KolinskyDC

About 12 years ago, I was being an idiot and driving in the breakdown lane on a highway because I did not want to sit in traffic, when I finally tried to get back into the lane, this guy would not let me. I got annoyed and sped up, then cut him off. Well he then preceded to try to get up beside me, but I would keep switching lanes to get away from him. Well, when he finally got up next to me, I glanced over to see what gesture he was making, but instead saw him holding his badge up at me. Of course, all the cars on the highway and I cut off an undercover cop. So anyway, I pull over and he is pretty annoyed with me. He comes back with my ticket, $625.00 (going 50 or 55 in a 0 mile per hour zone, plus 3 other charges), the first time I ever cried over a ticket, but of course no sympathy from him, couldn't really blame him though. Needless to say, have never driven in the breakdown lane again Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Some of my list.... 1 Be the best mother I can to my son 2 Open a chiropractic office with most of my patients being pregnant women and kids 3 Fall in love, get married and have more children 4 Become a pilot and own my own plane 5 Become the first female president of my chiropractic college 6 Become a professional speaker/lecturer on chiropractic 7 Own horses 8 Swim with dolphins 9 Own a boat 10 Own a Porsche 11 Write a book 12 Go to Australia and scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef 13 Skydive in all 50 states (stole that one but since I have already crossed sydiving off my list, this was a good substitute) 14 Own a beautiful home There are many many more but that's what I could think off the top of my head Melissa P.S. To RkyMtnHigh, thanks for reminding me, started getting caught up in the unimportant shit in my life and you reminded me of the things that matter "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Alcohol? Well I should probably stop drinking then! I have been pretty drunk more than a few times in my life, but never had the urge to jump out of a plane without a rig on. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

I agree completely. Over the last 9 months since I began skydiving I have noticed that when I start dating someone, it just does not end up working for the simple fact that when I am not working or spending time with my son, I am at the DZ, and just did not have time to invest in a relationship. I literally found myself on a couple of dates after spending the whole weekend at the DZ jumping and drinking, then driving an hour and a half home on Sunday and getting out on a date and start nodding off while sitting at a restaurant That made my date feel wonderful. I have not dated a skydiver yet, but I think that is probably inevitable. I am curious how do skydivers make relationships work with non-skydivers? Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

The thread on quitting things you love for skydiving made me wonder. If you met someone who was the person of your dreams, but the fact that they would not be with you if you continued to skydive, which would you choose. Or if the person you are with right now, spouse or significant other, gave you and ultimatum, which would you choose. This is hypothetical, so do not give me the answer that they would never make me choose, just pretend they did. If this had been done before, sorry, but just play along anyway. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

You had to bring it up, now I have been sitting at my computer trying to do it for about 20 minutes. I have tried this in the past and have never been able to do it. Amazing how something so stupid can frustrate the hell out of a person. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Yes, I have. My wife and I are having a baby next month. If it is a boy, I'll see another one performed. I do not understand why anyone would do this, why not wait until he is old enough to decide if he doesn't want that piece of his body. Do you really think that a new baby comes into this world needing part of him removed? Does this make any sense to anyone?? One of the first experiences your child will have is part of his body being cut off and do not think that just because he is a newborn, it will not have an effect on him. Ironic, coming from a medical professional. And my children get their immunizations too. I am not a medical professional, nor do I want to be. I am a chiropractor. Big difference. But since you brought it up, I know quite a few medical professionals who decided not to vaccinate their children, because they did their research and did not inject their children blindly, not knowing exactly what was being injected into them. I have researched these diseases, the vaccinations, what they contain, how they are cultivated, how the supposedly work, possible side effects etc etc. I made a very educated choice not to vaccinate my child because I trust in his body more than some mercury filled so called "immunization" to help him deal with whatever he may encounter in his environment. As am I Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Okay, that is just wrong!!! Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

I know, I am from the Northeast as well, getting a little sick of this weather myself. Had hoped to jump this weekend, but of course got up Sunday (with a terrible terrible hangover, but still wanting to jump) only to find out that the winds decided to act up. Of course there was lots of jumping on Saturday, but I decided to go out with friends and abuse myself, now I wished I had gone to the DZ instead. But I guess it is good that I got some "quality" time in with my whuffo friends before the nice weather comes and I disappear every single weekend Oh well...next weekend. Hope you found something fun to do regardless of the weather. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

1. Whats your name? Melissa 2. How old are you? 32 3. Why did you decide to start jumping out of airplanes? Something I always wanted to do, thought I would only do it once and cross it off my "To Do" list...Boy was I wrong

Tandem Complete sensory overload. I am so glad that I did a tandem first, I was in such overload, I do not think I could have handled doing it alone, but then again I did not eat or drink anything for several hours prior to my jump....big mistake....do not do that! Whatever you decide, have a blast, and get ready to think of nothing else for at least 2 weeks after.

again...raises hand...and starts jumping up and down..."Pick me" "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

raises hand "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Have you ever seen a circumcision performed? I have and believe me the trauma they endure is not a tale and is not silly. I don't believe in immunizations either, but that is a topic for another day. Comparing the pain caused by these two different procedures is not appropriate. Go stick a needle in your arm and then go cut off a piece of your body and tell me the feeling is comparable. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Here is a good link to read about circumcision, if somebody could make it a clicky, still have not figured out how to do that. http://www.mothersagainstcirc.org/ Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

This is a subject that I am very passionate about, so please forgive me if I get a little heated. As I read through some of the responses, it was difficult because I wanted to respond to so many, so I am just going to stick with the reasons for my own decision I made with my son. I did a lot of research on this and decided to keep my son intact and am very glad that I did. The number one reason I hear from people to have their child circumcized is hygiene, my answer is this, if you can't teach your child to clean themselves then you might want to reconsider having a child. How hygenic is it to cut off a piece of their body, then put it in a diaper that they will urinate and deficate into an open wound, does not sound very hygenic to me. I have read accounts from nurses explaining how they witnessed babies convulse in front of them from the pain of this procedure, only to have the doctor performing it say "and this is not even medically necessary" I had a friend who was a nurse in the maternity ward and told me that some parents had to leave the floor due to the screams of their son undergoing this procedure. This just absolutely blew my mind, how on earth could you subject a baby that just came into this world needing only the warmth and love of their parents to this kind of pain. They come out and one of the first experiences they have is their parents who are supposed to love and protect them allow them to be tortured and mutilated. I decided to keep my son intact because that is the way he was given to me, who am I to decide for him to remove a part of his body, if he chooses to later in life, then that will be his decision. Uncircumcized penises are more sensitive. The substance beneath the foreskin is actually beneficial and helps keeps the penis clean. More and more people are deciding to leave their sons intact, therefore the old excuse of "I don't want my son to be different and be teased" just does not hold true. I believe in a parents right to do a lot of things on behalf of their children, this is one that I do not. It is a very selfish action that is unnecessary and causes much pain. Please before anyone decides to do this, research the hell out of it and I can almost guarantee you will decide to leave your precious baby boy the way he was made. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

I rarely use the term never but I will never jump without a Cypress and I know there are some that would say that a Cypress is a substitute for training, but that is not true for me. I feel that I have prepared myself very well for emergency situations and am constantly asking questions and reading everything i can about what can go wrong and how to avoid it or deal with it if it should happen. There are always going to be things that can happen even if you have done everything right, i.e getting knocked unconscious, losing altitude awareness, going into shock or "freezing up" when it comes time to deal with a certain situation, if I thought about it I could go on and on about the many possible scenarios even to an extreme of having a heart attack, stroke or seizure in freefall. I know that these are rare occurrences but I am not willing to risk it, and having a Cypress puts my mind at ease. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

