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Congratulations Chris & Wendy! May you have many happy years together. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I don't know if I would call what Mr. Kerry did as honorable either. He is an admitted war criminal, and then he stabbed his fellow Vets in the back By preaching to congress on all the illegal things the "Soldiers" were doing. I have known Vietnam Vets who have told me they cut off heads and ears for trophies. Another told me they posed a dead VC they'd killed in a "spiderhole" with a lit cigarette in his mouth, giving the "peace sign" in the middle of a group photo (which was confiscated by the military command. He also said they made a game of stomping on a dead man's hands to see how far the fingernails would fly, as they apparently eject when you do that. Once during the seventies, at an upstate NY dropzone, a career Army officer and a skydiver showed me something from his wallet that looked like a dried up sheepskin condom. He asked me if I could guess what it was & of course I had no idea. He told me with a chuckle that it was "a VC's asshole" that he'd cut out of a dead enemy. I do believe these things happened. Not as a matter of policy, not because Americans were barbarians. But because these are the things that 19 year old boys do to blow off steam when they're scared shitless. It's what war does to people, even to Americans. I don't believe Kerry has dishonored his fellow veterans, only told us some of the things that go on that we'd rather not hear or think about when we send our kids off to war. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Oh, this was in China.... For a moment there I thought you were telling us about something that happened in Texas. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

North was convicted May 4, 1989 of three charges: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and destruction of documents. Ollie was also carted off to the Psych Ward when police found him wandering around, naked, pointing a .45 at his own head and shouting "I'm no good!". A minor aberration he neglected to mention during his routine background check for his White House job in the Reagan administration. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

If I'm not mistaken, Jo Weber's husband, who died of cancer, showed her a place in Washington state where the FBI now believes Cooper would've landed - dead or alive. It turns out they were looking in the wrong place for many years because the original investigation had no pilots among the FBI team, so there were some basic misunderstandings about the course of the plane through the air, compared with what the "whuffo" agents estimated. And the place Weber's husband pointed out to her was NOT the area that the FBI suspected at the time. It WAS however very very close to the location where the young boy discovered some of the cash from the hijacking, which has been traced beyond any shadow of a doubt by the serial numbers on the bills. Trouble is, he showed this place to his wife a year or two before the kid found the money. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I remember the Strato Flyers too. "Leg Breakers" I called them, on account of what they did to a lot of good skydivers. They were the beginning of people wondering WTF Para Flite was up to, after all the Strato Star and Strato Cloud had been such great canopies. The Strato Star really surprised a lot of people with its other capabilities. It was designed as a "smaller/lighter" canopy for relative workers by virtue of being a 180 ft 5 cell design, which the Flyer took to an extreme with its too small (for most people) 160 ft size. Eventually the Flyer was accepted as a neat canopy for little guys and girls. But it was the Strato Star that first dead centered out the Accuracy competition at the Nationals in 1975, and it wasn't just one Star that did it. It was TWO GUYS with Stars who DC'ed out after 10 rounds of competition and went into extra "sudden death" rounds until a winner emerged. Then there was a year or two that the Strato Cloud ruled the Accuracy competition before the 252 Parafoil took over. And the bottom four canopies of the world's first 8 Stack were all Strato Stars. The top four were Strato Clouds. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Another good reason for gear checks before boarding and before exit. We used to routinely do gear checks before jump run. And once, we actually did catch a camera jumper with no rig. We asked him where his rig was and he said, "What do you mean where's my....oh holy shit !" He took the plane back down. This really happened, in So. Cal, back in '79. I completely believe the guy in NC would've bounced, obviously nobody gave him a gear check. So if you don't trust a stranger to "fuck with your gear" in the plane, then trust one friend who you're jumping with. Check each other's gear, just the two of you. Show each other how to open and close the flaps on your rigs. Do it. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Too many fatalities and close calls were some of the reasons I left the sport 24 years ago. Those were people who died from low pulls, no pulls, pulling their reserves without a cutaway, or one friend who did everything right but died anyway because of a faulty reserve deployment system (an old round reserve by a company no longer in the business, so no need for anyone nowadays to be concerned). I finally got the feeling that the sport might be stalking me and all I had to do for my number to come up was just keep on jumping. The sport I cam back to last year after my Rip Van Winkle absence has become much safer - and much more dangerous at the same time. Very few people fall out of the sky and go splat anymore, thanks mostly to RSL's, reliable AAD's, and square reserves that open really fast. Getting something to open just isn't the big problem anymore, it's what we do with a perfectly good parachute after it's opened. When somebody fell out of the sky and went splat, that was it, they were dead, end of story. Nowadays we have these agonizing rituals of calling 911, waiting for the medevac chopper, watching the chopper fly away with our friend, and an exhausted core of devoted friends and family keeping a vigil around the ICU before death comes some days later. This just happened again here in So. Cal. this week, for the second time this summer. I didn't really know either of the two victims and both were doing something "I would never do" (God willing). And between them is another friend who did the same kind of thing, but by some miracle survived without a single broken bone. All at the same dropzone. At the immediate level, I think there's going to have to be more FORMAL canopy instruction, on a graded pass/fail basis included in license requirements. It's depressing that as we've mostly solved the old "chute failed to open" problem, we now have a "chute opened just fine, but..." problem that's maintaining the old fatality rates. That's just not acceptable. Cranking it into the ground because you don't unnderstand what you're doing is not acceptable. Taking out Roger Nelson - or anyone else - because you weren't looking where you were going is grossly unacceptable. To end on the bright side though, USPA said in the August issue of Parachutist that there have only been 8 fatalities in the US this year, add one more for this week's death in California and nine by mid-August still is amazingly good. So let's find hope where we can and let's all ask ourselves if we can't each clean up our acts in one or two identifiable ways. Blue skies & fuck the black death stuff. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I've had dreams where I've thrown out my pilot chute only to have the thing fall DOWN. I've also had dreams of watching an entire 16 way go in without pulling. I think it's a way we have of relieving the tension in our unconscious mind. We know what we're doing is dangerous, no matter how safe we try to be. Then every now and then there's a bad incident, sometime's with a friend. So our mind tries to let it come out when we're sleeping, because we can't always hold it in. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Sounds like the Catholic Church I grew up with. It's all about fear and control. post edited per comments below Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

"Alright so I farted on a couple Otter loads, for this I'm in hell for all eternity ??" Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Went to the doctor's Surgery removed the pin Soon I'll be jumping! Feels terrific Just to flex the foot again Doesn't even hurt Got hurt last April Shoulda done a PLF Learned my lesson Too fast in no wind ? Put your damn feet together! Or else it's crutches... What more can I say ? It only takes a moment To fuck yourself up (So don't do it!) I know there's an extra line in there, but excuuuuuuse me, if it helps one person not get hurt. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Just don't bite our heads off when you're done, the way a praying mantis mama would. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

And Melanie, you really put your effort into those Excel Camps, I was having a great time and actually getting somewhere with them before my little "boo-boo" this spring (but the ankle pin comes out this week, so I'm on the mend). In the old days we'd learn our skills a little at a time, mostly by jumping a lot and living through some hairy situations. After returning to the sport from an absence of over twenty years, I see that so much has changed, but mostly with the learning process. We've learned how to do a lot more with our bodies in freefall and much better ways of teaching those skills more effectively. At today's prices it would be just plain stupid to go on flinging one's body out of an airplane without learning something new all the time. In the old days I was never even nearly as good as I wanted to be. Now that I'm back, I want to learn to fly with more grace and control, and if I don't become a great flier, at least a respectable one. And have fun doing it too, it's sooooo damn expensive it's just gotta be fun or else it makes no sense. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

My Cypres will be due for its 4 year over the coming winter and I intend to have it done within the +/- 3 mo. window, whichever works best. The whole reason I use an AAD makes me want to follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule. As for the 12 year life cycle, I'm hoping that Airtec is doing some serious statistical studies with the retired units to determine whether or not the 12 year life is necessary. If the retired units are still performing up to par, then moving to a 12 year maintenance would seem reasonable, based on good experience. I've noticed that the Vigil AAD is now advertising NO maintenance or mandatory retirement of their units. This may be a little premature of them to be making such a broad judgement, especially with the shielding problems they've had. But I am hopeful that the new Vigil2 will do well, as a good healthy competition between the two brands will be good for all of us in the long run. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

It's already been said, but it sounds like you had too many inexperienced people in that group, which is why things went bad in the first place. Too many large groups with too few experienced people are jumping, especially with turbo twins being so common nowadays. 25 years ago a friend of mine was killed and another friend seriously injured on a simple 6 way flail dive. Nobody ever got together on the formation and then somebody in freefall hit an opening canopy. No AAD's in those days either. Everybody blamed the guy who dumped and the DZO tried to make a big show of banning him from the DZ. But the truth was that of the six jumpers, only one of them had over 100 jumps. We told the DZO that that 6 way should've never been allowed to fly in te first place and that we had no problem jumping with the guy who dumped and got hurt. As for screaming and accusing people of "trying to kill them", that's just plain unacceptable. Screaming the loudest doesn't establish te facts as to what happened, nor who was "right" or "wrong". Just last year I opened and saw somebody flying straight at me and closing fast. I was directly in his flight path, he should have seen me. No matter, I made a fast 90 degree turn on a rear riser, popped my brakes and got the hell out of his way. On the ground I very nicely asked him if he'd seen me in his path after opening. He said he didn't. I told him that I'd seen him coming straight at me and thhat I'd had to move fast to get out of his way. And that if I'd had a line twist or some other control problem, he'd probably have hit me. But I said it nicely, probably because he's a nice guy, I like him, and he seemed to be genuinely unaware of what almost happened. Maybe you don't want to jump with the screamers anymore if your friends will still jump with you. But ALWAYS fly super defensively, because you might be the only person in the sky looking out for anyone at all. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I feel for you, I'm also recovering from a broken ankle landing. Hopefully I'll be back in the air in just a month or two, but I too am trading up a size on my main. I was jumping a 190 Spectre, which is an excellent canopy, but I was loading it at 1.29 and came thundering in like a freight train on a hot day in no wind and approx 1400 ft field elevation. Now the interesting thing is all the CRAP I'm getting from so many of my so called friends, who are insisting that I'd be mistaken to trade up. They say things like, "my 190 didn't do this to me, I did this to me". Which is technically correct, I could've avoided the whole ugly result by deciding to put my feet and knees together and doing a slide or PLF and I probably would've got up and walked away laughing about it. But the truth is, I'd been having a tougher time landing the 190 than I really cared to admit and was not nearly as comfortable or making nearly as many standups as I'd been routinely making under 210's. (Note: Please don't be fooled by my 630 jumps - 566 of them took place in 1974 - '80, since my return after 22 years, I have only 64 current skydives). Nevertheless, I have one friend who thinks I'd do better with a 170 (at a 1.44 WL) and another who thinks even a 170 is still "too large". I sometimes wonder why these knuckleheads even wear a rig at all, they're obviously so hot they shouldn't even need one. Fast parachutes are fun, but let's not lose sight of thhe basic concept here - a parachute's purpose is to SLOW DOWN your descent enough to afford you a safe landing. I think you & I and everyone else would agree that a 1.35 WL is too much in your case. I did that math backwards and am guessing that you'd load a 1.19 (better) and a 210 at 1.08 (better still). Most canopy gurus consider WL od 1.0 - 1.2 to be a reasonably safe wingload for intermediate jumpers who get out and jump 100 or so times a year. In your case, you'd probably feel better with a 210, or even a 230. And if anybody gives you a hard time about it, tell 'em to shove it - hell, you're still jumping out of an airplane aren't you ? Sorry to hear how badly you were injured and I just hope you can get back in the air and enjoy it again. Blue skies. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Nobody has mentioned that in a very similar case, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that while the City Of Portland and Multnomah County had no such authority to sanction same sex marriages, the marriages performed were still valid. I believe Narcimund, one of our dot.com posters wrote a piece about his marriage in Portland and that it was still legally intact after the Oregon decision. The point being that the Oregon decision is case law, which the California court apparently chose to disregard, disregarding the effect their decision would have on the 4000 couples (that's 8000 citizens) involved. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I didn't stop for healing...I kept going with bandages and all..3 more, same day..I was a champ (so they said) I now have new visual cues and a new strategy. Scraped knees and a bruised ego is nothing compared to what it could've been. Didn't anybody offer to kiss the boo-boo ? Looks like it mighta helped. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Fine, be that way. More tickets for those who want to go. Who WILL you see anyway ? Sammy, Dino, Frank, and Andy are all dead, and uh, so is Lawrence Welk. If you boycott every artist or musician because of their politics, substance abuse, or sexual indiscretions, you will live a life without art. Or music. What an empty life that would be. But you do what you want, you will anyway. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

It's sickening is what it is. John Kerry seems to have lost sight of the fact that his supporters are desperately looking for a new President, someone different thhan George Bush. If he had the 'nads to stand up and say "hell, no I wouldn't", he might actually get some enthusiasm out here. I mean hell, the guy launched his political career with the VVAW demonstrations against the Vietnam War (no arguments please, just a fact...). But now he's smooching up to some imaginary "swing vote" that won't vote for him anyway. Personally I was pissed as hell with Kerry for voting for Bush's war. But when it became clear that Kerry was sweeping the primaries and being perceived as "electable", I decided that I'd just have to let go of it and support the jerk. And now this. I'm still going to vote for Kerry. I have to. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'd vote for Michael Jackson before I'd vote for Bush. But Bush is gonna win and I'm disgusted. That is all... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

You agreed to be her Maid of Honor. She may be a whiny little twerp, but you made the commitment. Sometimes life demands that we do more than just the things we want. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I was 18 when I started in 1974, but like you was 47 when I re-started last year after a 22 year break. I think God was telling you He likes you and isn't going to let anything happen to you IF you're careful. Good job & congrats by the way. Now you know what the handles are for and that it isn't such an almighty big deal after all (well, sorta...). Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

No. She's just trashy in general. Gee, you say that like it was a bad thing... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Bless you PK, you da man ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !