NickDG

In 1985 I got tired of ISPs going out of business and having to change e-mail addresses every time it happened. When AOL started I hated it for the simple reason it allowed the great unwashed to easily connect to the net which lowered the bar of discourse in a major way. It also furthered the advance of the web going commercial which is cool if you're looking to buy something, but a pain when you aren't. If you are computer savvy enough to set it up right (many think AOL "is" the internet) it's fine. It's always there and I've been with them for 10 years now without any problems. It's a bit more pricy than others but I use it both ways, dial-up and cable modem, and I'm happy with it. My only gripe may be you can't use a third party email or newsgroup reader, but I've become used to the e-mail thing, and Google works good enough for newsgroups. The fellow having problems opening a word doc is just going about it wrong. It's probably just not having doc files associated with the right program. I'd rather give my money to small and local ISP, but I've never found one that matches AOL for reliability. NickD

Anyone getting the "bandwidth exceeded" message when trying to access Skydive Radio? NickD

>>I have ordered people to get their helmet on or strap it in.

Two words - Mop & Glow . . . Got me through fours years in the USMC! NickD

I'm not so sure about the suicide angle. Why take a chance on being spotted gearless on the plane when he could have worn a rig and just hummed it in like Harley did? And if you watch the video it seemed pretty clear he reached for his pilot chute. The only explanation would be maybe an insurance deal, (was their any?) but most people who commit suicide want people to know they intentionally did away with themselves . . . I suppose we'll never really know. NickD

>>couldnt you just go pick up the bicycle?

Thou shalt not have a live 2-way radio in your pocket when talking to a policeman at 3:00 AM. I almost had him convinced nothing was up when the radio crackled, "Hey Nick, we're almost on top, how's the winds?" NickD

Nothing new here. Carl Boenish walked off El Cap using stilts and another person did it with a pogo stick. (Both the stilts and pogo stick were tethered to the cliff top and retrieved.) Jake Lombard rode a bicycle off Angel falls and Jon Carter rode a motorcycle off Greenie (in both those cases the vehicles were allowed to go in). I think in both the latter cases it was lame . . . Lombard especially seemed to do everything he could to get on TV. His most laughable stunt was being catapulted off the New River Gorge Bridge as a slow moving AN-2 (the big Russian bi-plane) came by towing a large net in which he tried to grab onto. He missed the net and parachuted into the river below. The breathless TV announcer made a very big deal out of it (and so did Lombard) without anyone mentioning the hundreds of people who jumped from the bridge every year at Bridge Day. I happened to see that with a few other BASE jumpers and we were rolling on the floor in tears of laughter. No, the "look at me" glory hounds of today have nothing on the ones from yesteryear . . . NickD

It's true except for the TM or student noticing it and the bit about talking off the helmet and waving, sheesh, where'd that baloney come from? I saw the video. He didn't realize he wasn't wearing a rig until he reached back for his pilot chute after the tandem deployed. He was wearing an older style video camera with a separate recording deck worn on the chest. This deck had it's own harness and that's probably why no one in the plane noticed he wasn't wearing a rig. It is said later he'd been doing a lot of camera jumps that day with fast turn-a-rounds and he was mentally very tired . . . All jumpers of the day were shocked this could occur and even to this day new jumpers find it hard to believe. NickD

Here's one from an Arizona cliff wall. It's obvious aliens came here to take advantage of our gravity which is more conducive to BASE jumping than on their home planet. Tell me that's not a pilot chute . . . and talk about a road trip . . . They are here, and all around us. How many people have you met that you'd swear are from another planet. I'm heading out to an after-thanksgiving party this afternoon and Jean Boenish will be there, I've often wondered what planet she's from . . . NickD

Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) from the "Karate Kid" has passed on. Every since that movie I've been trying to catch a Fly with a pair of chopsticks as I thought it good practice for BASE jumping, but so far, no joy . . . NickD

As of a few days ago I heard in an email he was on a respirator with fever and pneumonia. Doctors seem to be saying this is something he can recover from . . . All his vital signs were good. NickD

>>Here's Don in full HALO regalia:

Rapture, Smapture . . . Life "is" a struggle. Every living thing on this planet struggles to survive each and every day. Because we are thinking beings when we hit the wall where knowledge ends we invent stuff to make ourselves feel better. Giving yourself over to some higher power is giving up and waving the white flag because you aren't satisfied with what is and are so full of yourself you can’t accept this is all there is . . . Old timers will remember the fellow during the 80s who bought those full page ads in PARACHUTIST proclaiming the importance of being saved. His tagline was, "You never know which breath will be your last." When he bounced skydiving it almost seemed inevitable as he was way to ready, and willing, to meet his maker . . . Religion has evolved into a way of controlling people and it's hard to believe after all this time that it still works so well. If there is a God, I'm sure he prefers those who go kicking and screaming into the night, those who use the gift of life to wonder and be curious, those with the guts to say this is what I am and this is what I know and I'm going to make the most of it. If he doesn't but prefers those who blindly follow, those who are meek and guilt ridden, well no thanks, I'll go to the other place where the cool people are. The late astronomer Carl Sagen said it best, "Which is more possible," he asked, "is man born of God's imagination, or is God born of man's imagination? NickD

