lurch

...I know I dropped that contact down there somewhere.... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

This made me laugh my ass off. It reads like an optimistic evaluation of bad industrial wiring. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Thanks, Ed. I'd post more often, but when you say what you mean its easy to accidentally insert your foot in your mouth- witness my opening post. I hope our local RW guys won't hold it against me if they find it. Anyway I try to think before I speak, even online. I ask myself can this discussion get by just fine without my input? If its something I feel needs to be said, maybe I'll say it, maybe I won't and then feel good about it later because I kept my trap shut when everyone was trash talking. It kills off 90% of the things I'd like to say. I still pop in from time to time just because if everyone did that, this place would be deserted. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

No problem Ed, although you guys' talk of steers and texsexuals and manjunk admiration and whatnot worries me a bit, it spreads from thread to thread like some sort of icky mindvirus. I'm scared I'm going to find myself wearing a football jersey and experiencing a compulsion to buy an old Ford pickup if I read too much of it. Now I know its a bit dry out west, but do you guys ever get any good surf? You've been at this far longer than I've been skydiving at all, you've got to have scored some uniquely memorable monsterpuffies a time or two. Elsinore was my first run out west for flying purposes so I have no idea how often you get clouds worth chasing in that area. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oof. I left myself wide open for that. I shouldn't have said it like that. You got me, Ed. I can't argue with any of that. On the way to my slot in any bigway I've got eyes for only what I'm dealing with...range, closing speed, other birds, my slot itself. If I was the type to go all "look at the pretty clouds" starstruck in the wrong place and time I'd have had no business in such an event. For what its worth, I did -not- intend to put down other disciplines- your pic would be why. Takes just as much or more dedication to excellence to achieve something like that formation as it does to do anything with a wingsuit. After all, they have much less time in which to do it. I guess maybe the point I was rather ineptly trying to make with that turn of phrase is that I was more interested in the flight and sense of flying than I was in turning points or further increasing my skills in the art, and continuing with RW felt like it was getting further away from what drew me skyward to begin with. With RW my possibilities felt kind of restricted to variations of the same thing everyone else was doing, when what I really wanted to do was fly off and go explore the sky by myself, see how long I could stay up here, chase clouds and stuff. Funny thing is, it goes in circles...After a couple years of that, the students started seeking me out. First in ones and twos, then in dozens, my ex-students went on to become wingsuit instructors themselves, and the scene exploded outward when they did. But the whole solitary exploring the unknown thing, the pioneering element seems to be gone. Although theres still plenty to learn, wingsuit isn't the unexplored territory it was when I started and I think thats what Zeemax was getting at. Now that it is established, we aren't a tiny community of rare pioneers off doing their own thing anymore. Theres quite a few of us now, enough to break up into groups and start squabbling. I try to stay out of it-being totally unsponsored so far (still haven't figured out how to do that whole "go get sponsored" thing) I've been staying out of the brand wars. I fly Birdman suits by default, because its what I started on and what I'm comfy flying and I don't need anything bigger. Breaking up into camps based on the selling points and subtle technical refinements is missing the point-I made a freakin leather jacket function as a wingsuit by the most crude methods imaginable-it ain't about the suits, guys. But its a necessary driving force in the development. If we weren't all comparing and trying to outdo each others best gear we wouldn't be developing anything. I think its the growing amount of bickering and cynicism in our ranks thats got Zeemax down. I think perhaps what I should have said is, its we who are starting to fossilize somewhat. I went from "the only hard wingsuit guy for 700 miles" to "one of many". What happened to me in the sport isn't going to happen to anyone else, at least not in this discipline. Its a developed art with known rules and established players. Anyone new getting into it won't be going it alone like I did, and they won't see the wide open vacuum, totally unknown territory and potential, and unexplored spaces that I saw. They'll see US. And they'll see the bickering and cliquishness that Zeemax sees. I wondered how to address that, hence this thread. I figured I'd call some attention to something we all can agree on where the sense of joy hasn't worn off yet. Normally this would be the part where some cynic such as myself pops in and mocks the thread by asking can we all hold hands and sing kumbaya or something, but cloud surfing is still a pure enough joy to be cynic-resistant. We all get excited again when we see this stuff out the door waiting for us on the way up. I look at the pics people have put up and think "THATs what I came for." If I ever figure out how to put enough effort into getting sponsored and promoting this to make a living at it, it'll be so I can spend all day every day, up there, helping others BE up there. But if I do, I'll be part of the competition for resources, and the bickering and brand wars that result and thats not the image of wingsuiting I'd like the new guys to see. I'd like them to see what I think we are, a whole bunch of birds flying for the love of it. The bickering and brand wars are just decoration, tribal colors. Part of the fun, where we develop stuff. We're here for the cloud porn. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Now this ones got that infinite repeating background thing going for it. I love the effect and I have absolutely no idea how it works. Whats up with those clouds? All one particular style and type, a particular pattern to their spacing, all of them variations of the same vague chaotic model, done in a variety of sizes. What causes this? How come some days you'll get just these, some days you'll get them plus another whole pattern of completely different ones? You'll see a skyful of those things, plus occasional huge but wispy ones with a totally different texture, nothing like the other repeating shapes and poorly defined edges. Why is the air in that cloud not subject to the same rules as the little clumpy ones? Its kinda like curiosity about biology. Why does a type of plant like to grow in clumps here but not here? I look at a picture like that and I get a sense of a lot going on that I can't see. Its like the ocean, but bigger.

Ok I actually took the trouble to infect my system with realplayer just to see that clip. That was cooler than the other side of the pillow. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

We couldnt get to it, but it was sexy. Story of my life, bro. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Clown porn? That explains the Mini Cooper... how many people can you fit simultaneously in that thing anyway? 30? I hope its got drain plugs in the floorboards and good luck getting a camera angle in there... Bummer I'm gonna miss PR Skwrlbrother, so keep your line bites small, your head and shoulders high and your tail shut down for those openings ok? Line twists over the ocean are bad mojo. You could wind up being a guest of several hundred astonished fish. Think I'm gonna have to skip FnD as well for the first time in years much to my dismay... trying to figure out how to finance a trailer, get out of this apartment, free up a few grand a year, hit more events, and every time I attend a big WS event it sets back my clock another 6 months. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

The first pic is a nice teaser for the second. That second pic lit my face up like Yeaaah! THATS the kind of surf I live for. We don't see stuff like that out the door up here in the north all that often but when we do I'm usually hanging out in the door doing the happydance on the way up. There are some sights that just totally unleash my inner child, and a surfable cloudscape within range does it every time. Fortunately even my inner child remembers there might be newbies following me so I don't go stupid chasing after the wonderpuffy. We had a huge thunderstorm wallcloud sit for hours about 3 miles off the DZ last year and it kept having big chunks like that break off and go sailing across the DZ. Most surf I've ever gotten in one day, think I got in 5 loads back to back surfing the stuff, 2 3 and 4 clouds in 1 jump, from cloudtop to cloudtop. I kept having to fight off the temptation to strike out for the big source wall, but the damn thing stayed just out of reach the whole time. I could have made the distance easily, but without a prayer of making it home once I got there if I stuck around long enough to surf as much of the wall as possible. Just as well, anyway, there was a lot of ugly gray stuff at the base of it. I quit surfing its fragments when it started hucking lightning around, I don't want to be the first bird to get fried like a bug... I can see the incident report now... Victim was struck by lightning at approximately 11,000 feet while surfing a thunderstorm, his Cypres went off but his reserve was on fire so it didn't help much, the body was found in a swamp 6 miles away with a big grin on his face surrounded by boiled bugs and a small forest fire. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Actually I think the fun would start long before landing, about the time you hit the dark gray stuff at the foot of it, might want a fullface helmet with windshield wipers to surf that puppy. Dave's pic is somewhat like what I saw on that flight, except all the empty volume was full of wild wispy shapes in dozens of totally different and well defined types. I'm not a meteorologist so I have no idea what was going on but it was an unusual sight just because of the variety. It looked like every possible cloud type in large numbers all at once. 3d stuff, flat layers and decks, big stretches of repeating patterns, bars and ridges and waves that went for miles. Can anybody with a weather background shed any light on the topic? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok Zeemax's thread about the status of wingsuiting kinda got me thinking. One thing I think attracted a lot of us early adopters in wingsuiting was that we felt RW has fossilized somewhat...turned inward, so focused on getting that next point that a lot of people are paying little to no attention to the skydive itself. I'd bet a great many jumps are made in unearthly beautiful surroundings to which the 4-way team falling through it is almost entirely oblivious because all they see is a leg and a gripper and somebody's shoe and they consider the skydive totally ruined if somebody misses a grip. Most of the birds I flew with early on enjoyed the fact that we didn't give a damn about suit performance or name brand or points, we were just happy as hell to be flying around up there chasing after whatever surfable clouds were in range. On the way back from the 71-way in Elsinore my plane was flying through some layered cloud decks, one of the busiest skies I've ever seen. Look down and there was no bottom to it, just mile after mile of shelves, layers, slopes and valleys going off into infinity, dozens of different cloud types all mixed up, fantasy cloudscape on a cosmic scale. All I could think was I wish this was a jumpship, what I wouldn't give to be able to surf what I see out that window from this altitude. I stayed glued to the window for several hours, just enjoying the view wishing I had a camera good enough to capture what I was seeing. So. The point of this