lurch

Accept the crystal cup at the feast....beware the dwarf. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Gotta have 3. 1.First high solo. Friends in the door with me. So terrified I could barely speak. White, weak and shaking like a leaf. Thought I was badass. Thought wrong. Knew a problem with instability I hadn't licked yet was waiting for me right outside that door. A real battle with a real demon with my life at stake. The most gut-ripping fear I ever felt. Jumped alone anyway. Won. 2. First night jump. Possibly the most insane thing I have ever done or will do, and want more of. Clean off my mental intensity gauge. It blew my mind completely....except the part that remembers when to pull and how to fly. 3. First solo wingsuit flight on my own suit. Finest moment of my life. Lawndart took one perfect picture at the exact perfect time as he dropped away and I opened my wings. That one pic is worth a million words describing my last two years and all the effort it took to get to that moment. Thanks, man. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Thats fucking atrocious and absolutely, positively intolerable. When I next go to Rack Shack I will put my name down as "Winston Smith". When they want to know what I'm building I'll put down "Iludium q-36 explosive space modulator" and see what happens. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

For your amusement: I bring you Time Cube. This guy sounds like what would happen if you stuck a fork in Steven Hawking's brain and let him talk. www.timecube.com Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

The early worm has a death wish Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

How long did it take the train to notice you? Last time I tried that the train ignored me and tried to run me over. I was gonna sue it for not stopping but after I dived out of the way it ran off so fast I couldn't get its license plate number.....I'm gonna sue the railroad industry instead for not figuring out how to make trains stop when I stand in front of em.... I've seen variants on your ruleset there, like "theres no such thing as an unloaded gun" etc, but come on, someone please tell me the general public isn't so stupid they couldn't work this stuff out....then again, I've met people who needed a manual to operate a fork. Most of them were pretty skinny people. Never underestimate the creative stupidity of the species..... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Any of you guys want to wander out into the desert to tell us we're morally flawed as we're blasting cans, you're welcome. While your there I'll be happy to teach you how to safely handle the evil things OK. I've never taken a gun safety course or been "properly trained in the use and handling of firearms" and have no plans to in the future but can someone tell me why people feel such things are even necessary? Maybe its just me but the rules seem insanely obvious, even to the totally ignorant. Similar to other simple self evident safety rules like "Don't stick your head in a blender" "Don't eat steel wool" "You can't stop a train by standing on the tracks and yelling at it" and "Don't smoke in a fireworks factory." Lets see we have this bang-stick, absolute destruction comes out one end by way of contained explosion. Therefore, we derive rules like: Don't point it at friends and family or anyone you do not specifically intend to kill. EVER. It kills bad guys dead with big holes. If you fuck up it will kill whoever is in front of it. Duh. High powered hardware misassembled or cruddy or operated in a jammed state can be deadly. Driving a car with loose lug nuts can kill you and anyone near you. So can trying to fire a gun full of crud or loose/jammed/worn parts. If the lug nuts aren't tight, don't drive the gun.... ? The gun throws things fast. Thrown things tend to bounce around some, I think they call it "ricochet". It might be wise to consider where the things the gun throws (bullets maybe?) might bounce to. In other words don't shoot rocks at close range or you may cap yourself or a friend in the nut sack. And lastly, bullets do go a long way don't they? If I can't shoot for shit and the bullet is not stopped by my intended target, it IS going to be stopped by SOMETHING. I might want to consider what that something could be before shooting. Shoot me if I'm wrong here but didn't I just sum up a gun safety course? Believe it or not I even figured this all out on my own. Without a manual. Or even an adult present to help me. So tell me why the hell we need firearm safety training? It wastes the time of the experts trying to preserve the lives of those too stupid to know not to point a might-be-loaded gun at themselves or eat steel wool. Let darwin have his way, dammit. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Night jump. Full moon. Head down. Long spot. Oh, shit. Look there. Corn field. Tall corn. Face plant. Didn't hurt. Dumb ass. Big grin. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Grrrr you mean I have to use a REAL weapon? how......boring. .45 acp then. Not the most accurate but inside of 25 yards you only need the one round. You forgot the great granddaddy of all revolvers and my personal choice for zombie splashing....the .454 Casull. Just don't miss. Your arms will hurt too much to get off a second round. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Zombies? Gimme an Eightball cannon any day. Primary fire is up to 6 homing rockets in a cluster or fan spread. There's nothing quite so satisfactory as having your victim trapped in a hallway when you get tone right as the Eightball loads the 5th and 6th rounds. Your reticle turns red and it becomes impossible to miss. And of course fired as a cluster the splash damage is unearthly....there won't be enough left of your zombie to spread on a pizza. If you're quick and you have a ping time of under 100 mS you can sneak up on em and they hear the tone and turn around to face you just in time to catch all 6. Not even a fully charged shieldbelt will save your zombie. This thing redefines "wallpaper." Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Speak for yourself, Andy. As for me, I have a very effective method for dealing with that kind of intolerable behavior, a method most people don't seem to be able to bring themselves to implement.... Violently aggressive rudeness, short and to the point. A local newspaper somehow got ahold of my cellphone number once. I have no hardline for two main reasons, one, I can't be reached when I'm not home and two, to avoid marketing harassment. The cellphone rings and its "Hi, this is Dan from the Telegraph, if you could spare some time to answer a few questions..." In other words, carefully constructed leading questions obviously designed to make me arrive at the conclusion that I need your product. When I was a child I found that kind of thing irritating as hell coming from adults. As an adult I find it intolerable. I said "Fuck off." and hung up. Two days later... (ring) I look at the phone and it says No ID available. Great. I pick it up and hit talk. Me: "Steve's hooker shack! We fetch em, you stretch em! What'll it be?" Dan: "I....uh.....um, uh.....hi, this is Dan from the Telegraph, if you could spare..." Me, loudly and violently: "FUCK OFF!!!" (click.) In 6 months since then I haven't had a single unwanted call from anyone selling anything. Now thats what I call 100% consumer satisfaction. Their weapons are rudeness disguised as politeness. I use that weapon with the candy wrapper torn off. Works for me. Flawlessly. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

10/8/2003 j/n 237: tracking dive: minimum speed on the graphic: 74.24 mph SAS, 76.19 mph TAS at 5086 feet. 10/10/2003 j/n 238: another tracking dive but this one I'm writing up as some sort of fluke or glitch or readout error because I think this is just impossible, even for me...(I'm 5'10" 135 lbs, the heaviest of the ultralight humans)...the graphic shows my speed did the usual spike up to 130-ish after exit followed by one huge smooth curving drop in airspeed all the way down to....52.74 mph TAS, 46.79 mph SAS. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell this happened. Did I really go that slow or did I do something that somehow fooled the protrack? If I did, its a weird glitch because the curve looks fine, same as any other corkout reading or curve down to mimimum speed I've captured....but waaay waaay too slow to make any sense. Anyone else out there ever get this? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

mine is cool. -from star trek. hm. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

It wasn't even that I had to deal with just one of them, man, it was the fact that they showed up in herds on the trails posing an unspeakable hazard to navigation.... If the FSP has to accept the inalienable right of fat guys to wear spandex in order to help protect my right to drive with no seat belt and no insurance, I guess I can just shut up and deal with it. *sigh* the things I tolerate in the name of freedom...... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Its not the lycra...I LOOOOVE ladies in spandex, whoever invented that stuff should be prosecuted for glandular cruelty to the male species.... What I can't stand is the 311 lb lawyer in skintight yellow thinks he's getting in shape and saving the environment by riding a bicycle 600 yards at 2 mph before stuffing his folded ass in his ford excursion for an air conditioned 2 mpg drive to the nearest McD's drive through to replenish his obviously depleted bodily resources before sailing into court to sue McD's for making him too obese to ride that bike in the first place. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Liberate New Hampshire? Thats kinda redundant. I live there. Its already free. Thats like saying you're going to corrupt Washington, DC. Whats the point. No seat belt law over 18. No helmet laws No gun registrations/permits It cost me 144$ to register my cars this season....for both of them. Thats right, 72$ each. We got nice roads we got lots and lots of TREES! The cops are mostly cool here and will leave you alone unless you're doing 92 mph, at night, with no lights, on a bike trail. Hell, we don't even have mandatory auto insurance laws and somehow we don't have total automotive anarchy here. NO state income tax! I went to California once, I'd heard it was free-er than my home state....I fled screaming, pedal to the metal, tach at 9 grand for 3,200 miles till I got home. In Cali, everything not forbidden is compulsory. Everything not compulsory is forbidden. They even tax you on AIR in cali and it seems their entire government exists only to figure out new ways to triple charge you for being allowed and licensed to do some basic life activity, like eating walking or breathing....and if you don't yet need a permit for whatever you're doing there right now, you will soon. At a hefty price for the privilege of being licensed to do that I might add. My impression of California was a consumer culture concrete wasteland theme park franchise ghetto with hideously expensive landscaping. Hell On Earth with an unusual number of pieces of unusually good car audio gear being stolen by an unusually large number of unusually skilled car stereo-stealing "gank-sta"s....who despite all kinds of laws controlling their access to guns are more well armed than the L.A.P.D. SWAT team.... My life was in constant danger on the bike trails due to the supremacy of the most hazardous "yuppie spandex biker clans"....you've seen these guys. Mirrors on their bikes. Lots of yellow spandex. Those fucked up shoe pedal clip thingies. Those utterly ridiculous ducks-ass looking bike helmets they think somehow make them more aerodynamic and faster. They refer to their fellow cyclists as "fellow cyclists." They come heavily armed with lawyers and credit cards. They travel in large packs on the trails moving at 2 mph creating a terrible danger to all us jean-jacket wearing shattered reflectors and beat up primer-colored 10 speed riding thrash bikers who only want to ride at 92 mph at night with no lights without undue risk of collision. Pepper spray is an effective deterrent/trail obstacle remover, however. As for these FSP guys, if they want to help make us free like Cali is free, STAY HOME!!!! If they want to move here and try to help us hold our ground against psychotic politicians and suits trying to convince us we need to pay 90% of our income for the privilege being allowed to earn money drive a car or breathe the atmosphere, come on then! We're under siege here! This state is the last quasi-free space left on the continent short of Manitoba and the only reason THATS free is there's nobody THERE! HEEELP! Bring guns beer and dog food! Build a wall! DO something!!! /end rant Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Simple question: How many birdman wingsuit flyers are there anyway? Anyone know? Is there a Birdman census going on or what? Just curious as to the actual size of the flock. If you got them all in one place at one time how big would the crowd be? I'm not talking tried it once people I'm talking about owns and jumps one people. Have a Birdman Boogie? Are there enough birdmen to even get enough together to HAVE a birdboogie? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

(-sigh-) Funny. By the time I got to the experience necessary to fly one I didn't feel like crowing much about it or advertising, just did it, flew, landed, raved briefly, ordered my suit and went home. By the next time I set foot at my home DZ everyone already knew about it anyway. My new GTI should arrive soon. Fly soon. Cool. Fly with others soon. Cooler. Am I just hallucinating all this or can I really fly with wings now? Just out of curiosity, just how big is the flock by now anyway? How many birdsuit pilots are there out there? Edit: I'd like to give a public thank you to Asaf for suit demo and ground school and Lawndart21 for ground video and advice. (-bounces around laughing hysterically- "i got wings! i got wings! i got wings!" /end hysterical bouncing mode) Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Yup...I royally hosed him on the exit timing, I was so wrapped up with mentally rehearsing emergency procedures, wingout timing, deployment sequence etc, I absently asked what kind of delay after the others got out or just go whenever? He said yup. So, I totally spaced the exit count, got in the door, looked at him for a second and then just went.... DOH! On the positive side however the flight itself was a living fantasy like nothing else. Zero problems controlling the flight, I just thought "fly this way" "fly that way" and it just happened. I'm hooked for life. Edit: another positive note is that the time it will take for the suit to be built and delivered will give my rationality coolheadedness and skills time to catch up with my enthusiasm. I chose my gear (sabre2 170, .98 w/l approx.) specifically to give as much of a margin for error as possible and got a nice clean twistless on-heading deployment, but now that I got to do this its time to sit back chill out think things through nice and easy and practice practice practice.... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oh what the hell.... I got out to lebanon for the beer time last weekend where I hit a new high point in my jumping career at 218 jumps and got the reward for all this hard work and jumping by test flying a Birdman classic, immediately followed by ordering a GTI. Whatever you do, do NOT test fly a wingsuit people, its nylon crack. One flight and you WILL buy one. My checking account is trashed and I'm happy about it and still, days later, bouncing off the walls trying to deal with a suddenly altered reality where I have wings that work. I'd like to thank Lawndart21 for shooting video from the ground, can't wait to see how it came out. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

o we should all just suck it up? I hate the stupid lawsuits people file. Like "McDonalds made me fat, give me money." But when someone damages someone elses property, they need to pay for it. That's what insurance is all about. What if some guy in a 1977 chevy nova hits a tractor trailer and puts it out of service? You know how much those are worth? Maybe it's not owned by a giant corporation that can just suck it up. Maybe it's everything the driver owns. Should he just say "oh well, it happens" and go find a new job because he cant afford to fix his $100,000 truck? Or should we ban trucks from the road because they're too valuable? You're telling me the tractor trailer owner isn't already insured against loss and damage to his truck? With a 100,000$ piece of hardware I'd have the max coverage I could get on that puppy. The point is, we all DO just suck it up whether or not anything happens and it has grown ridiculous...Whats the max on YOUR liability insurance? 20,000$? Go hit a lamborghini. The guy's insurance company will replace his car, but then come to you expecting to recover the loss...that's what insurance companies are for, to be paid to assume the risk of having to "suck it up", and absorb a loss greater than the individual can pay for...to BE the giant corporation that can suck it up. Lets say you're joe the destitute swooper. You do not have the 300,000$ it will cost to replace that car. Blood from a stone, man if there's no money to take there's no money to take. What will they do, take half his paycheck every week for the next 50 years? I fully agree with the necessity of taking reponsibility for damage you cause but past a certain point it's simply not possible to protect against the losses that could happen if someone fucks up. We as uspa members have a certain coverage against damage we can cause but eventually the cost of that coverage will, also, like the lambo, be more than we can possibly pay, cost more money than we have. We would be effectively paying for any possible accident whether we have one or not! Right now the system still permits the possibility of unrecoverable loss. You aren't yet required to have coverage enough to pay for a wrecked lambo...but you WILL be. The system is designed to self correct which means every time you submit a claim the price goes up... My point being, in most states it is illegal to drive without insurance. Have enough fender benders and your coverage is too expensive to afford anymore. Drop the insurance you can't pay for anymore and it becomes illegal for you to drive. The same is happening to skydiving but collectively. Skydiving is dangerous and shit can happen. A reserve pops on the strut and takes out a c-182, all jumpers survive but the dz loses a plane and somebody gets an aileron through the windshield of his lincoln. A skyball goes through a roof. A wayward demo hits a car in a parking lot. There is no way to remove this risk or prevent all possibility of shit happening. Minimize, yes, but not eliminate. There WILL be claims. The price WILL continue to rise as it must under iron laws of economics... The uspa is losing badly as this cost rises. It can not afford that insurance anymore, plain and simple. Lose the insurance, jumps stop cold, shut down game over. Like driving in a mandatory insurance state, if you cannot pay for any possible damage you might cause or pay someone to assume that risk you will no longer be permitted to engage in that activity. Used to be, driving with your kid in the back of the truck was an acceptable risk. It is not anymore, and you are not permitted to take that risk or use your own judgement on the matter. Used to be, driving with no insurance was a risk you were allowed to take. It is not anymore. The same is already true of skydiving...and we cannot afford to pay for the right to take that risk any longer. The system, by its inherent nature, tries to eliminate the possibility of unrecoverable losses and to make it illegal to create that possibility. Skydiving creates that possibility, so when we can't afford the insurance anymore, we get shut down. If a demo jumper makes 300$ doing a demo but insuring that event costs 495$, is he going to do the demo? And I can't think of a damn thing the uspa or the faa or the aopa or anybody else can do about it. So enjoy your jumping while you can. Like kids in the backs of pickup trucks and uninsured drivers it will eventually be legislated and financially driven out of existence as a thing too risky to be allowed to exist. Make sense now? . Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Reading this thread from the somewhat uninformed standpoint of someone who doesn't speak legalese I'll tell you what I see. All this talk of third-party this and liability that and premium this and coverage that is so much bs.... You're looking at the genetic code for the informational disease bringing down not just skydiving but a bigger picture as well.... How many billions get spent trying to decide who gets to fuck who over if shit happens? Somewhere along the line you have to just take personal responsibility for what you do and that includes the risk of your own unrecoverable losses due to mischance or error. This is insane. Mister fucking learjet can afford to buy a fucking learjet but will spend millions trying to force Joe Poverty to pay for banging into the wing and causing 20,000$ in damage? Or find somebody he can force to pay for Joe's banging into his lear? Or worse...bankrupt the dropzone trying to guarantee that he won't be exposed to the risk of being hit again... To use the example posted earlier about the mercedes.... It is insane to expect me to pay a fortune to protect me from you suing me because YOU choose to drive something too expensive for me to replace IF I should cause damage to it. By that logic nobody should be allowed to drive unless they have liability coverage that would pay for the most expensive hardware they could possibly wreck, meaning the most expensive thing on the road...meaning unless you drive a lamborghini or a bentley you are legally forbidden to drive because you couldn't replace the lambo if you hit it and cannot afford to pay someone to assume that risk FOR you. At some point you have to accept that sometimes shit can happen and sometimes you won't get paid back for the loss or damage. Lightning strike, tornado earthquake psycho muslims or Joe the destitute swooper it doesn't matter. Past the limits of whatever insurance you have you're fucked no matter what happened. Personal responsibility goes both ways. If I choose to drive a 560 SEL I'm accepting the fact that some numbnuts could hit it and wreck it and I won't get paid. I'm so sick of endlessly hearing about people or organizations taking a loss due to chance error or mishap and the first response is "who can we hold accountable for this"? Enjoy your skydiving while you can....someday this sport will be regarded as unthinkably irresponsible and criminally negligent like allowing your kid to ride in the back of your pickup truck is now. The next step is to mandate punishment just for creating the risk and choosing to assume that risk. Let your kid ride in the back of your 2003 dodge ram and you'll probably be arrested just for allowing that kind of a risk to be taken, a risk nobody and nothing can protect you from... after all, something COULD happen couldn't it? Fines and damage payments afterward or skyhigh insurance premiums beforehand, we're at the point where you get punished by unsupportable financial loss no matter what happens. Even if nothing happens I lose heavily just paying for protection against the possibility of something happening. Ground zero of this insanity is whats bankrupting the uspa. Watch closely folks cause the disease is spreading rapidly.... fast forward 20 years... Skydiving is as ancient history as manned space flight and kids in pickup trucks. It is illegal for a private citizen to own or operate a car unless they can afford $1,000,000 insurance against liability or damage to anything they could conceivably hit. The only things left on the road are heavy equipment and lambos and bentleys owned by the independently wealthy...because they are the only ones left who can afford to assume the risk of every day living and basic transportation. Everyone travels around on foot, and to be allowed to walk on city property requires a medical certificate proving you aren't likely to have an epileptic fit hit your head and sue the city for not padding all the sidewalks and corners to protect itself from you suing it for allowing such a hazard as unpadded sidewalks to exist. To even get a pedestrian permit you have to have $100,000 minimum liability insurance because you could bump into and damage one of those 560 SEL's out there that you can't afford to pay to repair if you should walk into it and break a taillight or scratch the paint, and now even a paint scratch is evaluated at several thousand dollars loss...not because of the cost of repair but because of the cost of the lawyers and insurance it took to proclaim that it'll cost several thousand to fix that. There are cameras on every street corner recording everything that ever happens 24\7 to make damn sure that when someone DOES fall and hit their head and knock over someone's souvenir stand, the right person is "held accountable" and strip-mined of all their assets to pay for their negligence. 99% of the loot goes to the lawyers though so everybody loses anyway. The remaining 1% is taken by the state in court fees to keep the whole parasitic cycle going...somebody has to be held accountable for all this courtroom time we have to use to determine who we can hold accountable, after all. Betcha 100$ I'm right. Oh, wait....gambling is illegal too..... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

*pokes head in, looks around, admires the new visual method of event representation, loudly applauds the longevity of the thread, leaves thread, the sound of whistling can be heard echoing down the hall....* Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'd like to give a shout-out to the USPA then, I think we can thank them for the fact that the TSA is finally capable of recognizing the fact that a parachute is not a terrorist weapon. I bet if we didn't have the USPA raising hell the TSA'd still be happily chopping up the occasional rig with bolt cutters just to see what makes it tick. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

aw hell who needs to read my crap? post removed. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.