NickDG

The WX in not jumpable in San Diego???????????? You can usually count those days on one hand. LOL! It's blue skies, light winds, and perfect right now . . . Edited to add: Well, almost as typed the above, the winds came up. We are having a slight Santa Ana condition (winds blowing from the desert to the coast) and the area where the DZ is can get blown out. But, it still sounds fishy as towards sunset those winds can die off and when was the last time you called a DZ and they said it's too windy. What's the old joke? The manifester is hanging onto the wind sock for dear life with one hand and with the other hand holds a phone and they're saying, "It's great, come on out!" NickD

Every busted leg tells a story and we probably miss some lessons by not keeping better track of non-fatal accidents. When it was smaller the BASE community is a harder place to go unnoticed when you pranged and some of the BASE magazines of the day printed those as accident reports complete with conclusions. The un-intended results are sometimes heated exchanges when the injured jumper writes the editor saying, "You f-ing bonehead! You got that all wrong!!! I'm got more jumps then you, you f-ing moron, and another thing you f-ing . . ." It "was" somebody second guessing someone else and it didn't work. It's a lesson I keep in mind when writing the fatality reports and I sweat being correct as possible. But, I'm sure when I get to heaven some BASE jumpers will be waiting for me with, "You f-ing . . . bonehead!!!" So when the time came I didn't print accident reports in the Fixed Object Journal unless the injured jumper wrote the piece, or at least someone who was there did. I remember at least two non-fatal wire strikes, but I think there's been more. In one the jumper entangled the guy wire and slid down until the canopy burned through and dropped him into a water channel. The other jumper still on top said, "It was a million to one moon shot." NickD

Ever notice the older he gets the more Bill Legg looks like a certain God . . . NickD

When we were kids in New York City we spent a lot of time on the roofs looking over. And we always wondered what going over would be like. I think I'm the only kid from the old neighborhood that found out . . . NickD

Here' an example of a tower being hard to spot. You can see a few shadows from this 700-footer . . . NickD

Suppose he had reached back and deployed his stash bag. Even a quick sideways glance might look like a pilot chute going away. Even if it registered as a hard pull, would any of us have figured that one out in time? NickD

The next thug who tries to rob me when I'm downtown at three in the morning is in for a surprise . . . NickD T BASE 194

Yikes, it is George Bush . . . And I'll guess at what the trailing black thing is. It's a strap off a stash bag that's in the pouch on the rig's backpad. NickD

>>crack 3 ring

>>My wife is in Berlin this week,

Okay, I've discovered what's wrong with the world. Life Magazine has gotten smaller and TV Guide has grown larger . . . NickD

I wrote something once about putting names to faces and how time draws a line that statistics don't convey. I can't really think of any sport I could have become involved in where I would actually know this many dead people. If you throw in the ones I've never actually met, yet knew their names, it gets even more grim . . . NickD BASE 194

I remember (late 80s?) a Chinese government sponsored team of really young girls. I believe they were between 13 and 15 years old and they average around 1500 jumps each. They are being groomed to compete in the classic events. The Russians, in the 1950s or so, realized rather than keep large standing forces of paratroopers they'd just subsidize skydiving for civilians. For just a few kopecks, if anything at all, you could start sport jumping. I think by the 1970s there are three million fun jumpers in Russia. The only rub is if the cold war had gone hot you'd be packing up your old kitbag . . . NickD

"I knew this would happen." NickD

And you could pre-set winds, problems, malfunctions, and the cops coming, as random or specifically. "A 180 to the right, please." The game needs to be open ended so you could model your own sites. Manufactures could build accurate models of their latest and greatest stuff and release it through the game. A virtual fly before you buy. The files for jumps would be like flatiron.sit and we could share them, "Oh, sorry Brother, didn’t ya get the update?" NickD

Sorry to say number 91 has been posted . . . http://www.basefatalities.info/ NickD BASE 194

Welcome to the party there's always room for one more . . . NickD

Okay, that was too subtle, my bad, the one sure fire way to kill Slyride is someone else doing it right. It's a goldmine just sitting there waiting for the right jumper who has the resources and gives a damn . . . NickD

>>Next time....use your hook knife you sissy.

That's how I heard it too. And he asked for more than one rig to give the impression he might take someone from the crew along. This would make it impossible to give him a fouled rig. Plus, and I haven't looked at the timeline lately, but I think he was back there long enough to do an I&R . . . NickD

>>YEAH BABY!!!!

Real or not you can see Skyride would have to employ non-jumpers. It's possible, not being hip to skydiving, they wouldn't see anything wrong with it at first. What really kills me, and sorry I'm repeating it, is if Skyride had only went about things just a little better. All they had to do: -Charge ten dollars per certificate. -Not stolen art for the websites. -Not pretended to be actual drop zones. -Offer a no-questions asked refund (sure keep the ten for your trouble). -Send students to the closest geographical DZ never mind the political baloney. Maybe DZOs, especially the smaller ones, might realize they didn’t need to spend so much on advertising or maybe even none at all. Drop zones could still honestly compete with each other on cost, planes, and facilities on their own dime, but Skyride could have worked in a limited but honest fashion. However, if you think big, and there was a democratic way to divvy up all perspective students Skyride could have been the-go-to call for all first jump students. Imagine getting a sawbuck for every first jump made. That would be what, three or four million dollars per year. In any case Skyride could have worked to the point where aSkyRideGuy became manger in charge of customer service with a good wage, benefits, and a clear conscious . . . NickD

Boy, this is a tough one. On the one hand I don't think it's good to monkey with the Constitution, but I know there are some people who shouldn't have handguns. I guess I feel like taking everyone else's gun away is all right as long as I can keep mine. New York City has had the Sullivan Law since about 1911. You can't legally own a handgun without a police permit. Note: this isn't a permit to carry, but a permit to own. And they are very hard to get. Until this SF thing that was probably the toughest gun law in the country. However, you can still buy a handgun on the streets of New York, or if you are really industrious, you can drive across the bridge to New Jersey and buy one. The big thing with SF is since we are made to register our weapons they know pretty much where you are and what you have. Are these folks going to start getting letters saying, "Hi, we've noticed you haven’t turned in your gun . . . " There is going to be a Constitutional fight over this and probably a few shootouts too. NickD

Well, never minding the fact Bill Dause would never take any crap from a tandem student most students would probably think the DZ is Skyride. Some DZOs have reported getting flack from students who do realize they were overcharged. And while doing research is always the right thing to do, I'm not sure perspective students could make sense of it all. This is what Skyride counts on. There is another Skyride type scam in the flower industry. Call a florist in your hometown yellow pages, and even while the ad says [Your Town] Flowers, it's really a boiler-room operation in some other city. See below . . . NickD