tbrown

Tell her you almost died and you were thinking about her warn body wrapping around yours. Should work... My wife knew I had a cutaway before we got married. She believes the system works. Now that I'm back in the sport again, I haven't had one so far, but will probably tell her. Including the part about her warm body, which I think about a lot. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

He doesn't go to jail for this. He just gets billed for it. Or else he can move to Florida, like OJ and stiff the judgement. OJ is still searching the golf courses of Florida for the REAL killers.... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I would not give him the time of day for a Pioneer K-series reserve. Not even with the substantial discount for acid mesh ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I think Michael will walk. Personally I believe he's guilty as hell. But from what I've heard, in the nonstop coverage of the trial, the prosecution hasn't done a very good job of proving their case. I'm not even sure a responsible jury could find him guilty. His defense team has done a good job, which is what you'd expect from a high paid, high power defense team. Move over OJ and Baretta, Michael's joining the club. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The last "Whorehouse Boogie" was supported by Van Pray from Cal City in the mid 90s....I was doing tandems. There were some interesting tradeouts being done. Damn...those were some good times. bozo So, they haven't done one of these in ten years ? What the fuck is up with THAT ?? Just wondering.... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I started jumping when motorcycle helmets were the norm. Then we went to hockey helmets, then Protec helmets came out. Then a lot of people went to the stupid leather hats. All those things do is hold together the pieces of your shattered head when you're already dead. I'm glad to see people wearing hard hats again. I'm still comfy with an open faced helmet and wear a Mindwarp myself. But I took a good bite out of my tongue last year carrying a base formation out the door when I caught somebody's knee on the chin. So if you want to get serious about team 4 way, you might want to consider a full face over getting kicked in the face. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Actually, that's not true. The French were the first to really 'publicize' that they were doing stable delays, but other people were doing some in the 20's and 30's, long before Leo Valentin.... I have a copy of an article from the Feb 1934 issue of Popular Mechanics called 'Secrets of the Silk Sailors' by Floyd Smith (of McCook Field fame) which describes stable fall, rolls, turns, loops, even dives and actually gives remarkably accurate fall rates for the different positions. Wow, we live and learn. I'd always thought it was Leo Valentin until I read this. I think the oldest descriptions of parachutes in existence are from Marco Polo's descriptions of those Chinese acrobats jumping from high towers with parasols. Then there was Da Vinci. By now, both his parachute and his hang glider have been reconstructed and guess what - they both work beautifully ! Makes you wonder what the old fart did with his weekends.... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Good point about the wages, if you compare a jump ticket to hourly earnings. My FJC in '74 was only $35, but that was due to a sizeable discount for a large group - basic price was $50, with discounts down to $45, $40, and $35 for groups of 5, 10, and 15+. Second jump was $15, practice pulls were $11. First freefall was $8, plus $5 to the keg fund. Cessna loads to 7500 were $5, once we got the Beaver we'd sometimes go to $10,500 for $7. First big plane I was ever on was a DC-3 at Z-Hills, they charged $8 to 12,500 and were offering a $10 special for 15,000. At Perris in 1980 there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when 12,500 went to $10. Back then though I was making probably $8 - 9 an hr at a GOOD union job. For most of my life a good skydive has always cost me a little over an hour of toiling in the mines. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I've never jumped with an audible, but am thinking of getting a Pro-Dytter this year, especially if I want to try freefly. Freefly would be all new to me, has faster fall speeds and would require more of my attention as I learn it. I've known a couple people who've pulled low waiting for their beeper to beep. One of them even had a two out because his Cypres fired as his main was opening. Same thing can happen with a visible altimeter though. Another friend once waited and waited on an altimeter with a stuck needle, ignoring the ground, which was getting HUGE. She opened below a grand and was grounded for 30 days (this was in the old days, before the Cypres came along). They're ALL backups, your eyes and your brain are the best altimeters you'll ever have. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Anybody who can afford to own multiple rigs should be able to own multiple AADs for them. One of the attractions of the Cypres & Vigil is that they're setup inside the rig, so nothing's showing or exposed. Why take a step back to the way things used to be ? And if you keep moving parts around, the things are likelier to fail. We just had a fatality this year at Perris with a perfectly functional Cypres because the user didn't understand how to properly turn the thing on, and she wasn't even switching parts from rig to rig. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

