peacefuljeffrey

What Lainey is thinking of is "terminal velocity" but it merely applies in an atmosphere, not in a vacuum. That terminal velocity is a function of both the mass of the body and the resistance it gives to the air (its drag). Imagine if what you were saying is true: two people under identical canopies should descend at the same vertical speed too, even despite being different masses -- if greater mass did not translate into greater terminal velocity. Now, this would be different on the moon: a person with an inflated (or "spread out") canopy would fall no slower than a person whose main is in the container. If you believe the myth about objects of different masses falling just as fast as each other -- particularly if they are of the same volume (i.e. different densities) then try to imagine if a kickball and an equal sized bowling ball would both reach the same terminal velocity in freefall. Certainly they would not. The kickball's mass gives it a certain strength of pull toward the center of the earth, and once it speeds up enough so that the drag equals that pull, it stops accelerating. "Terminal velocity." The bowling ball will reach a much higher velocity before drag overcomes its pull toward the earth. This kind of physics is also why your car levels out at a certain speed each time you press the gas just a bit more. Extra gas means more force in the direction of the wind: the car speed up until the additional drag from the wind equals the extra gas you gave the car. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

OMG -- BLATANT thread-hijack here. How did this degenerate into a talk about football in Nebraska?! Back on track: "Southern California" is not a state, bucko. There are parts of CA you wouldn't be jumping in during January, aren't there? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Barry, are you just a troll? You list Pahokee as your location, and a D license with NAMBLA as your licensing organization, and you spelled the abbreviation for Skydive South Beach "SoBO"... Yet here you're posting to demonstrate your utter lack of humor, and your irritation about people posting offensive material?? I mean... NAMBLA?! You thought that was funny?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Jeez, someone lend this guy a sense of fuggin' HUMOR. Reminds me of a fridge magnet I saw recently. Guy standing at a cashier's counter. Cashier is saying, "This is a feminist bookstore: there is no humor section." Oops! I just made a chauvinist post! Must cauterize fingertips! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Florida: "Sure it's flat as shit and boring to look at, but where else can you jump when it's -15F everywhere else?" - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

The way I'm getting this logic from Kallend and others is, "Wahh, it's anti-freedom to ban these model rocket engines, so because I'm so mad about that I'll support even more erosions of freedom, like the freedom to own various types of guns." Great logic there. How do you all like it when the anti-gun "logic" is turned on you and YOUR hobby?: "Why would anyone need such a powerful assault rocket engine? Surely there is nothing wrong with being limited to smaller engines, you can still have your little space-man fantasies with smaller engines, meanwhile the public will be protected from all the harm we fantasize you would do with the larger ones." In truth, I fail to see how model rockets capable of reaching 5,000 feet -- let alone in "seconds" -- is at all safe. What means is employed to assure that no air traffic might be jeopardized by your launch of a rocket that travels in the HUNDREDS of miles per hour, to an altitude higher than most GA pilots bother to fly? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

KENNESAW! MORTON GROVE (For those who don't know, Morton Grove, IL banned handgun ownership. I just thought this'd be a good counterpoint to Kallend mentioning Kennesaw, which passed a largely symbolic resolution to require all households to have a gun.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, my sympathy to you if you're being tormented by nightmares. Me, I've always sort of welcomed them. I like to wake from a nightmare and think of it as a really cool scary movie that my mind put on for me. Usually I find myself marveling at their content and direction. I've had a few recurring kinds over my life, but most of them didn't start until I was in college. I occasionally have dreams in which I die. Yep, that's right. It's a myth (from the movie "Dreamscape") that if you die in a dream you really die. Pish-posh, as Mr. Burns would say. Some of my deaths have been by nuclear bomb, snake-bite, self-inflicted gunshot (it was either that or I'd be killed by the Terminator), falling into a puddle of molten metal from a meteorite shower (the meteorites hit the ground and made puddles like mercury), and even ritual sacrifice. The nuke and snake-bite things have recurred, each time with variations. Once I was on a building top in Israel (never in reality; only in this dream) with a group of friends, and a terrorist nuke blew up a nearby building and we got hit by the shockwave. The dying dreams are not traumatic, just really really fascinating. I love getting the feeling like I'm experiencing life after death -- the "other side." In most of them, I end up conscious and still alive in spirit form, standing right where my body had been moments before. Usually there's no pain involved, either. One recent dream death resulted in the dream becoming lucid. Of the unsettling, upsetting variety, though, are the ones in which my mom is still alive and suffering from cancer. She died (real life) in 2001 from colon/liver cancer. I've had recurring dreams in which she's still alive, very sick, and suffering. Needless to say, I don't enjoy those dreams. Sometimes I start to try to talk about her terminal illness with her. Other times, I spend the dream trying to keep myself from crying over it in front of her. That's the goal of the dream: I feel like "I mustn't let her see me sad or it'll make her sadder." I had one dream in which she appeared to me as a ghost, in a supermarket near the eggs. She came walking toward me in her fur coat and sunglasses, walking with the help of her nurse. She couldn't speak to me, because it was taking all of her spiritual energy to become visible to me. (This was something I just "knew" in the dream.) That dream was kinda reassuring. But I suppose I'll still have some of the sad ones. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You want to go to www.boxelder.com and check them out. There are four free MP3s to download, and you should get any of their CDs. This band is awesome! I recommend the albums "Love Light Affection" and "Live Under the Sun" most. The former has a song called "Fly" on it that does something wonderful to me whenever I hear it. "Know you're god in everywhere, the universe, between the twilights -- caused it, but pretend not, just to play... realizing love like you've never been hurt, been hurt before -- a brand new meaning peering off that ledge inside your mind... stepping off to FLY... FLY...so high!" Okay, now I have to put that song on... Enjoy. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Same here. And isn't the city of Morton Grove in Illinois -- the one that banned handgun ownership outright? It's ILLINOIS I hate, not just Chicago. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Um, folks, we seem to be losing sight of the thread topic... It's not "what do you dislike," it's what do MANY LIKE that you can't understand why they like it. So in other words, it has to be something that's popular but you can't imagine why. Things like "money grubbers" and "self-centered people," -- are these things that "many like"? Dunno 'bout that... ---Jeffrey -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Cigarettes/cigars, front wheel drive, condominimums. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

In a vacuum, they'd be correct. In a vacuum, they'd be dead. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Maybe they are confused by the idea of two objects of different mass having the same acceleration due to gravity in an airless void. Add an atmosphere and things change because of drag. If you dropped a feather and a brick on the moon, they will fall at the same rate because there is no drag on either. The moon's pull (actually a relative pull between either pair of objects, moon-and-brick or moon-and-feather) is stronger between the moon and the brick than it is between the moon and the feather -- BUT -- The brick has more mass than the feather, so therefore more INERTIA. It takes longer to get going, like a big fat guy in a race against a small skinny guy. May end up reaching the same speed, but takes more to get it happening. The brick, being pulled harder because of the interaction between masses, thus accelerates slower, proportionally, than the feather does. The feather is quicker to take off because of its low inertia, but then slower because of its lesser mass. So a massive object (brick) gets more pull but has more lard-ass to get moving; the less massive object (feather) can get up and moving quicker because it has less mass but it doesn't have as strong an attraction to the moon. The two cancel out, and fall together. At least, that's how a friend recently explained it to me, refreshing my memory of the physics class I struggled through in high school. Hope it helped you. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Pshahh! What Valentines plans?? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You're welcome. I was gonna say I hope it gets easier for you, but I already know that it will. I remember seeing others going for the door, and it used to kinda squick me out a bit to see them near it for extended periods. Of course, you can train that feeling away by simply remembering that they're all experienced skydivers with PARACHUTES on! What the hell could be so wrong with being near an open door if the worst that happens is that your skydive starts a little early?! (Granted, the door is closed until at least a few thousand feet.) I came to relish the idea of being near the door, even for the whole trip up. It's really very similar to when I'm flying a Cessna and looking out the window. There's little to no difference in the view, and there's the security of having a skydive rig on. But on every skydive, I continue to pause to make sure I'm breathing deeply and relaxing. I still think of the hand-thing that Dave Cole did with me on my AFP jumps. It works. I've even taken the hands of other people to do it, now.

Wayyy cool, Kelly! Glad you had fun. I was out jumping too -- caught two rides and had a good time myself. "Which plane" never comes up, since all we fly is the Super Otter. I was wearing a borrowed RW suit (since I've yet to get myself one), and found out in a funny frustrating way that it is NOT appropriate for my sit-flying practice. All my other sit freefalls have been in shorts and t-shirt. The booties on this suit caught so much air that I couldn't do much more than "freak fly" (sitting butt-low). I did some tracking and a couple of loops and had some nice landings in our freshly-mowed circle. It was just a super plus to have the fun of skydiving on Friday the 13th. The last time I did that was in 1991, way before I really got into skydiving. I knew everything would be just fine. Kelly and I can't be the only ones who jumped on Friday. Who else did? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

My 48th jump was with my own rig. Prior to that it was almost all rentals, with just a couple of jumps on with a rig I was thinking about buying from a guy. I first got a used altimeter for $50 (GREAT deal on an alti that woulda cost about $140 new). I got a used helmet for $150. I got my rig, which is a new Javelin with 2 jumps on it, a new reserve, a new CYPRES 2 and a used Lotus 170 with around 200-300 jumps on it -- all told $4000. (Breakdown: the container/harness was $2000, the Lotus was $1000, and the CYPRES 2 another $1000). Since I'll have the CYPRES 2 and the Javelin for a good long time, I'm quite happy with what I paid. I'll keep the Lotus for a few hundred jumps before I switch to a Samurai or Sensei. Now that I fly an airlock, I don't want something that's not an airlock. (Thanks, Brian G.!) Make sure you run your potential purchases by experienced friends at the DZ. You can learn about stuff to avoid, and get counsel on what would be good for you. Enjoy! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Everybody just needs to remember to BREATHE My instructor used to put his hand on top of mine and clasp it, then raise it up as we inhaled, paused, lowered it as we exhaled. We'd do this three times, and on the third time as he lowered our hands, we'd make our hands come down in a spiral. It became a ritual and it really did help to relax me. Don't forget, you're up there where the air is thin -- you NEED extra breath just to break even. Deep in, deep out. Focus and clear your mind. Fear goes away. Do what you got up there to do. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Then you've never had an adequate case of blue-balls to convince you otherwise. Dry humping is the devil's creation, man. If it doesn't lead to the real thing, you gonna suffer some, son. Having trouble relating to all this "scared/didn't know what I was doing the first time" stuff. Man was I ready when I got down to it! I'd been reading all I could about it, fantasizing all I could about it, learning all I could about it -- and when it happened, I was IN there! And none of this slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am crap, either... Foreplay, during-play, afterplay... It was fiiiine! That's why I wouldn't give it up. I only wish skydiving came as naturally as sex did! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'm disgusted by the hijacking. I wanted to make a point that we all need to get along and you perverts took it to the gutter....spankings for everyone!! *HAPPY DANCE!!* NO SHIT!!! Not just the "dancing in my chair" , not even the "dancing ON my chair", more like the Snoopy dancing to Linus playin the piano Happy Dance. Hey, you mean SCHROEDER playing piano! Linus toted the blanket around. Now, Sally... she was into the luvin'... rrrOWrrrr! Count me in for the regular luvin' or the perverted luvin' -- just let me give/get some luv somehow! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I remember after the first time I had sex I thought, "So this is what all the fuss was about?". I remember after the first time I jumped, right after the canopy opened I yelled out loud, "Holy shit, I can't believe I just did it!" I'm still very vocal under a freshly opened canopy. My reaction was, "That was worth all the fuss!" Maybe you should have someone video you and then get some coaching! Something's not being done right. Hey, you bringing that beer you owe?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I think I do remember hearing that that is a new rule. It's about fuckin' time, too. The only problem is, it is a clear infringement on 1st amendment rights to say that they can't run ads speaking about issues or specific candidates within 60 days of the election -- traditionally the time when you used to see most such ads. Since when is it constitutional to tell people they are not allowed to get their opinions out to the people just because the election is within 60 days?! Besides, those 60 days is when you will now see the liberal newspapers and t.v. shows HAMMERING their opponents and boosting their favorite candidates because guess what -- there's no restriction on the MEDIA from talking about the election issues. Only on the people who themselves are running, and on any political action group (ACLU, NRA, AAA, AARP, etc.). This McCain Feingold bullshit is BAD LAW. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

This is not the time To dwell on computer stuff Must go out to jump Too much time wasted Reading online foolishness Should be at the 'zone - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What's going wrong on your landings? - I think I'm spoiled, because my landings have been really fine lately. I attribute it to flight training i.e. knowing how to land an airplane helps. Good luck figuring out what you need to fix.