Good on you for not messing with it too long. Free flying seems to be justifying going back to stuff known to be problematic. Things like adding a pud to a throw out (that must have Booth tearing his beard out) or using a soft pud for a reserve handle can cause problems. I realize the things related to FF you are trying to cure, but you better be aware of the problems and be ready for them. What scares me is when you asked if this has happened to anyone else . . . There's a long list of dead people who searched too long for dislodged (pull out) puds. It seems to me a true free fly rig is only a marketing term at this point. Listen to Bill Booth's Skydive Radio interview as he discusses the above issues . . . http://www.skydiveradio.com/ There's a reason old guys get old . . . NickD

It would have to be a very large room, but . . . Bad idea, think fire hazard . . . and little boys are good at starting their rooms ablaze, I know I did with my first chemistry set . . . NickD

Don was one of the best AFF certification course directors and his service in the cause of student safety needs to be noted. Hey USPA, this year's Achievement Award right over here, please . . . People often said Don and I looked alike and both of us have been mistaken for the other. When we first met many years ago, we stood staring at each other, and we both said the same thing at the time, "I don’t see it!" Sweet dreams, Don . . . NickD BASE 194

"What would you do?" Risers . . . NickD

>>Actually, Lenny Bruce WAS crazy...

It can't be . . . because "they" said . . . Copernicus was crazy . . . Galileo was crazy . . . Da Vinci was crazy . . . Amerigo Vespucci was crazy . . . Louie Pasture was crazy . . . Orville and Wilbur were crazy . . . Listen to Schubert's "Ava Maria" he was totally crackers when he wrote that . . . Lennie Bruce was crazy . . . And it goes on and on . . . In the end you don’t have to be sane, you just have to be right . . . NickD

>>I don't understand what you mean, don't take this the wrong way but...what isn't working? What were you hopeing would happen?or change? Becides El Cap being legal for all to enjoy, and any other cliff that a condor hasn't already claimed, what could change?

hemphog, Yes, I see that. But eventually we are going to have to decide what's more important. I know that protecting high profile sites is important, but the thing that's changed since about ten years ago is not that someone is going to blow you secret site (which I'm not advocating by making public with press releases) but that some yahoo is going to come to your town and jump your site and get caught. What happens after that is going to determine the course of your future jumps in that area. The choice we have right now, is if we really worked hard on it, is in five years or so a Judge would admonish the police to go out and catch real criminals. We have a real chance to lesson the offence, if wuffos understood it just a little bit better . . . Fuck 'em all worked for a long time, but it isn't working now. And while that idea may get "you" through the next few years we, all of us, have to start thinking of the sport as a whole. Anything less is, well less, and I think we all come to that same conclusion after a number of years. And the day will come when you do too . . . NickD

FIREFLYR, I appreciate what you're saying, and for 20 years I've been in that same camp, but over a span of time I see it isn't working . . . NickD

Morning Thoughts . . . It's funny how reality, or the appearance of it, is twisted depending on how you encounter it. If you are a wuffo reporter working on a BASE article this week, (I mention it as I've been talking to two of them) and you enter "BASE jumper" into the Google News search engine the below list is what you get. The first eleven are about John Agnos, including his cliff mishap, and the twelfth mentions Felix Baumgartner . . . We are making the mistake of not using the press to our advantage. We let them write anything they want about us, but we never give them anything in return. Through most of the 80s and early 90s when a reporter called they mostly got told to get stuffed. The same with the bottom feeding video shows. When we do that the only press we do get is on accidents and the corporate sponsored BASE jumpers whose job it is to get the corporation's message across and not ours. Even when we do put our best foot forward, like the major events in China, and things like Bridge Day, where they actually invite us to jump we don’t get a bump out of it in the mainstream press. Most of the articles I read (written by local reporters) seems to be about BASE jumping, I mean the words are all there, but it's like something out of the bizarro world because they don't quite get it. At Bridge Day every jumper (who agreed to it) should be given a form to fill out that states a bit of information about themselves (the human interest stuff, like Pete's the local insurance guy, car mechanic, or barber) and also the name of their hometown paper. That info can be entered in a boiler plate press release and in that week after Bridge Day I'll guarantee they would run in hundreds of local newspapers. The same should be done when someone from out of town does the potato bridge. Local papers eat that stuff up. What I'm saying is we can't stop the press from writing about us so maybe it's time we (as a group) stopped shunning them. If you go out to BLM land or something like that, write it up as a press release, include a few photos and send it to every hometown paper of the jumpers involved. Now, this course of action would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but there's no use acting like BASE is a big secret anymore. So let's start spinning them, instead of them spinning us . . . I'll put up by saying if anyone needs help crafting a press release I'm here for you. But, make sure you get that these won't be "look at me, I'm a hero" pieces, but just vehicles to get the message across that BASE is a legitimate sport with a grand history and an exciting future. If the public hears that often enough it will truly become their reality when they think of BASE. Instead, right now, that reality is what's listed below: NickD

Well, not exactly, but jumpers may find this first timer's account interesting . . . http://www.oldradio.com/archives/warstories/1572feet.htm NickD