You've already gone back up and jumped again, so you've "proved" you can get "back in the saddle". But if you're wiggin' out and pulling at 9 grand, which is really not cool for other people in the air, maybe you need to take a break. Taking a break is PERFECTLY OK. It doesn't mean you're quitting. There really is a whole world out there full of other things to do. Take a class, learn how to make pottery, go to the beach, or volunteer some time with Little League or something. It can broaden your horizons. Chances are after a month or so you'll start to miss jumping and want to get back out there. Right now you sound like you're trying too hard and not enjoying it. And that's a drag. So give it a rest and it will be there when you're ready. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Check the article in Parachutist last month about the new Skydivers Over Sixty record, I think it was a 35 way. You can die a grisly death driving your car too, but if you're a careful driver the odds are much more in your favor. Same with jumping, though I'm not going to get into whether it's safer than driving (it ain't). But out here in So. Cal we have hundreds of jumpers with thousands of jumps apiece who keep right on jumping, with hardly a malfunction among them, I mean with some of these people a cutaway is real news, because they haven't had one in a couple thousand jumps, or sometimes ever. I quit jumping in 1980 because I felt like all I had to do was keep jumping and it would get me. But I was younger, and frankly something of an asshole safetywise in those days. Too many cutaways, etc. Nowadays, older and alledgedly wiser, I'm doing just fine the second time around, keeping my act clean, mostly, and having more fun than ever. Bottom line is it's a deeply personal choice. You gotta do what you gotta do. Nobody should jump at all unless they love it and they want to. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Go to any of these things you can, because you'll have the memories for the rest of your life. I went to an Easter Boogie at Z-Hills back in 1977 and it was one of the wildest weeks of my life. And some of the memories, at least the parts I CAN remember (I think we made a lot of jumps, and uh, other stuff happened at night...). Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Now THERE'S a million dollar question I've been wondering about. It's going to take more than another 3 in. of asphalt to handle this baby. What exactly is going to have to be done, how long will it take, and what kind of delays might we have to expect ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I've been a Dem most of my life and Howard Dean makes my skin crawl, the guy is just plain embarrassing. I think he'll be remembered as the low point of the party's fortunes. A good comparison might be with Michael Foote, the ultra leftist leader of Britain's Labour Party in the eighties. Foote led Labour to its lowest showings in the polls, being crushed by Maggie Thatcher and the Tories. Moderate Labourites even bolted the party and formed the Social Democrats (who are now in a formal alliance withh the old Liberal Party). But out of the wreckage and almost unnoticed, a young guy named Tony Blair managed to win a seat in Commons during the Foote regime and of course we all know now that Blair rebuilt Labour into what they are today. I just hope there's a Tony Blair type (maybe Barak Obama ?) in the Dems today who will turn out the morons who are running my party into the ground. It won't go on forever, we'll be back. Howard Dean will be a merely embarrassing stain from the past and a reminder that we finally had to get real about life. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Hey congratulations on your A ! Looked up your profile and you've got a nice rig too. Come on out to So. Cal. sometime and do Perris & Elsinore. Especially keep Chicks Rock at Elsinore in mind, it's always the later part of October and is the kind of boogie you'd love. Anyway, lots of friendly people at either DZ to jump with and plenty of local dot.commies who'd be glad to meet you and make some loads with you. You're in for a good year kid. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I got off student status after 35 or 37 jumps back in 1975. Think it was August, so that was over about 16 months. In those days nobody was hung up over licenses, so once you were off you could do just about anything the DZO would allow. I skipped by the A and B licenses and got my C in 1977. Didn't get my D until 1980, when the National Park Service anounced they would issue permits for El Capitan, but only to D license holders. There was a huge flood of D applications at USPA. I was lucky to get mine quickly and get one of the permits. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I've been married for 24 years to the same woman, it's the only marriage for each of us. Even the sex is still great, if not as often as when we were young and virile. I don't know if it's "the norm", but with the right person it's great. Can't say I'm not ever tempted either, but I can't imagine constructing a relationship with anyone else, so I'm faithful too. It's NOT like being on a chain either, it's very rewarding to have something as good as this. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Do it, you'll be amazed how it feels. You ever shave off a moustache and notice how soft your lip feels ? Your whole head feels that way. It gets habit forming though, by about the third day you'll want to do it again. Hair is a game, if you got it, play with it. Just remember to wear a hat out in the sun. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

An implant or an earring thingie that sends an experience direct to the brain, as if you're having it right then & there. Then you buy a little player with downloaded experiences that you can carry in your pocket. Wearing a condom under your clothes would be recommended for the guys, driving or operating heavy machinery would NOT be recommended for anyone! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Looks like a happy couple to me....was this on a European vacation ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Hey Krisanne, I may not have been on #100, but it was a real pleasure helping with some of those "high nineties" to get you there. You were a real hit with the locals and we'd love to have you come back down anytime. Thanks especially for your 101st, when we got to do the Jungle Gym dive with Betsy, I'm still completely blown away with that. Sure was some great weekend ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I think some of the negative and cynical remarks made about Perris and the Conatsers in this thread are disgusting. There are some of us who can remember when Perris was mostly a lot of flat earth, with a rickety manifest shed that might fall over if somebody leaned up against it (and for all I know, maybe it did). The Conatsers have done an amazing job, year after year of building that dropzone up into one of the finest jump facilities in the world. Step by step they put in the pool and bath house, the main building, brought in DC-3s, built and rebuilt the Bombshelter, built and rebuilt bunkhouses, the IHOP, converted the fleet over to turbos, built the school and team rooms, and the wind tunnel. Am I forgetting anything ? Probably, they've done so much I can't really remember it all. So I'm not at all surprised they're going for it with the jet. Will it succeed ? I'm hoping so, if anyone can make it work it would be Perris Valley and the Conatsers. It's easy to take a cheap shot at somebody else's success. Yeah, Perris is successful and we're fortunate to have one of the world's great dropzones right in our back yard. It's easy to find fault with a large successful operation, and there's always some baggage that goes with being a big operation. All I know is I have a great time when I jump at Perris and anybody who thinks they can do a better job is welcome to open their own place and see just how tough it is. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Eighteen years old, April 27, 1974. Had to wait 'til I was eighteen, as my parents wouldn't give me their permission to jump any younger. My birthday's in November and not to many people jump in upstate NY over the winter (though once I got started, it didn't bother me). Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Bless you Kallend ! Never saw Cream, or Jimi, or The Doors, but I did see Janis when I was 13 years old. $4.50 for a 3rd row seat ! Shredded my 8th grade mind beyond repair. By 1970 I'd also seen the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. The Dead were still in their twenties, played in a small college basketball gym and dosed the audience with jugs of electric apple cider. Then they played 'til 3:30 in the morning. I was just 15 and was so totally grounded for the rest of the year (Thanksgiving 'til Xmas). Also saw Cab Calloway, just months before he died. He was recovering from a broken hip and had to stay seated on a barstool while he led his band. But he was still swingin' and dancin' on that barstool and the whole theater was roaring the choruses of "Minnie the Moocher". Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !