NickDG

>>Didn't the Japanese build a shorter version of that? I thought I had seen it a magazine. Maybe not.

Jumpers have discussed this before. The closest to the idea I've seen was a plan by some engineers to drill a small tunnel straight down 50,000 feet and drop capsules in which automated micro-gravity experiments could be carried out. Then a company began toying with the idea of scaling it up and selling anti-gravity rides to the public. I remember it because I wrote about it in BASE magazine in 1989 . . . NickD

http://www.pibmug.com/files/map_test.swf NickD

I thought it would be obvious, but I guess its not. These charts (the skulls one I did in about 1992) are snapshots of what we thought at the time. All knowledge is fluid . . . NickD

"Extreme" is a lot of different things . . . Once on a BASE road trip we found ourselves in some berg and the weather was pretty bad so for a laugh we went bowling. We were enticed by a sign outside that read, "Tonight, Extreme Bowling!" Well it was a bunch of spiked and pierced lane warriors, who hurled trash talk at each other while throwing wicked hooks. The thing quickly degenerated into throwing drinks and when the balls started flying we split. The owner of the alley admitted the next day he was desperate for business and was willing to try anything. "Nobody bowls anymore," he said sadly. I see this same desperation when Madison Avenue uses the word "extreme" to sell sugary drinks to suckers. I first heard the term "extreme" in its current form about 25 years ago and it was in relation to something called Land Luge. This is what it sounds like with the sleds having wheels instead of rails, and the hills not covered by ice but highways that were paved. And the extreme part is these were public roads and not closed off to traffic. So extreme, at first, seemed to mean taking an existing or traditional sport and turning it on its ear. So, like the dopes we were at the time, we went along with calling BASE jumping an extreme form of skydiving because it made sense at the time. It was also our way to poke back at those skydivers who delighted in calling us mental cases because they got so indignant when anyone suggested they were being dethroned from the top of the danger heap. We were wrong of course, and later we realized BASE was a separate sport altogether with its own rules of survival that had little to do with skydiving. We learned you don't BASE jump at the drop zone and you don't skydive at the Flat Iron Building. Those who didn’t learn that lesson paid the price sooner or later. The true thing about "extreme" is nothing stays so forever. Skydiving was extreme in the 50's and early 60s. But, now anyone that's not dead (or I suppose even if you are) can be a passenger on a tandem jump. And any reasonably experienced skydiver with a bit of training and the right gear can go huck a BASE jump from the Potato Bridge. Extreme is coloring outside the lines, but more so doing it before everyone else is doing it because that's when it's truly dangerous. You'll realize that the first time you see bowling balls flying through the air . . . NickD

Wow, I haven't see that for a while . . . NickD

>>Worldwide skydiving population

No . . . And good on you for asking first. NickD

Bridge Day could use a dozen of these babies . . . (The ride up in the bus, or in the back of some local's pick-up has always been, the scariest part of that jump.) http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/ptech/02/14/wall.climb.invention.ap/index.html NickD

One only needs look at the myriad of laws passed in the U.S. that are stacked on top of pre-existing ones that cover a particular offence. BASE jumping from a private object is already, and always has been, trespassing, plus whatever public endangerment, nuisance, or breech of the peace charges that may be added on. The way it is now the initial punishment fits the seriousness of the crime and getting caught again, and again, means the punishment escalates accordingly. If you look back in BASE history you'll see the people who had several arrests and convictions like John, Felix, and others, were facing some big consequences. And the thing they all had in common was being pigs at the BASE trough. Unlike many here on this board I can recall when almost any first offense involving BASE jumping got you a big laugh in court. Judges and prosecutors had no real knowledge of the sport so they didn’t see it as much of a problem. My hometown of San Diego was like that until just fairly recently. From the early 1980s onward there were only two cases of jumpers actually being charged and they were timed pretty far apart. BASE just wasn't on anybodies radar screen and the two or three times I've been caught red handed by the police I was let go. One time a cop actually helped me hide out until the heat was off. Well, those days are over as everyone knows what BASE is nowadays. And if Sabre210 is irked by the punk attitudes displayed by the Philly ground crew so will any cops, judges, and prosecutors who see it. Oh, and Sabre210, I explained the dynamic between "now" and "then" concerning early BASE films, but I guess you didn't, or don't want to, get it. And as for Dwain, well, he's dead so I’ll keep my opinion to myself. I didn’t mention Jeb in my original post but I will now, and in a limited way. I consider Jeb a friend and I think I'll get away with it. Jeb is now in the same boat as those before him. If this Wednesday night he's sitting home with nothing to do and decides he feels like going downtown to LA and making a jump he must now stop and consider the legal consequences if by some chance he's caught. Not only would it make national headlines again, they would probably throw the book at him. Now it wouldn’t matter much if it was only his problem, but it’s not, it's a problem we all have to deal with. Every time there is a high profile BASE "thing" in the news it makes it harder on all the rest of us. I consider the fact I've never been arrested for BASE jumping a "gift" and getting busted is not what I'm thinking about when jumping. I'm thinking about not getting injured or killed, but the more we have to worry about getting busted the less we'll be thinking of the most important thing, which is going home in one piece. I have no problem with people making BASE vids and either selling them, or passing them around for free, within the BASE community. This "in house" sharing is something we've always done. But if you can’t see the problem with pubic posting of these vids, or using the sport to gain a "name" for yourself, then that's it. Until you learn the lesson for yourself there's nothing more any of us can do except suffer the consequences of your actions. Sometimes I think we could fix the issue if everyone just chilled out for a while. The public has a short memory and maybe we could turn the clock back, maybe we could convince them the "fad" is over. But in reality the toothpaste is already out of the tube. And history we'll forever remember who the chief "squeezers" were . . . NickD

Although you can't say its impossible, like it won't ever happen, but, I've never heard of a BASE jumper hurting anyone but themselves . . . does anyone else know different? I have seen inexperienced jumpers land among the spectators at some past Bridge Days, but they are usually deep in the brakes with a big slow canopy and not likely to seriously injure anyone. But if we keep up the downtown day blazing like the recent Philly vid making the rounds it's bound to happen sooner or later. And after mowing down some completely innocent pedestrian you won’t need to kill them for it to become a very big deal. Are we forgetting why we jump in the middle of the night? The winds are calmer and there are only two kinds of people in the street. The kind who won't call the police, and the kind who are the police. But I do have to thank the Philly boys for putting the cherry on my original post . . . NickD

Yes, on behalf of your Mom, we were out scouring the countryside for you. But no worries & welcome back, brother . . . NickD

The vid's here . . . http://www.nbc11.com/news/10989631/detail.html NickD BASE 194

Approach a helicopter from the front, not the tail, like you do when boarding an airplane . . . NickD

http://www.koreus.com/media/dynamite-surfing.html These guys live a ways from any beach, but they make do. Knarly . . . NickD

And you'll luv the DZ in Buckeye, he he he . . . NickD

Actually I just had to move Sean up to #109. Unfortunately, another BASE fatality has just to come light and it occurred in early January. The inserted fatality is now # 107 . . . NickD BASE 194

You guys can throw the term "old schooler" at me, that's fine, and even though you mean it in a derogatory sense I'll wear that tag with honor. My perspective on BASE is very different than yours as my thoughts have formed over a longer run. And being the demographic of this board is skewed toward the post Red Bull generation I expected a good slamming. I will, however, address a couple of your points. Someone said I was re-writing BASE history when I suggested all previous generations of jumpers kept BASE on the down low. The example cited was Carl Boenish and the distributions of his films throughout the world. Well, I knew Carl both before and after he began what at the time was called fixed object jumping. In fact, from 1978 until about 1980 when Phil Smith started jumping antenna towers in Texas the sport was merely known as cliff jumping, as that was pretty much all that was being jumped. Carl was first and foremost a photographer. Prior to the jumps he organized at El Cap in 1978 it's well known if you had an "outside the norm" type project going and you needed it documented on film then Carl was your man. He loved to film anything involving parachutes and the goofier it was the better. So it's well known, even though I wish I could say it was a higher calling, Carl had set up the whole El Cap thing just for the opportunity to film it. I've written extensively on Carl both here and over on the BASE Board so you can search it out if you want. But the point I'm making is Carl's generation of BASE jumper was as different as my generation is from yours. To over simplify I see it as three distant eras. From 1978 to when the BASE numbers began in 1982 no one thought much about hiding their jumping activities. At the time there was every reason to believe the sport would be embraced and applauded as just another amazing thing human beings could do. So Carl felt no need to hide the activity as the only place the sport was having any trouble was in the National Parks. In fact, I know he thought public opinion would only help that situation. I was there at Lake Elsinore in 1978 on the night Carl showed the El Cap footage for the very first time. And none of us watching thought, "Gee, he shouldn't be showing this too people." Calling Carl a glory hound, or comparing him to people who post BASE vids on Youtube is very unfair in view of the times he lived in. The second era of the sport began when BASE wasn't accepted as we all thought it would be and it lasted from about 1982 until the year 2000. During this time we spilt into two camps. One side thought it best to hide our activities and the other thought, screw what others think, and made no bones about being BASE jumpers. I waffled between both groups at that time and for many reasons. BASE jumping then wasn't at all accepted by the skydiving community as it is today. To openly admit to being a BASE jumper was the kiss of death at many DZs if you were an Instructor or held any other DZ job. It's hard for you to imagine nowadays the vitriol aimed at us from skydivers, who I imagine felt somehow threatened by us, and we were now being blamed for any image problem that befell skydiving at the time. At first I was in the "out" camp my thinking being if we rammed BASE down people's throats long enough we'd win acceptance. It just didn’t exist (and still doesn't) in my mind that BASE would languish, or die off, as it was just too beautiful of a thing. It was around this time I started the "Fixed Object Journal" a BASE magazine I published from 1989 to the early '90s. Mine was the third such publication with Carl's "BASE Magazine" being first until he died in 1984 and then Phil Smith's "BASELine" magazine came second. These magazines were "in house" or in other words only circulated to people in the sport or interested in the sport, and they never appeared on newsstands for public consumption. My thinking, at the time, is it was important to get safety information to people who were starving for it. This is a time prior to the advent of BASE gear manufactures as we know them today and some of stuff we were using would curl your toes. There was also no knowledge base that exists today and every jump was still pretty much an experiment. At the time we weren't dying in great numbers, and the only reason for that was there weren't that many if us, and the rate of jumps per person was low. But we were suffering constant and horrible injuries. So much so that it became hardly mentionable when the plaster casts were visited upon you. Getting hurt became a normal part of the sport. But then, after the BASE gear industry gained a foothold, and we started to get acceptance because people were being exposed to other "extreme" sports the death rate in BASE started to rise dramatically. We went from losing one or two people a year to losing several and more a year. The sport is still rather small so these are not strangers but friends. It was then I, and many others, changed their minds and started advising people to keep BASE jumping to themselves. This is when I finally realized BASE was like no other sport in that it was way too easy to get in over your head and the spike in fatalities bolstered that point. Then came the third generation of BASE, your generation. And now I will retract something I said up-board. I came down too hard in calling you "all" glory hounds. That used to be a term we reserved for the worst of the worse offenders. But bear with me for a moment and I try to weasel out like a man. We videoed ourselves too. It was a bit harder back then as consumer video cameras were still pretty spendy, but the big difference is we had no method of easy distribution like you do today. And I'm not so sure we would have been able to resist doing it any more than you can now. But there is a big difference between then and now. A video camera at the launch point was not so normal like is today. The few videos I have of any of my jumps are all in the dark with no lighting and the only interesting part, in most cases, is the audio. The majority of my BASE jump memories exist only in my mind. Even today I never think to take a video camera along on a BASE jump. That said we all have to face up to the biggest problem in BASE jumping. And that problem was the basis of my first post. Too many of us are dying. I just added Shane Richards to the Fatality List this morning and we are averaging a fatality a month. When you're brand new to the sport that might seem normal, but I'm here to tell you it's not normal at all. And the only way we are going to affect those numbers is by keeping BASE a bit more underground and making it a bit harder for all but the most determined to get into BASE. Right now we have thousands of 12-year olds watching your vids on the internet. What do you think the outcome of that is going to be? Why we are dying in such numbers is no big mystery. There are simply more of us and we are making more jumps per person. That's progress, you may say, and there's nothing we can do about it. But there is something we can do about it. But first you have to give a damn. I've been keeping the BASE Fatality List going for about 18 years now and I've mentioned before that it's getting harder to keep up my original enthusiasm which was purely to educate newer jumpers and prevent needless deaths. But, I can't help but feel, in an admittedly myopic way, I've failed in that as the fatality numbers continue to grow. My own participation in BASE is in its twilight, as both physically and mentally I'm losing the edge I once had. Someday soon I will ask some poor sap to take over the Fatality List rather than just pull it off the web because deep down I know it does help to a certain extent. That person will also have great enthusiasm until he or she reaches the point where they get sick in their stomachs every time they write one of those reports. Lastly, I never wanted to wind up being "that old guy" who doesn't understand the new thing. Especially after I've seen so many go that route before me. One thing I'll always regret in my BASE career was our treatment of Jean Boenish after Carl died. She didn’t have the skill to impart effectively the message of being safe and to have respect for the sport. So we laughed at her and we ridiculed her, and we swore we'd never become like here ourselves. But, we were wrong and she was right. Someone said the reasons for my initial post was, "you must really hate us," but, it's just the opposite, I love you all, and even though many of you resist the idea we are brothers and sisters I still, and always will feel, that way. I am you thirty years ago, and you'll be me thirty years from now . . . NickD

I meant his first "freefall" building jump . . . NickD

Senator Marty Golden is introducing a bill to make it a class D felony offense for those caught BASE jumping in the state of New York. I'm sure the law will pass and eventually other states will follow suite. http://www.brooklyngraphic.com/site/tab6.cfm?newsid=17829722&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=552852&rfi=6 Go ahead, read the above, and come back. I’ll wait . . . Well boys, it was a nice twenty eight year run. I’ll remember those first few nights climbing KFI's tower at 3:00 in the morning with a (very) young Todd S. and Mark H. all of us giggling like school girls. I'll remember hiding out for hours in a downtown San Diego building just to escape a rent-a-cop and then walking down to avoid the possibility of getting the building hot. I'll remember how many times I dragged my tired butt downtown in the middle of the night to help out a newbie looking to get a BASE number. I'll smile on a million things like jumping with Jakey (the author of "Groundrush") on his first building jump. I'll smile on all the solo building jumps I did and the lovely feeling of this was mine anytime I wanted it. I'll smile on the sea of faces I can recall, all of the jumpers who have come and gone over the years, all the excitement, all the laughs, and even all the tears. I'll be proud of all the TV interviews I turned down, NBC, CBS, ABC, they all called me at one time or another, and still they call, and still I say no thanks. I'll be proud of writing thousands of posts over the years, always trying to add something to the sum total of our knowledge. I'll be proud of always subtly warning you that BASE jumping was precious because so many of you had never lived in a world without it. I'll be proud of telling you of all the ways the generation that preceded you went to great lengths to keep BASE jumping underground where it belonged. But I can see the freedom, simplicity, and beauty of BASE wasn't enough for you. I can see the fact you could go and jump any night you wanted wasn't enough for you and I can see the knowledge you could do something no one else could do was something too big to be contained inside your own heads. So be happy with your bridge in Potato Land and your once a year fling in West Virginia. Be happy knowing the people starting out in BASE today won't enjoy the extent of freedom you took for granted before you threw it away. Be happy in the knowledge that you were so much bigger than the ones who came before you that you thought nothing about selling the sport out for 15 minutes of fame. Be happy and continue spewing your "look at me videos" all over the internet and trying to "explain" BASE to the masses as you sound more lame, juvenile, and idiotic every time you do it. BASE was a gift, and you shat upon it . . . A felony is a life altering thing. It won't matter much to us old timers, as we always knew the true cost of BASE was the real possibillity of the death penalty so we'll still bang one out from time to time. But, it will make younger jumpers think twice. So you all better start getting handy with needle and thread as making BASE jumping a felonious offense will certainly finish off the BASE gear manufacturers in this country. And you'll find no refuge elsewhere as slowly the rest of the world will also turn against us. Nope, it's over. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but soon, and forever. I still don’t actually believe it myself yet, I mean the enormity of it, and how you managed it, but all you f-ing glory hounds got the entire United States hot . . . NickD BASE 194

Like jewel thieves and cat burglars in the past sometime in the future some "reformed" BASE jumper is going to make a good living as a BASE Prevention Consultant. The clientele will be broadcasters and other entities that control jumpable sites . . . NickD

This was circa early 80s. The problem was the source for the mesh used in covering the steering vents on some round reserves came from a manufacturer who also supplied the same mesh to tent manufacturers. At some point the tent manufacturers requested the mesh have a fire retardant added to it. No one realized the problem until some round reserves started suffering damage and catastrophic failure on deployment. The treated mesh laying along side the canopy fabric overtime in a packed container did the deed. It became a nightmare finding all the affected canopies as it spanned several manufacturers and lots of serial number ranges. I wouldn’t be surprised if there still aren't some of these canopies sitting in pilot's rigs tucked away in airplane hangars. You can contact Master Rigger Alan Silver, in Northern California, for more on this (he sort of made it his life's work to track these canopies down). There is also a chemical test Riggers can use to test the mesh in suspected canopies, and any older round pilot's rig you pack that has mesh should be tested. The big lesson all us Rigger's learned from this was the "real" importance of inspections. And don’t think something like this could not happen again. I had two round reserves that were bad, and there were many of us walking around fat, dumb, and happy with time bombs in our reserve containers . . . NickD

I had a problem with Doug Blain years ago that started when, without permission, he culled all the deceased British BASE jumpers from the BASE Fatality List and posted them on his site, word for word. What I didn’t like specifically is he then used that content to sell his t-shirts, bumper stickers, and posters, etc. Basically he was running advertisements on our gravestones. He even included the following warning: "© basejumping.co.uk / DougBlane.com | All Rights Reserved World Wide He's still doing it, although he's changed the wording of the reports enough that there's not much I can do about. However, as the reports appear now, they contain only the "sensationalism" and not the "lesson" that might help save the next guy. " I know one thing for sure. If Frank, Neil, Nik, Martin, Terry, Darren, and Michael were able to, one night there would be a knock on Doug's door . . . NickD

Contact Anne Helliwell, she has a really nice house a mile or so from the Perris DZ for visiting jumpers and its tons better than the ratty IHOP . . . PM me for her phone number, if you want. NickD

I was touring NZed in 1991 and visited most DZs including one in Queenstown. It was the first Tandem only DZ I'd seen anywhere in the world. Tandem riders were shuttled out from a storefront in town by van, made their jumps, and then were shuttled back to town where they'd pick up their photographs. And I hated it . . . As an Instructor I saw these "riders" getting a taste of skydiving, but they were missing out on the meal. Back in the States, and not long after, a similar operation opened in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I hated it . . . The very idea of tandems, and especially "tandem only" DZs is anti-skydiving. But, while a few people railed about it, it was mostly just experienced fun jumpers who weren't being allowed to jump there. What tandem and "tandem only" meant for the sport overall was being ignored. Well, our chickens are now coming home to roost . . . When Ted Strong sent us our first Tandem rig at Elsinore in the early 80s I thought, wow, this is great. Now the old, the blind, and the infirm could safely experience the thrill of skydiving. I never thought, in my wildest imagination, tandems would become the de-facto way everyone would make their first jump. If I had known it, I would have thrown that fucking rig into that night's bonfire. It's all too late now. The generation now inhabiting DZs across the world see tandem as normal and look elsewhere for the reasons the sport is going down the tubes. The economy, they'll cite, and all kinds of other reasons. But the answer is staring them right in the face and they don’t see it. Tandem has been the ruination of skydiving. It's sapped our AFF/SL student starts to a pathetic level as the whole wham bam see you later experience of tandem misses the most important aspects of the sport. And it's not the economy as anyone who started before tandem will tell you it still took every dime they owned to get through student status. Want to save skydiving? Then burn a tandem rig. After every tandem rig in the world has "spontaneously" combusted the sport will eventually re-just back to normal. AFF and S/L instructors will be able to make a living again, and the quality of that instruction will return. First jump students will again "invest" themselves in the sport and we will all get a return on that investment. Tandem students leave the DZ thinking they've skydived, traditional students leave knowing they've just scratched the surface and they want more. We had a beautiful thing going, and we sold it out to make a buck. And the fault lies in all of us that sat around and let it happen . . . NickD