champu

I just make sure if I'm going to use a pullup cord to secure my handle while transporting my rig, that I use one of some horrendously obnoxious color... looking at quade's "choke the whole thing with your chest-strap" method I might consider that, although if you do that you can't carry the rig over your shoulder

I'm going to be the next president of my school's skydiving club, and aside from maybe half a dozen of us or so that are jump regularly and hang out all the time, we look to promote it to whuffos at our school. The main things we do are answer questions as best we can, make information available, help provide transportation to the dropzone, and provide encouragement for those who want to go through the whole student progression. Really we are looking for people who know skydiving is out there, have a feeling the want to try it and/or take it up as a hobby, but don't have any of the details. In a college town it's not hard to find people who do actually want to try skydiving, but you can take three guesses as to the first and most popular question we get...

Sprint in south florida is like beating your head against a concrete wall only without the immediate returns... Verizon, Nextel, and T-Mobile work really well down here. I'd switch, but I'll be home in illinois shortly where Sprint tends to have very good coverage. The Nextel (iDen) push to talk feature is actually a lot cooler than it may sound at first, particularly if you gather up groups of friends a lot. "beep, bla-doop" but the service might still be too expensive for the casual user.

My friend and I are looking to ramp up our university's skydiving club and really provide encouragement to those with interest to follow through all the way and become skydivers. As practice I brought a co-intern out to make his first tandom sunday and gave him the contact info for a few dropzones near his home where he really wants to start AFF. Next weekend I'm bringing his roommate out who had expressed interest in it, and now he and I are teaming up on him So now I'm feeling all cool and groovy I get an e-mail from my friend back at school telling me she brought out 6 tandoms with her this last weekend, DOH! I guess I'll leave the recruiting up to her, I can just be eye candy.

I bought a used mirage g3 and it has what I'm guessing is mirage's optional hookknife on the left legstrap. it's a relatively small metal one, but it looks pretty rugged. as with most new timers my thoughts are on the lines of "I think if worse comes to worse and I needed it I could probably figure out that I did, but the fact that no one ever really talked much about it to me as a student kinda bothers me." The only time any of my instructors ever mentioned a hookknife was during my first jump course. if we did something really screwy on our exit and got wrapped up in our static line he said he would cut us loose and to go for the reserve.

maybe it's more of a three strikes system

skydive miami is located in homestead, FL which is actually aways from the ocean so I doubt sand would be too much of a factor. salt air and overall humidity could have definetely played a role. Does anyone know of any ill efects on gear of a dropzone being too close to a giant swamp?

I will now pointllessly offer that I would give you a ride from c/u but I can't cause I'm "stuck" in south florida through the 9th

I'm not a lawyer/lawmaker so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. This is my basic understanding of it... As it stands right now, copyright violation is a civil matter. Meaning if someone has something copyrighted, and you copy it, they can sue you for damages. It's more of a breach of contract than it is crime/theft or any other scary words the RIAA likes to throw around. Their constant comparisons to shoplifting are laughable. What this means is that if you download a song from someone, you didn't steal it, you just copied it. This is a copyright violation by the person who had the music to begin with as it says clearly on the cd not to distribute it. While the RIAA could probably ask the courts to make the downloader remove the song from their computer, that's prolly as far as it would go. The real beef is with the person who made the song available, and these are the people that the RIAA is going after now. My advice is to try and stay low-profile. Grab a smaller program like winmx or soulseek instead of the big names like kazaa or whatnot. And for jebus sake don't leave your entire mp3 collection of like 10 jillion songs in your shared folder.

no no no, it's all in the celery... ...the celery I tell you.

I like your red and pink handles lookin' good. I need to start attempting to freefly soon.

what's the difference between a truckload of babies and a truckload of bowling balls? you can't unload the bowling balls with a pitchfork.

mmm...miami/southbeach

boooooooo

it's funny being in florida where people shiver at altitude if they are anywhere near the door. I jumped once up north in february, even with layers and two pairs of gloves I was numb and bordering on nauseous when I got back to the ground, needless to say I only did one jump that day at altitude here the air is really nice =)

only been jumping for a little while, but I learned how to side-pack and pro-pack (only actually use pro-pack of course) and I don't mind doing it. I'm still working out the finer points of the folding and bagging step but I manage, and openings have been really good so far *knock on wood* when I was first learning to pack it was on a student rig with a ripcord/spring-loaded pilot chute, man was that a pain in the ass... if I didn't have a throw-out I'd prolly just have a packer do it.

30:0 yay!

ahh! craziness... I live in plantation as well, I started skydiving back in illinois, and so I was in the coached phase of training when I came down here. Skydive Palm Beach is pretty nice, I've gone there I think every Sunday since I've been down here. the people there are really cool (the people most places are cool) Dave, George, and Akos are the main instructors and are cool. Sam's funny once you meet him, he was the guy I initially talked to on the phone as well. Clewiston I was at once looking at gear but didn't jump cause it was a bit windy for my tastes, they run a pretty tight little operation there. Sebastian is prolly the closest "big-ass" skydiving facility to where we are, but it's really really far away for a day trip. whereas pbx is less than an hour from here. Skydive Miami (homestead) I've not been to but have heard very mixed opinions about ranging from "excellent student place", to "don't bother with less than a couple hundred jumps" so I really don't know what to think. Wherever you decide to go, decide to go! :P

any of the museums are pretty cool if you haven't been there (I've seen them all a million times though) there's the art museum, natural history, science and industry, aquarium, planetarium. They are pretty much all located near the lakefront (michigan ave and east of there) The beach or Navy pier is fun but it's probably going to be somewhat crowded in the summer, ymmv. Definately take the time to get some good food. I'd check out Ed Debevic's, if you get a particularly funny server there it can get hysterical. and pretty much anywhere you haven't heard of before that serves pizza is a good bet.

I saw 28 days later and T3, thought the later was better. some of the best car chases I've ever seen in T3. 28 days later was pretty good for a zombie movie, it had a lot of great scenes in it that made you think but at other times I just groaned and rolled my eyes a lot Ira: I saw your avatar and laughed cause I remember your static-line photo plastered all over Archway (it's even at the top of their website) Were you involved in that all girl 9-way last sunday?

I used an Alti-III as a student, and now I recently picked up a silver Alti-III galaxy. The first thing you'll notice is the bigger numbers on the wider dial looking back at you. I like the new look, Even easier to read than the already good alti-III, and still has the same familar caution/warning arc. While it's nice that they decided to make the lens user-replacable, the lens is no longer recessed below the lip on the metal housing. Seems to me this would make it easier to scratch up the face while manuvering around inside the plane.

for more info on the skyhook if you're curious you can look here. I know I hadn't heard of it and was curious. it looks like it has the bonus "never lose your free-bag" feature as well (provided you don't also lose your main of course)

under canopy I usually just glance at the alti a few times while playing around to see when I'm at 1000ft, the rest I'd rather just get a feel for visually. And while I'm not always johnny on the spot with my landings, I feel like I've been learning a lot more this way.