tbrown

I'm very pleased with myself to say I've never watched a fucking minute of that idiotic show. The entire premise is so fucking ludicrous it even offends a skydiving retard like me. Is this what shows like "Dead Like Me" are cancelled to make room for ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Next thing you know the bastards will crucify Jesus ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Cheney should put a shotgun in his mouth and resign with his big toe. And no, it's NOT illegal to suggest the Vice President commit suicide either. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The answer is not letting Scooter Libby go, it's getting the rest of those fuckers - including Bush, after he leaves the White House - and locking their asses in prison where they belong. This entire affair has been a pre-meditated and orchestrated operation to a.) stifle and discredit an American diplomat for trying to warn the public that the administration was LYING through their teeth, b.) revealing the identity of an American intelligence officer, which is rightly a FELONY, and c.) using the entire excercise to intimidate and persecute (and prosecute) the press for their attempts to investigate and report on the whole shitty mess. I say fuck 'em all - and get a rope. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

A lot of this is motivated by sudden newfound wealth due to gambling. The fewer members, the bigger the cut each member gets. Just goes to show that Indians can be just as nasty and selfish as anybody else. It's a historic fact by the way that many of these former slaves also marched to Oklahoma on the "Trail of Tears" and suffered just as much as the full blooded Cherokees. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I own and jump a PD193R that was built in 2001. The canopy had 3 deployments on it, all by the previous owner. Two were cutaways from low speed mals, one was a Cypres fire that occured when the guy accidently opened his main too low ( a "two-out" deployment). The Master Rigger who inspected it said the canopy was in beautiful condition and I haven't worried about it since. And so far in 3 years, I haven't had to use it, but I have complete confidence that it's waiting for me when I need it. If you really think about it, most reserves go through their entire service life with fewer openings than a lot of main canopies get in a single day. That F-111 material is remarkably tough stuff, it just isn't as swoopy as Zero-P. And according to PD, it's actually better at containing its own damage in a bad situation than Zero-P, which has a tendency to blow itself all to hell. So get it inspected by a rigger and if your rigger says it's good, believe it. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Well Thijs, I used to feel the same way a lot when I was a 19 year old struggling newbie. All talk about "the great people" aside (and there really are SOME great people), there are a lot of merciless egomaniacs in this sport. On a certain level it really is a jock culture. But I guess the question I have for you is whether you only feel this way about jumping, or is this a more general feeling you have about life and the things and people you're involved with. Friendships, relationships, and so forth. I was very awkward with all of those at your age and very much a loner type. I really wanted to skydive though and stuck with it and somehow started getting the hang of it inspite of myself. And I just kept showing up and that alone earned me some kind of respect and I started making more friends at the dropzone. To this day, and I'm over fifty now, I'm still no social butterfly and fairly comfortable with being something of a loner most of the time. But skydiving more than anything else helped me crawl out of my shell and gave me more confidence with people because it was fun and I had to work at making friends with other jumpers. You're not ever going to make friends with everybody, nobody ever does. Some people in life just aren't going to like you ever and there's nothing you can do about it. But that's nothing to worry about, because the people who will like you and respect you (and even go to bed with you and love you) are out there - but YOU have to find them. Whether the path to finding those people includes skydiving or not is up to you, but the path is out there somewhere for you to find. Good luck & happy hunting. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Had to be my Cobra 10. It was my first square, so I didn't really know the difference from what and besides I only weighed about 165 lbs in those days. But the thing was constructed so poorly that it started to tear out at the ribs after only 65 jumps. Sent the fucker back to Para Flite, where it was "repaired" and got maybe another 50 jumps on it before it tore out again. What a piece of shit. and made by Para Flite no less (in those days they had the stature that PD enjoys nowadays, the difference being that PD actually deserves their reputation, where para Flite just bullshitted their way until their market abandoned them). Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Wait 'til they make the Anna Nicole model. slightly blue/grayish shade, just leave it in the friddge overnight and in the morning you'd think it's the real thing ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

SG: First, welcome to the Forums ! Second, you have good instructors and they're teaching you the right way to handle this situation. Finally, thanks for contributing, especially considering the harebraned advice we often see from people with many more jumps than you. Live & learn, stay safe and enjoy your new sport. We do. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Elsinore usually holds Safety Day seminars at the end of the day, as the weather is almost always good. But the seminars are really good too, held indoors and pizza is served. Not everybody stays for it, but a lot of people do and all the speakers cover different topics one after the other, so you don't miss anything. The discusions and Q&A that follow are really lively and thoughtful. Also during the day you can grab any Instructor from the school and practice a cutaway on the suspended harness. Which I suppose you can do anytime, but on Safety Day they make a real point of advertising it and encouraging you to hang up and chop. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Well yeah, like there isn't a "Fuck no !" option for those of us who'd like to express that feeling. Back when I was a young radical hothead, I used to think we needed a "Confederate States Parachute Association" (my name for it) to compete with USPA. It gripes me to hear people complain all the time about USPA and say they think they can insure themselves some other way. These are usually the same people who would do away with the Post Office because THEY have email.....and so forth. One interesting tidbit I encountered was during my (few) years as a life insurance agent with one of the big companies. This company would write life policies for skydivers who were USPA members "in good standing", whatever that means aside from dues paid up and not kicked out of the organization I suppose. The point being that their actuaries believed they could see a difference in the Safety and Training practices of USPA and their apparent belief that they could reasonably insure the life of a USPA skydiver and not just any outlaw Joe or Jane. I'll shut up now. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

But man, I sure thought it was cool at the time! That's because you wuz SKYDIVIN' ! And there ain't nothin' like it. I started on a rig like that too and was just as happy as you looked. Nice double shot Capewells by the way, did your reserve have a pilot chute or not ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

At least they're not stoning anyone to death. That Joe Arpaio asshole would love to give it a try, I'm sure... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

So the ass grab is safer, gets the point across and leaves you in good shape to do something about it. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

You should kill him. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

had kids and raised them to adulthood. (And taught them all how to drive a stick.) Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I'm a little curious as to where James Cameron can find "DNA evidence" to authenticate whether or not a family of bodies that has been entombed for thousands of years can be THE holy family. Please understand that I don't particularly hold to the story of the Resurrection either and I'm familiar with the arguments about Judaism, Mithraism, and early Christianity adapting from a Jewish sect to a Gentile religion. But where did Cameron get his "DNA evidence" from ? The Imperial Roman DMV perhaps ?? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Had Momma Cass shared that sandwich, they'd both still be alive today... The Momma Cass sandwich was a fabricated PR story. Sad to say, Cass died of a heroin overdose. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

This wasn't a skydiving incident, but there should be a lesson in the sad double fatality at the Denver Zoo. A panther mauled a keeper to death who shouldn't have been in the cage in the first place (strict zoo policy against humans and big cats ever occupying the same space). Then, as the panther approached the EMTs in a menacing manner, it had to be shot to death. So there's two deaths, a human being who was doing something she shouldn't have been, and a panther who was just doing what panthers do. I'm willing to bet this was not the first time this keeper had broken the rule against entering a big cat cage. I'm thinking she'd done it before and got away with it, maybe even a whole bunch of times. Sadly not this time.... There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. That's the lesson we can learn from this tragedy. Let's be safe up there people ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Gee, how do "70 to 80 jumpers" fit in there? In the seats. If you're little, or lucky enough to be in 1st class it's a breeze. For a big guy like me in tourist seating it's a bit of a bitch, but hey, it's only for 4 minutes. Most of us have flown enough commercial flights to know what a jet takeoff is like, but to get that feeling at the dropzone, with your rig on is so cool it's almost silly. It can't be only 27 ft long either, maybe more like 127 ft ? Gotta be a typo. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Well, that's the price for our having become an affluent "pay a packer" sport. I do my own packing, but I'm not a rigger and I don't really want to devote the time or energy to becoming one. Nor should I have to. But I do keep up with things like checking my slider grommets, container flap grommets, replacing closing loops, checking my soft links and working any twists out of my brakelines on my last packjob of the day. Parachutist has run a number of good articles about the things jumpers should be self inspecting their rigs for. It would make good sense to include a gear inspection requirement for a license, perhaps even for the A license, as part of the packing course. And it should definitely include assembling a 3 Ring and a RSL. For that matter, have the jumper assemble and line check a completely detached canopy to their system and then pack and jump it. Being a rigger requires a lot more knowledge and training, but being basically gear competent is realistic, doable, and necessary. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Annette Haven and Hypatia Lee. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The Band's final show at Winterland in San Francisco, 1976. Immortalized by Martin Scorcese in the film "The Last Waltz". The rest is about a gazillion Grateful Dead shows I went to and I've got spiffy bootlegs of most of those. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I'll second that, not only guitar, but banjo picken and steel peddle too. Amen to that Brother. First time I ever saw ole Jer was in 1970. He wasn't even slinging his electric guitar, not for another hour or so anyways. He was seated at his "Mr. Benson" pedal steel with The New Riders of the Purple Sage, before the Dead even came on. In the old days it wasn't enough for him to just play with the headline band, he had to play with them all and he could play in ANY style. God how I loved that guy ! Year after year I went to see him, whether I needed to or not. He played for each and every person in the hall, one-on-one. People still think he was just a wierdo, but he played thoroughly American folk, jazz, blues, and country. I miss him so much.... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !