairly quickly and easily. Skydiving requires an enormous amount of time, committment and money just to get a basic license, let alone get proficient. There's not a lot of bang for an advertising buck in it for a sponsor. Here's the other thing that always gets me into trouble when I say it. For a non skydidver, skydiving is the dullest sport imaginable. At it's world class level, it's too subtle for most people to grasp, as all they really want to see are funnels and crashes anyway, much like why I would ever deign to watch NASCAR. I've yet to get any whuffo to sit through more than five minutes of video before they get bored. All in all, it's an expensive niche aviation sport. What we spend on it is a drop in the bucket compared to aerobatic pilots, and you don't see too much of that on TV either.

Stop trying to make my brain implode with the vacuous nature of your argument. Attempting to place evolution and creationism on the same platform of science is akin to equating vulcanism with angry earth spirits. One is a matter of scientific method, the other of blind faith. There may be gaps of evidence in the theory of evolution, but there's no evidence whatsover of creationsim other than the blind faith of it's proponents.

How, exactly, is the sticker in question forcing anything on anyone? It does not even mention creationism or God... J It doesn't have to. It wss a blatant end run around the constitution. Nobody here is claiming that the sticker was put there to promote good science. Both you and I know who put it there, and why.

OK, I get the sig though. It's quite amusing, but you'd be surprised at how many fundies use it as either a sig, or as a bumper sticker. I read Neitche for a while. Bit dry and not enough pictures, but there you go. While I agree that the subject is difficult to understand, I don't agree that we will never understand it. There's work being done right now on the new variant of superstring theory, called M theory, mainly led by a really bright guy called Ed Whitten, that's getting tantalisingly close to the much sought after general unified theory. It's really deep in calculus and higher math though, so it's not as if your average Joe is going to want to put the time in to understand it. it's easier to go with the pat explanations. Suffice it to say, that if Whitten is even partly right, it would redefine everything we know, or thought we did up to this point.

I doubt it. I lived there for a while. Be careful what you wish for. As an atheist, let me tell you now that this issue has got nothing to do with non believers forcing an agenda on anyone, and everything to do with Christians foisting their beliefs on the school curriculum. I personally don't mind if creationism is taught, as long as it's done so in the context of religious education. I object when that viewpoint is presented as valid science.

It's just more parasitic self serving bullshit. We should all be used to it by now. Schwarzengger was at the site of the landslide in California yesterday. He came in, gave a carefully scripted speech, made sure that he got his media coverage, and flew out again. Heaven forbid that he should actually get a shovel in his hands and fucking dig for survivors. Politics as usual.

Because I imagine that from your sig, that you have a religious bias towards Creationism. Evolution is a theory in the same way that other accepted sciences are theories. Heliocentricism is a theory, and one the church used to burn people for expounding. It's not absolutely empirically provable, but I don't see too many people still claiming that the earth does not revolve around the sun, although I can point you to religious websites that do say exactly that. Just because all the answers are not in place for evolution does not reduce it to the same level as blind superstition. If people want to promote creationism, it has it's own text book, namely the bible. It doesn't require others.

Apparently you join it, it fucks up your weekends, and you get continually drageed back into service, years after you thought you were done because of the stop loss program. Mind you, it does offer you the opportunity to get shot at while you experience financial ruin back home, so at least it's got that going for it.

And About time too... Farking eejits.... http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=5&u=/ap/20050113/ap_on_re_us/evolution_stickers

One of his sons ? Heh heh. You clearly aren't aware of the Royal family's allegedly rather dirty little secret.