thread is, post your best cloud porn. Doesn't have to be a shot you took yourself, just put up the most spectacular cloud pics you can find, the cloud you'd give anything to surf. Bonus points if it IS a shot you took or a cloud you did in fact personally surf. Altitude is irrelevant since most of the best clouds go way beyond jump altitude anyway. Heres mine, or at least the best one I could find within the limits of my attention span and a couple beers. The air is probably impossibly thin up near the top of this thing, but even if I had to get out only halfway up the foot of it, it'd be the most epic cloudsurf in history. Funny thing about cloudsurfing, the cloud does not care which suit you're flying or whether you hold any records or if your backfly inlets work better than the other guy's. So come on, Florida guys, you've been gloating about your world-class puffies since the day I got my first suit and you've got enough world-class camerabirds to fill an Otter. Surely one of you can do better than this pic-you got em, lets see em. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Actually shouldn't be an issue if the van was a 3/4 ton or 1-ton work van. Truck axles for 4wd are commonly the same model as the rear but with U-joints added so it can steer. Theres an easy to judge range of weight classes, first to come to mind is the range often used by jeep hackers- Dana 30, (light half ton) Dana 44, (medium) Dana 60 (virtually unbreakable 1-ton, good for duallies). Any video you've ever seen of jeeps with big tires being used violently, the ones that don't break are fitted with dual Dana 60's. Makes the jeep MUCH heavier and slower and requires extensive reinforcement to fit a jeep with axles that heavy, but it doesn't break. Theres many other models but the range is the same...GM 10-bolt, 12-bolt, etc. Some light and medium trucks and jeeps mix em up, Dana 44 rear, Dana 35 front, but with a heavy van/truck its likely to be dual Dana 60's front and rear, either one of which is far stronger than it needs to be. If the guy who built that really cared, he used a 60 up front. Basically if the frontend is on an axle with 8 lugs, it can take being used as front wheel drive. I've seen poorly done hackjobs that made me cringe... a late 70's IH Scout with a built 327 under the hood, beautiful paint and 35" tires, sitting on what looked like spindly little Dana 25's suitable only for a toy like a Geo Tracker. Weakest setup I've ever seen, trailer queen only, guaranteed to fail rapidly if you actually tried to use it for anything or even drive it, let alone go offroad with it. All I could think was the first time somebody stomps the gas on that truck all 4 wheels are going to shear off. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well, there were two things I wasn't expecting. First was the snowbank turning out to be solid enough to be a beautiful ramp, second was what was gonna happen when the rear suspension (with rancho shocks and a double springpack, compressed to the frame by slamming the jump at 30+mph) unloaded at the top of the ramp. One of life's best "Oh, SHIT!" moments. Only time in my life I've had a vehicle so cleanly airborne you coulda stood at the base of the snowbank and it wouldn'ta even took your hat off. That car was FUN. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Never ram an old snowbank. From pavement into a 10-foot high snowbank at the edge of a parking lot in a jacked up 4x4 warbuggy. The vehicle went violently airborne, then steeply nosedown in midair and the first part to hit the ground was the bullbar on the frontend. It ground along on the bar for a second, almost went over on the roof, then fell heavily back onto all four wheels. The impact dislocated the engine and tranny 3/4 of an inch on the rails and left it idling in neutral with the stick still in "drive." And a nice new bruise on my neck from getting clotheslined on the steering wheel. Seeing pavement coming up at your windshield is never a good thing. For a second I thought the drivetrain was broken till I dropped it into "2" which was now the new "D". No matter how tough your jeep is, if you drop it on its nose from an altitude higher than its own wheelbase, its gonna hurt. I drove the thing for another 5 years though after I fixed the frame. It actually still drove straight on the highway... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

WHOA!!! (Record needle scratching sound) Dave, you gonna ditch that old protec with the stickers and the electric rubber monkey on top? Thats one of the most hardcore helmets I've ever seen. Its even uglier than the Darth Vader bucket I've been jumping since AFF, which makes it even cooler. Plus you can play hockey or have a seizure in it and make out just fine-its versatile. At least hang it up in the Birdhouse, ok? We'll give it a place of honor, put it up next to the mutilated skateboard with the names on it. Let other birds appreciate its battered plastic majesty. That things probably got more miles on it than god's dirtbike and its awesome. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

