NickDG

I've nothing to add except this aside on body armor. No one, in general, used it before Dick Pedley's death in 1989. It was then we realized if he'd come away from his initial building strike conscious he might have had a chance. It's a nice tribute to Dick that his fatality actually changed things for the better. In those days we thought nothing of jumping buildings bareheaded and garbed in shorts and sandals. We laughed, at first, as some overdid it (or so we thought at the time) with shin guards and things like that, and wondered how "robo jumper" would get rid of it all should he need to flee or blend in . . . Originally, we took to calling it body armor and I wrote a story about it for the second issue of the Fixed Object Journal in 1990 called "Knights of the Air." No one was really wearing boots as rule yet, so I included a section on shoes. The most popular at the time were "Hi-Tecs" trail shoes." These had an energy return system built in by way of switchable rubber balls and I dubbed them, "Ranger Evaders." In the years that followed people started calling all this stuff "battle gear" and that stuck for a while, but now it seems to be back to body armor. NickD

I remember when it was "new" but I always thought it was done in Florida. It's a neat vid even by today's standards. In the years that followed however, after we started using that song for student videos I can hardly stand to listen to it anymore. (Same for TP's "Freefalling.") NickD

I've lost the count now, but I sure remember them. I saw Allen a few years back, he's driving a long haul truck and he shaved off his beard! I have that "Twilight Zone" tape too. It's a killer. Remember when he says, "Oh, there's some people here I've wanted to jump with for a long time now . . ." NickD

>>Regardless, a 4 line check should always be done when attaching a conopy to the risers.

Hi All, I've updated the BASE Fatality List to version 3.87 - I changed the opening quote at the suggestion of someone here. - Will Forshay's entry now includes the NTSB report on his aircraft crash. - Added Josh Whipple to the bottom section. - Added J.T. to the top section. - Updated Terry Forrestal's entry to include info about a film concerning his accident. - Added a photograph of Frank Gambalie. - Added a photograph of Clod. http://www.basefatalities.info/ NickD BASE 194

Thanks, Brother, and tell your Mom I said hey . . . NickD

The Goober . . . I think your experience is similar to other thinking BASE jumpers. I believe that even as we smile and look cool BASE jumping really scares most of us. In the early days it was common for BASE jumpers to say, "We are here for the fear." I never arrived at the same comfort level in BASE jumping that I achieved in skydiving, and I'm pretty sure I never will. On some BASE jumps I managed to push the fear away and just have fun, but every time I did that, I come away thinking I got away with something. When I meet people who never exhibit fear or doubt about BASE jumping I think they are wired differently than me. Something that's changed since the old days is the amount of BASE jumps some people have at certain sites. I would guess some can jump from the potato bridge with a certain amount of comfort because they do it so often. This is something not so common just a few years ago. BASE jumps are funny things in that the goal is always the same but from object to object they are all very different. This is what makes that comfort level so hard to achieve. The underlying problem with BASE, and the real goober of it all, is BASE jumping is a wonderful thing, but it's not worth your life. That's the thing we must maneuver around every time we jump. I realize that people who start BASE now may feel they are playing catch up, but don't. In terms of what may happen in the next hundred years I'm not really sure we know anymore now than we did twenty years ago. One day soon BASE 1000 will be as archaic as BASE 1 is now. Carl Boenish left us a clue for those willing to heed it. BASE jumps aren't meant to be gulped down like skydives, they are special jumps, to be savored and planned for like a once a month Sushi dinner. There is, like in any endeavor, that rare breed. The Mike Alderman's, the Slim's, and the Dwain Westons', the ones who take it to another level leaving only something for the rest of us to shoot at, but two of three of them are on the List. That's the goober . . . NickD

It takes a real man to admit he wet himself . . . NickD

>>Besides those on the list, there might be others that have gone in.

Yes, unfortunately for all involved, the story is true. Chris Wentzel was facing life in prison, but due to having no criminal record, the judge saw this as a bad decision by an otherwise law abiding man. His attorney finished his appeal to the judge with, "This is a different man than many of the people you've sentenced. If there was ever a man that would never be back here again under any circumstances, then this is that man." The judge sentenced Chris to seven years in prison. The other fellow, Stanley, got life. There's another story about this in the Nov 23, 2002 issue of the LA Times. It's a bit long to enter as text here, but maybe you can try the LA Times Archives. Here are the two photos accompanying the article. NickD

