NickDG

Naw, Rocky was later on. I just heard from him a few weeks ago. He and his wife Heidi are now NRA gun instructors! NickD

I'd forgotten Jerry and Sherry's offspring was on this site even though I did have this conversation with him some years ago. My intent wasn't to slam anyone's parents, and I should have softened my wording. My issue with the Shrimshers (Jerry specifically) was his vitriolic position against B.A.S.E. jumping in the early days. In any case my argument with either of them is political and not personal, and if I offended anyone, I'm sorry . . . If it's any solace in a few hours I'll be at the dentist under the drill so I'll be getting somewhat paid back . . . NickD

Warped, I enjoy sparing with you. So sleep on it and maybe tomorrow you'll feel different . . . NickD

People I know who've seen the movie “Full Metal Jacket” sometimes ask me if Marine Corps boot camp is as depicted in the movie. They can't believe it could be, and even newer Marines think the film is exaggerated. Well, they are both wrong it was actually much worse . . . I went through boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina in 1971 arriving there just one week after I turned seventeen years old. Boot camp lasted a little over three months in those days and the fact you were headed straight to Vietnam almost right after hung heavy in our minds. What the movie doesn't convey is the total feeling of being on a real life Devil's Island with only two ways out. One was to graduate and we didn't even dare contemplate the other. It involved swamps filled with alligators and more than a few stories of recruits who didn’t make it. There's was plenty of physical abuse to be sure, and more constant than shown in the movie. But the real anvil over our head at all times was the threat of being "recycled." That means being sent back to a platoon behind you in the training schedule and you didn’t want to add a single day to your stay there. To add a couple of weeks was unthinkable. My nightmare dream consisted of one morning hearing my Drill Instructor screaming, “Private Spaghetti, pack your fucking trash!” (If you had a long or hard too pronounce last name like I did they always hung a new name on you.) There were two of us Italian kids in the platoon and the other one was Private Meatball, so I made out a little better. And so it happened usually once or twice a week. Some poor bastard would get the dreaded call and be recycled. Basically it meant they weren’t hacking it. And since we were all punished when a member of the platoon screwed up it was always preceded by some midnight platoon justice. The DI on duty on those nights must have certainly heard the commotion but they never intervened. And it was the only time I was there I recall doing anything autonomously. And some of those beatings were brutal to the point of hospitalization. And you couldn’t hold back even if you wanted to as it could come back on you later. But their actual leaving was an even more agonizing process to witness. They’d pack up their fighting gear, often in tears, into a steel bucket, their uniforms into a seabag, and sling their M-14 over a shoulder. Then they had to make that long walk down the center of the squad bay and out the hatch while we all stood at attention in front of our racks. I recall now always being relieved it wasn’t me, but knowing full well tomorrow it might be. And while we sort of understood what happened to them after that, for all intents and purposes they were just dead and never seen again. And we were glad to be rid of them. I don’t recall exactly how many were in our platoon when we started boot camp I’d say about 200. But when we graduated there was only 80, or so, of us left. Some of the stuff in the movie was true (I haven’t seen it in some years) but I think they depicted “suicide class.” We had two guys in our platoon try to commit suicide and fail. This prompted an hour long class on the proper and most efficient ways of doing away with yourself. It sounds absurd now but we were all taking copious notes. Some stuff was merely inconvenient like being made to smoke a whole cigarette with a steel wash bucket over your head. If you were lucky you’d start puking early one. But the DI’s liked irony too. If Private Meatball was in trouble and being punished I could always count on hearing, “What the fuck good is meatballs without spaghetti!” So I’d get hauled out there too. You didn’t have to screw up to get in trouble as punishment was just more or less inevitable. Another little trick they had up their sleeves was “Motivation Platoon.” While being recycled was reserved for guys trying as hard as they could and just not making it, motivation platoon, or “moat” as we called it, was for the hard cases. If you dared talk back, or refuse to follow an order, or just plain gave up (there’s no bell you can ring and quit like in SEAL BUD/s training) you were sent to motivation platoon for an entire week and then you got recycled. They also had “one day moat” and we all sooner or later got sent to that just for “because” but you weren’t recycled. When Meatball’s day came sure as shit they sent me with him. And it was pretty much the worst day of my young life. They gave us a shiny chrome plated steel helmet to wear and this separated us from the other recruits and was meant to embarrass us. To this day whenever I see someone with a chrome plated skydiving or motorcycle helmet I think, “What a frigging loser!” LOL. We spent three quarters of the day crawling face down through ditches filled with swamp water and some of the most foul smelling shit I ever came across. I still don’t want to know what was in those ditches. We carried ammo cans filled with sand in each hand while crawling and it was brutal. When we weren’t crawling we were holding those ammo cans at arms length which is pretty much impossible so that meant more crawling. And all the time the DI’s are screaming, punching and kicking at us and I came out of there black and blue all over. Late in the afternoon they hosed us off with cold water (it was winter) and sat us down to watch John Wayne movies (this was the motivation part.) We saw “Sands of Iwo Jima” but I noticed it was a heavily edited version with all the softer parts cut out. To say Meatball and I returned to our platoon more “motivated” than when we left is an understatement. I couldn’t imagine a full week of that shit like some guys faced. With about a month left of boot camp everything subtly changed. It was getting easier. It wasn’t that the DI’s became softer, they never let up on us until the last minute of the last day. It was us getting harder. I guess the lesson I learned from that is you can adapt to anything, which unknown to us, was exactly the lesson they wanted us to learn. As I look back on it now, Christ, it was 39 years ago, I still carry it in my heart. Anytime something calls for that little extra bit of physical or mental effort I can still put my head down and come up with it. And I’ve carried that gift from the Corps in me all these years. I know Marine boot camp isn’t like that anymore. A DI today who abuses his recruits in that fashion would be placed in the brig and then thrown out the Corps. But I remember my three Drill Instructor’s names and faces like it was yesterday and as funny as it sounds I can honestly say, and without any shame, I sort of love those guys. What prompted me to write all this was seeing this website. It just brought it all back like it was yesterday . . . http://media.gunaxin.com/a-tribute-to-full-metal-jackets-private-pyle/45050 NickD (Private Spaghetti)

>>Thanks for your opinions, Nick.

>>Scratch "Live Live Nude Nudes"!

Video just prior to the attack . . . http://www.wesh.com/video/22671481/index.html/index.html NickD

>>I 'think' it is also the highway where one of the SoCal serial killers left some bodies?????? NickDG??????

I've made my views known on this before so won't go into it again other than to say this . . . The old way of certifying new AFF candidates, while not perfect, worked. Three people running it and traveling the country gave it standardization. The kid at Skydive California had to meet the same standard as the kid at Skydive Ozarks. And the fact so many failed candidates would come on here after busting a course complaining of how unfair it was proved it was working. Funny, but you don't hear anyone complaining anymore. That alone should make you very afraid . . . NickD

I don't know it's current state but the Ortega Highway was just recently in the news as partially closed due to storm damage. And there's another storm due tonight (Thursday) so make sure and check before leaving the airport or wherever you're starting from. NickD

That's like people who call your house but it's a wrong number. For years I said, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid you have the wrong number." And got hung up on without so much as a, "Oh, I'm sorry." So now I just say right off the bat, "Wrong number, asshole!" I gave up trying to maintain civility in some cases . . . NickD

>>Treat others how they wish to be treated... not how you wish to treated.

Jeff, You are intelligent and eloquent. But watch this and come back, I'll wait . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRWJFvX03vg&feature=PlayList&p=36BEC6F77AE48784&index=0&playnext=1 NickD

Not buying it. We became more eco-friendly as a species just because it was "natural" we'd eventually get smart enough to do so. Even now there's holdouts. Like fat drunks that camo up and kill deer, and other animals, with the excuse, "But, they're like rodents here." Animals have it rough enough in the wild without hillbilly thrill killing . . . And don't say, "But we eat them!" It's not the frigging 18th century anymore! NickD

>>Pair of the best man made tits I've seen! (and never got paid)

>>you said FUTURE occupation didn't you?

I never count PARACHUTIST. If you can't get your mug in there you just ain't trying. The Hustler "spread" (boy that just works in a context sense ) was a double naked tandem with Anne as TM and some female porn star as passenger. And yes, it "was" a fun gear check! NickD

Don't blame me, I'm at least two generations (maybe three) removed from the current one. Plus you had two shots at spelling "criticize" right and blew it both times . . . NickD

LOL, but not as funny as you'd think. I know more than a few individuals who bypassed registration at Bridge Day in just that fashion . . . NickD

Sea World (and Zoos and Circuses too) are just modern equivalents of organ grinders panhandling for change with a live monkey on a leash. When I was a kid I played a lot of hooky from school. (Catholic school so it was a self preservation move.) But unlike my friends doing the same, who'd play stickball or sneak into the peep shows on 42nd street, I'd spend the day alone roaming the great halls of the American Museum of Natural History. It was right around the corner from my home in New York City. I loved the dioramas featuring all the world's great animals and the full scale giant blue whale they had hanging over my little head. I devoured every word on the adjacent plaques explaining how and where they lived, what they ate, etc. Sure, some of these animals were stuffed specimens, but at least they were truly educational to the millions of people who saw them and were totally out of their misery. On the other hand when my parents would drag me to the Central Park Zoo on a weekend I hated it. I never saw a happy looking animal in a zoo. And when these "businesses" use conservation as an excuse, well, it's very similar to the same reason outlaw motorcycle clubs do charity work. Plus Evolution dictates millions of species will die off, like so many have, so preserving some, especially just to make a buck, is a straw man argument. As an aside eventually public places, like museums, art galleries and such eventually adopted a no-unaccompanied minor rule during school hours to combat us hooky players. So I'd just wait outside for a teacher with a class on a field trip who were similar to my age. Then I'd just tag on to the last kid and breeze right in past the guards. This was essential practice in developing my Ninja skills that served me later in life when I started B.A.S.E. jumping . . . LOL! NickD

>>Well, if the second pic wasn't a photoshop...then maybe...

Wow, Dana was in Easy Rider? Ya got me beat . . . My old GF Anne Helliwell only made Hustler magazine! LOL . . . NickD

Another cold & wet storm heading in this week is preventing me from finishing up on Nina's paint job so the other day I'm puttering around the garage and surfing the web with a few brews. I was reading the "American Iron" (the magazine) web forum when I saw someone ask something which is the best motorcycle magazine? So I fired off the below. But when I hit post I received a message it was being held pending moderation. I'd posted there before without getting that, so thought oh well, this will never see the light of day. But a few days later there it was. I gotta say, since it was critical of their own magazine, I respect an outfit like that . . . ------------------------------------------------------------ Which magazine would I suggest? It depends on where you are in time. For the most part all the mainstream motorcycle magazines share the same traits and flaws. If new to bikes it's mostly all good, if you've been around a while it's mostly all bad. These magazines are, first and foremost, adwells. That is they live and die on selling advertising space. So that means no matter what they say - you the reader comes second. When Big Bear Choppers had necks snapping off their frames due to poor welds and a government initiated recall was announced not one of these magazines that took Big Bear advertising said a peep about it at the time. But they all kept running Big Bear’s advertising copy. Reviews of accessories are tainted too. You get pablum straight from the manufacture, "It's the lightest, it's the strongest, it's the best, and it’s the most innovative!" Or you get a staff writer that can always find something good to say about anything while leaving out the flaws. Just once I'd like to see someone call a product a piece of dung. It’s never going to happen though as there's always a chance that product manufacturer might become future advertising revenue. Bike reviews from big manufacturers? If they slam a bike too hard, or at all, they never get another one to review. So all you get is happy talk. One-off bike reviews owned by individuals? Some of the photographs can be interesting idea wise if you're building a machine yourself. But if you're a bolt on accessory type biker with a stocker, it's just so much eye candy. Not to mention that "Hey, I'm a writer" first paragraph of dribble you always have to wade through with those articles. If interested in the bike being featured start with the second paragraph and save an inevitable sigh. Then there are the front end columnists. Man, where to start? It seems they get a schedule of stories for the year. It's the same “Spring Cleaning your Bike” story followed by the "Brushing up on your Skills” piece every April - year in and year out ad nauseam. Then there's the obligatory "How to Photograph your Bike" and so boilerplate it's obviously written by someone who wouldn't know a f-stop if they tripped over one. And the always perplexing "Where are we Going?" story that purports to map out the future of motorcycling but never gets it right. Travel and run stories? The former is always about some ball of yarn off Route 22 (or something equally non-enticing) and you can always get better travel info elsewhere. The latter, well, I’ll save you some time. Here’s how they all go. “We took off late, met up with Tiny, hit some weather, got something to eat, went to a party, and came home exhausted and vowing to go again next year.” And now there's a new wrinkle in many motorcycle magazines. Woman columnists. Probably because some "Where are we Going?" piece mentioned more woman are riding and they realized they can up their readership and thus their advertising rates. As a male reader if I wanted a female point of view I'd sit in the living room with my old lady not out in the garage with a brew and a motorcycle magazine. The “How To” articles? I think in all the years I’ve been reading these magazines they were featuring what I happened to be doing, well, never. Sure, you’ll cut the articles out for later but you’ll never find them when later comes, trust me. These pieces are also thinly veiled advertisements for independent shops, or accessory manufactures, and a swap of publicity for labor on some project bike the magazine is doing. Throw in the tiny black & white photographs and cryptic captions, never mind it’s not even the model bike you own, and it’s another waste of space. But of course it’s not really. All this filler serves up more pages and more advertising space. How about the non-mainstream motorcycle magazines? The ones like “The Horse” and “Easy Rider?” I once, many years ago, found Easy Rider to be the best magazine out there. But I grew up and Easy Rider did not. (And why I said up front it depends on where you are in time.) Both of these magazines are stuck in perpetual adolescence with their only saving grace being they show boobs. So what’s the best magazine out there today? I won’t leave you in suspense, it’s this one “American Iron” flaws and all. And I say that simply on the strength of Donny Peterson’s “Techline” articles. They are worth the cover price on every issue. Lastly, here’s one final tip. When I look at the piles and piles of motorcycle magazines sitting in my garage I realized (finally) I could actually have that $3500 Baker six speed, and a lot of other cool stuff, these magazines advertise, if I’d just stop buying the damn magazines . . . NickD

I get reminded everyday I don't live in the world I was born into. In stores and restaurants I always say, "May I have," instead of, "Can I get," and that usually goes okay. But one day I stopped to hold open a door for two teenage girls and under her breath one of them called me a, "Perv!" NickD

>>dorks sliding over the ice with some stone thing