A bathroom cleaner? I dunno, man. Personally I always thought it sounded more like the name of an expensive italian kitchen appliance, like the kind of espresso machine owned by people who live for the next Ikea catalog, wear lots of Abercrombie and order stuff at starbucks that reads like the parts list to an aircraft carrier or a complex genetic modification procedure. A Vimeo hypercaf sludgeomatic with optional fellatio dispenser and automated sweet n low reservoir or something. But thats just me. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

This is unexpected and hurts like hell. Chip was my Tandem Master for one of the early tandems I did long before I took AFF seven years ago. He was there as a mentor long enough to see me make my first 60 jumps or so. Taught me how to pack. About the most important things to keep in mind while skydiving. "Remember, every skydive is the most important skydive of your life. Whatevers on the ground, stays on the ground." Back in the day I called him Master Yoda and he was the closest thing to it I ever met in the sport, represented everything I wanted to be in a skydiver and later, instructor. I've chosen very few role models in life and he was one of them. Long after he'd left my home DZ I ran into him at a bigway wingsuit event-by that time I'd "grown up" in the sport and graduated to things like wingsuit design and instruction-and I had the chance to let him know that the same stuff he taught me I was now passing down to the next generation of up-and-coming wingsuiters. Now I'm glad I took that opportunity to say that when I had the chance. Wish I'd known that was going to be the last time I saw him. He was one of the highest quality people I've known and I am going to miss him. So long, man. Seeya by the fire on the far side someday. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Only thing to impugn is this shows accuracy. I mean, I got called out on deck for busting 2 over manifest, I can only imagine what Franny'd do to me if I dumped at 200. Scalp me, make a lampshade out of my face and nail my skull to the birdhouse maybe. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Shit. Time to take up CRW, guys... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I can't, Howie. I do not have the proper screencap ninja skills. Anyway I would NEVER impugn your screencaps cause if you hadn't made one, I wouldn't have had one to judge from. Besides, its been awhile since I impugned anything anyway. I'm not very good at it. I don't impugn things very often, since I so seldom get to use that word in a sentence. This has however put me in the mood to find something to impugn just to keep current in the art of impugnation... impugnoring... impugnory? Whatever. I'm gonna go find something else to impugn now. Politics, maybe. Or the quality of the cuisinarts made in china...those things suck. Seeya. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Damn, I'm good. And from a blurred screencap no less. Coming soon: Lurch's wingsuit spotter's guide. Been taken out in a formation? Happened so fast you don't know what the hell it was? Read my book and the next time you encounter one of these in the wild, you can be certain of your identification and intended application. Scott Gray gets a free copy of the first edition. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Actually although the pic is a bit blurry I think that guys wearing either an S-3s or an S-6. I can run just fine in mine, ask any of my friends whove seen me trying to catch a last-second load. I KNOW I'm not supposed to DO that, but they WERE holding the plane for me just in case, and, well, the clouds looked tasty, so just so long as I wasn't pulling a Mike and rigging in the plane.... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Interesting take on it, although I wouldn't consider a 6 to be a gigantic suit. Anyway I've always flown a suit with rodeos simply because it never occurred to me not to. 99.5% of my last thousand jumps have been in a wingsuit- I'm just far more comfortable in freefall with one than without. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

S-6 rodeo tips: (works with mine anyway) Arms behind your back like you're gonna deploy, legs locked toes pointed, about 85% head down and face first. After about 15 seconds of this you'll have the speed to level off behind the rodeo, then overtake it horizontally. I usually aim at a point about 100 feet away and 50 below it, then climb back up to it, and just stop bleeding off speed when it has "come down" to me. About half the rodeos I've chased were moving so fast the only way to get there was to fly a much longer distance than the obvious straight line in order to have enough distance to build up enough of an overspeed to actually overtake and catch it. It ain't enough to hit 150, to catch it before the skydive is over you might have to be pushing 170-200ish. This technique can also be useful trying to catch a bigway when the exit gets strung out and you're last out the door. Keep an eye on your bridle... good reason to have a freefly-friendly rig for wingsuit. And make sure you aim well off to the side... colliding with the rodeo at a 60mph closing speed because you were moving much faster than you're used to flying and braking back down from is considered somewhat rude. Good luck. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.