I'm not sure if you mean, attaching the canopy to the harness backwards, or packing a correctly attached parachute so that it open backwards. If it's the latter it'll just be a line twist like mentioned upboard. People do however attach canopies to harness' backwards sometimes by mistake. It's a bit harder to do nowadays than it used to be. Rigs equipped with RSLs (reserve static line) would show the RSL attachment to be on the wrong riser. In the old days it used to be many people had their risers marked right and left to avoid that mistake. When canopies were generally bigger and more forgiving intentionally attaching your canopy backwards was something you did once in awhile just for fun. There was even a spat of "backwards canopy relative work" going on for a while. However this was done by a generation already experienced in flying backwards with round parachutes and the low performance squares of the time. Also, with some square canopies in those days you could stall the canopy and fly backwards. Instead of collapsing these canopies would go into what looks like a bowtie configuration and in that steady state they were pretty controllable. Letting up on the toggles would put you back into forward flight. Very early BASE jumpers sometimes used this method (with varying degrees of results) to avoid object strikes. (This involved stalling the canopy until it starts to reverse and then letting up on one toggle to make the evasive turn.) Being a student the above may be a bit confusing, but it shows you are thinking. We'll save landing round parachutes that are not only backwards, but also inside out for another time . . . ! NickD

Here's a story about a jetpack with a skydiving connection. Chris Wentzel was an Elsinore jumper and a camera person back in the day. He was a friendly man, very well known in the skydiving community, and a good jumper. I was very surprised he became involved in all this . . . Chris was also involved with the "10 Miles High" project in the early 1980s. This was a civilian attempt to set a freefall distance record. They had the space suits lined up and were begining to practice for it, but the effort ran out of funds. http://www.sundayherald.com/print28401 NickD

Not for nothing, but this thread needs a cherry on top, so here's a nice picky of Marta . . . and a reminder, it's a beautiful world. NickD

Sacking It . . . This will sound odd, but I was lucky to get cancer when I did. I was still fairly young, and my body could still tolerate massive amounts of chemotherapy (a cocktail of drugs, which are really poisons) used to kill cancer cells. I was in a VA hospital in La Jolla, California, in a room with six other men. There are all much older and every few days one would get rolled out the door. It was very depressing . . . My doctor, a young man himself at the time, and someone I still correspond with (I'm his longest living cancer survivor) told me he wanted to try a new mixture, a mix too strong to use on any of the older guys. Before we started he told me it was going to be very rough. I had it pretty bad, and the deal is going to be finding the line where the drugs kill the cancer, but not crossing that line, so the drugs kill me too. By now the cancer is using my lymph system as a highway and traveling from organ to organ. I had cancer tumors the size of softballs growing inside me. The pain of my body eating itself from the inside out was beginning to come on. "No problem, Doc, it's pretty rough right now." Like everyone, I've experienced discomfort before, I've had broken bones, but I never felt anything like this stuff. I remember telling the Doctor during the worst of it that I finally met a drug I didn't like . . . Toward the end of my course of treatment, the tumors are shrinking, but I'm weak as a kitten. But, I was well enough to get around. And it was during this period that Moe and some others went out of their way to help me. On some of the first BASE jumps after coming out of the hospital I wasn't launching very well. I was going ass over teakettle when I never had trouble with stability before. Watching a video with Moe we are laughing and I said, "Look at that, that's not flying, I'm just a living breathing sack of potatoes." So for the next few jumps I just stepped off, I stopped trying to force it, and went into relax mode, just letting it happen, and it was better. And we took to calling the practice, "sacking it." I feel somewhat vindicated by last year's Bridge Day as I watched many jumpers, rather than have some rehearsed freefall plan; just give themselves over to gravity and the result of how they stepped off. "Oh my," I thought, "that's cool, people are sacking it . . ." NickD

Happy Anniversary To Me . . . I didn't have a phone in my room, as it wasn't too plush a hospital. It's late and I lay tossing in my bed the day's course of chemotherapy having thoroughly kicked my ass. A nurse came and plugged in the phone she carried. "It'll ring in a few moments, I shouldn't be doing this, but it sounded important." My hair was almost all gone now; my moustache falling into the sink had horrified me. The phone rang and it's a laughing Moe Viletto. "Hey, man, we're coming to bust you out. So be ready." I waited until the nurse left the room, rolled up my clothes around my sneakers, and climbed back under the covers to wait. I really needed out of this place. I wasn't eating or drinking anything so they had me hooked up to a water bag and I had to yank out the needle. I was thinking if I didn't leave now I never would. A half hour later I peered into the hallway and all was clear. I walked down the corridor as calmly as possible and then hit the stairs running. I stood outside the hospital hiding in a bush until I saw them circling the parking lot and then I jumped into the car. I looked at Moe and said, "Let's blow . . ." "Let's," Moe replied. "There's a rig back there if you want it, brother." I was pretty weak, but figured if I could get in, and get up, I could handle the rest. They both had to help me up the last few floors, and they helped me get geared up too, but I managed it other than sort of landing in a heap. I felt myself coming back to life. And I did, as all that happened in March of 1990. NickD

>>kerb hops

Gimps (even) on Staff . . . The "yellow shirt" lasted into the early nineties. Jean yelled at me in '89, because I ditched the "polo shirt" for something with long sleeves. No one talked about it much, but I was probably the first to wonder why we held the BASE jumping part of Bridge Day in the freaking winter time. The yellow shirts are beacons to new jumpers. Jean would drum into first timers to find a yellow shirt if unsure of how it all worked. The shirts were used to combat the problem of skydivers coming to the launch point and saying to the staff jumpmaster, "Hi, okay, what do I do now?" There aren't "First Bridge Jump Courses" back then. Even the experts didn't feel expert enough to stand up in front of a bunch of people and say here's how it all works. We individually passed secrets from jumper to jumper, things we learned from jumping off buildings and other things in the middle of the night. but always with the caveat, that they shouldn't be doing this, if they weren't ready. I don't think we need the yellow shirt kind of thing anymore. The caliber of jumper that comes to Bridge Day today is very different . . . NickD

>>The latest fatality at Perris hit close to home, she was my friend. I'm feeling a little bit scared to jump,>> Hi Chelle, This will always be tough. Yet, one day some years from now, and for better or worse, you'll probably greet news like this as more natural. Knowing friends who have died jumping won't keep you out of the air in the long run. If it did, there'd be no older jumpers on the DZ. It always helps, however, to know what happened. It's that unknown factor that's adding to your apprehension. Until the facts are in just have fun, and focus on altitude awareness. In my own case, a lingering fear while jumping has never been all the things we train for, nor the scary things I've seen or read about happening to others. It's always been that one situation where all of a sudden you are thinking, "What the fu*k is this?" NickD

Max Dereta designed that patch in the early 80s and Carl, and then Jean Boenish, used it as the insignia for the World BASE Association. http://www.xs4all.nl/~mdereta/ There've been all kinds of design competitions to update it, but it has stood the test of time . . . NickD

>>3 decades, hundreds of thousands of successful jumps, 85 deaths????; One plane crash and you wipe out over 300 people in one second.

>>Keep the list in the light and the sport in the dark, which is where it belongs.

>>Although I understand your goal, I think you might consider that burying the facts is abhorrent to ethical people. I know you well enough to know you are ethical, so I can't figure out where you came up with this harebrained idea. Further, I think making an issue of what you allege to be Nick's obsession with death calls for an apology from you to him. But that's just my opinion, and you can do whatever you want. Just remember, though, that the webpage you propose to impose strictures on belongs to Nick, and he, like you, can do whatever he wants, no matter what public pressure you bring to bear. If it comes to a vote, then mine is that the webpage should remain as it is or as Nick may choose--without undue interference--to make it in the future. Although it now serves as an educational tool, it remains a memorial to those who have gone before. It would be a terrible thing for any of them to be forgotten. rl

>>Maybe cleaning up the fatality list so that it's not so dark would be a good start. Remove the red 85 at the top. Hi Jason, Yes, it does looks dark. The Fatality List has its roots when the prevailing wisdom in BASE is, "make death your friend, or else it becomes your enemy." Skydivers and non-jumpers scolded us for having a death wish, and that we'd all get "our due" in time. So being a rebellious lot we flew the Jolly Roger right in their faces. We decorated our rigs with skulls and bones, and everything we owned is black in color. We giggled when we were scared, and chuckled at the near misses of our friends. We did everything we could to get our minds away from the fact we really didn't know what we are doing. This is the time when Moe Viletto observed, "death is an educational tool." So that's why the List looks as it does. Since you are questioning it, I can only assume it's the beginning of a generational sea change coming to BASE jumping and okay, that's fair enough. >>Turn it into more of an informative, educational tool. Heck, include commentary on "how this accident could have been prevented".

And anyway. . . Psalms 108, 4 "For thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds." NickD

Hi Jason, We had this conversation in private, but okay, we can do it here I've wanted to take the List down several times over the years, but I always get talked into leaving it up by other BASE jumpers. I published the first version of the List in 1987 as a training aid, but more so as a memorial to my friends. It's grown since then into this big thing. The List is written for jumpers and it's the reason it comes off frightening and cold to non-jumpers. But, I don't agree "unfriendly government organizations" can use this information against us. No one can hurt us with the truth. Without the List being public, there's nothing to stop "unfriendly government organizations" from claiming there are one hundred BASE fatalities a year. I don't especially like maintaining the List anymore, but it's survived all the changes BASE jumping has undergone since we "were" a small band of brothers. It's a constant that binds us together and fixes us to our history. Since we can't censure the one hundred dollar "Come One, Come All," First BASE jump Courses the List shows those inquisitive enough to look, the dangers involved. And, yes, there are all kinds of arguments either way. I'm not totally against the idea of password protecting the site. I just don't see how that's going to keep determined "unfriendly government organizations" from gaining access. I'm also open to taking it down altogether. Jason, couldn't you state your case against the List without calling it, "Nick's Death List" so many times? And this --->>>leads me to believe he's obsessed with death.