I would definitely suggest keeping it in a bag, just found that out the hard way. Left mine out after I re-packed it and someone had to move it while I was not there. When they lifted it up, they grabbed one of the harness straps but on the other side only got the main and reserve risers in their hand. Pulled my reserve riser up out of it's part of the container, had to have my rigger open it up and put it back in. Waste of time and money that could have been avoided if it was in it's bag. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Yes, do that and then please look up medical malpractice while you are at it. The straw that broke my neck was a chiropractor. He did that neck torsion thing, and 2 hours later my hands were numb. 2 days later and I was having surgery. I have never been the same since! It was said that he broke my neck. I don't know for sure whether it was he or my parachute openings, but he did definitely seal the deal. Please, if you are going to make comments like this, give an actual example of someone dying from a chiropractic adjustment. As a student this type of ignorance used to infuriate me, but I quickly realized that when you are dealing with someone who is completely uneducated about chiropractic then it is usually a losing battle to try to make them understand it when they already have these unfounded predisposed ideas of what chiropractic is and what it does. If you show an x-ray to 4 different chirporactors they will give you 4 different assessments. Given to 4 different radiologists, you will get one straight answer. Most of Chiropractics is bullshit marketing ploys, and it works. People fall for it wanting to believe in them! They say, oh no... crack... oh there, perfect... and you believe them and feel better 'cause it cracked and you want to believe it's now straight! They are not real medics though! Go look it up! Most of their schooling is not in anatomy, but in marketing. Just think about it... if you have a fense that is crooked and a vine growing through the fense... the fense being yourbones, and the vine being nerves and muscles growing around them, what would happen if you suddenly jolted to fense to straighten it out? Dor sure the vine would break, as did my vine! bone spurs, which he likely either caused or exacerbated since they had not bothered me 'till that point. So just be careful! And before you or anyone goes to the Xhiropractor, be sure to look that stuff up on the internet! I am sure you will find it very informative and enlightening!*** I agree, you should always investigate, regardless of what type of health care provider you chose to go to. Chiropractic has been here for over a hundred years and has helped millions of people. I am sorry that your experience was a bad one, but you should not go making generalized statements, which most of which are untrue, because of your one experience with one chiropractor. Every single profession has undesirable people it it, I just wish that people not judge this wonderful profession by the actions of these few. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

I was down in Florida for the Lake Whales Boogie in January and loved jumping out of the Casa, just found out that Peperrel is having a Boogie in Aug and will have 2 Casas there for the weekend. Does anyone know of any other boogies in New England where they will have a Casa? Or any boogies in general? Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

I am getting ready to make this decision in a month or so myself, at least the container which I want to match the canopy, which I will order in a few months. As far as containers go, the sharpest looking I have seen was red, black and white. I think I will go with that color scheme, just not sure what the pattern will be on the canopy. Another one I think is awesome is the white canopy with a small American flag in the center of the bottom skin, but don't really care for the whole canopy being the American flag. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Oh, and one more thing. Someone moved my rig to another room in the house and managed to pull out a little of the reserve strap that has the toggle on it. So now the strap is loose and you can see a little of the yellow reserve toggle and extra brake stow. Is this something that will have to be completely re-packed, or can it just be opened enough to tuck it back in? Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Ok, so I spoke with the rigger at my DZ and he said I should ask the guy who owns the canopy (doing a gear program where the canopies are provided as you downsize) just to make sure he was ok with someone else repairing it, but he would do if when he had the time. I spoke with the canopy owner and he said that it did not sound like a serious issue and if I wanted I could get some rip-stop tape and apply it then sew around the edges. Does this sound like something I could do? I did not know they made this special tape and if they do, it sounds like they have made it relatively easy to use (at least by how this guy responded) Just looking on some input. My rigger will probably not be able to do it right away and I really want to jump this weekend, what to do??? Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

It is used, but I did not buy it. It is part of a gear program I am doing, I will be trading it in for a smaller canopy probably in a month. I did not check it over when I got it. I am doing this program at a different DZ than my home DZ. When I picked up the rig I went straight to my rigger and told him to take it apart, repack the reserve and main and inspect every inch, so I am sure it was not there when I got it, but I can't remember anything that would have caused it either Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"

Thanks for all the replies. It is a nine cell and the tear is on the top skin of the third cell from the right. It is about a third of the way from the nose to the tail and about and inch from the seam where the rib goes down from. Looking at it again, the tears are more like and inch but there is also a small tear going between the two tears, looks like an H and as I looked at it again is very close to becoming a hole, so jumping with it is definitely not an option and I will have my rigger repair it this weekend. I am glad I decided to take it home and dry it out instead of just packing it a little damp, which I was told would be fine if I was jumping again soon. Who knows what it might have turned into on my next jump No, I haven't climbed over any barbed wire fences and don't plan to. I have only 19 jumps on the canopy. Yeah I am also stumped as to where the tears came from, don't think they were there when I got the canopy and would think that if they were, they would have turned into a lot bigger tears after 19 jumps. Makes me wonder how often I should be spreading it out and going over all the fabric. Melissa "May the best of your past be the worst of your future"