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With the number of gun posts you provide on a skydiving sight you might want to rethink your priorities, or look at what the good Dr. is saying. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Individuals and small groups can always be wonderful. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

skydivesanmarcos.com and Carene is an excellent packer and damn fine lookin' young lady as well. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

You can legitimately deduct hobby expenses as long as they do not exceed hobby income. Granted a business loss is even better but if you want to play it real safe you can offset coaching income with jumping expenses. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

It makes the shooter even more scum than he is. At least he believes in what he is doing, no matter how wrong he is. If OSB asked the question about shooting Bush you would be outraged. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

www.kgsr.com "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Credibility is in the details. I don't know if motorcycle racing is more or less dangerous than skydiving but the insurance companies do. They don't base their rates on exagertions. They base them on statistical facts. Believe me they want your money and they don't want to pay any out so if the odds are in favor of paying out they will either jack up the rates or deny coverage. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

My guess is that this poll is driven by the one about the waiver. So if I can't check the reserve you are about to rent me and I sign the waiver and I have to go to reserve and moldy socks come out then I can't sue. Or more to the point my family can't sue. But I couldn't be responsible for my own gear because I couldn't check the reserve. "That's some catch that Catch-22." "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Y Cymro available here "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

What is really fun is that heterosexuals seem to be moving away from marriage and homsexuals, in the US anyway, want to embrace it. For better or worse, America's a nation of singletons Married couples become minority as marriage issues heat up By Rick Montgomery KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE Sunday, February 22, 2004 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- "Politics does not make strange bedfellows," Groucho Marx once declared. "Marriage does." What about the bedfellows of politics and marriage? Against the backdrop of America's ongoing cultural feud, Washington's romance with "the sanctity of marriage" tends to reach hot-and-heavy status with each election cycle. In 2004, however, the state of marriage is no joking matter. Census data and surveys show an institution in sickness more than in health. Cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births keep going up. A staggering majority of young Americans view matrimony as an endgame steeped in as much risk as romance. Their parents had viewed it, for better or worse, as a practical starting point for adulthood. As such, the nation's demographic profile is poised to cross an important line just about election time. Married-couple households, which defined nearly eight of every 10 homes in the 1950s, could slip below the 50 percent mark. Ward and June Cleaver, welcome to the minority. Despite reams of research on the benefits of healthy marriages -- married people on the whole live longer and experience less depression than the unmarried do, and their children are less likely to commit crimes than the children of relationships untied -- more Americans are opting out or never getting in. "We're on the verge of becoming -- at least in the legal sense -- a nation of singletons," reports BusinessWeek. Now witness another minority, the homosexual community, some of whose members want to get married. To opposing groups, the prospect of giving gay couples the public platter of tax breaks, health-care benefits, child-custody and inheritance rights -- which have been the domain of the legally married -- threatens everything. "This issue is really the ultimate battle," said Peter Sprigg, director of marriage and family strategy for the Family Research Council, which opposes same-sex marriages. Galvanized by recent court rulings paving the way for gay marriages in Massachusetts, social conservatives are promising a hard, divisive fight to define marriage -- by amending the Constitution, if necessary -- as the union of one man and one woman. Passage of constitutional amendments face more obstacles than lawmakers are usually willing to tackle. But for supporters of the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment, lip service won't do. "This is going to be an issue, much like abortion, where it's a defining thing," said Kristi Hamrick of the conservative group American Values. "You can't take a pass on abortion. You can't take a pass on marriage." All of which leaves gay rights activists saying they are baffled. "Here we have a segment of the population looking to embrace marriage," said Mark Shields, a spokesman for the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, "but being denied it." A legal status Today's debate goes far beyond matters of sexual orientation. It goes to what some critics -- on the political left and the right -- call social engineering: President Bush recently proposed spending $1.5 billion in federal funds to encourage wedded bliss through premarital counseling and educational programs. It goes to the future of nuclear families. "All other things being equal, it's better for kids to be raised by two parents instead of one," said Andrew Cherlin, a public policy professor at Johns Hopkins University. "But Americans also believe strongly that the government ought not interfere with other people's personal lives." It goes to messages in popular culture. "We're approaching relationships as a consumer issue rather than a covenant issue," said Deborah Smith, a sociology professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. It goes to generational attitudes. "In the past, marriage was seen as a very important institution in the sense of providing for children," said David Popenoe, director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. "You ask old people today, and they say young people aren't committed enough to see a marriage through." Some groups are even questioning why states still affix their governmental stamps on such personal relationships. "Our question would be, what's the government doing in the business of marriage in the first place?" said Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Given the state of marriage today, in light of no-fault divorce, it tends to be little more than a tax status." In some European nations, where marriage rates have plunged to unprecedented levels, various forms of "marriage lite" have been on the books for more than a decade. Couples in Denmark can opt for registered partnerships; half of the children there are now born out of wedlock. French couples can sign "civil solidarity pacts" that either party may dissolve on three months' notice. Three U.S. states -- Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana -- have moved in the opposite direction, enacting "marriage covenant" laws aimed at making divorce less easy. Couples choosing to enter into covenants, at the time they marry or later, agree to relinquish some of the grounds for no-fault divorce and are required to get counseling before calling it quits. Bush's $1.5 billion proposal for strengthening marriage is slated to be worked into the welfare reauthorization bill. Several states already are dabbling in matchmaking through welfare, offering low-income couples subsidies for premarital counseling. West Virginia pays a $100 monthly bonus to married welfare recipients. "Encouraging people into marriage is a good idea so long as we know those people and their children will have healthy relationships. And when do we ever know that?" Cherlin said. "West Virginia offers just the kind of incentive that drives a woman on welfare into marrying an abusive man because she needs the money." Why tie? The latest annual report of Rutgers' National Marriage Project offered "some good news and some bad news" on the matrimony front. The good news is that for the first time in four decades, the percentage of U.S. children in two-married-parent families rose in 2003, ever so slightly, from 68 percent to 69 percent. Contributing to the uptick are higher-than-average marriage rates among Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing minority group. And U.S. divorce rates remain level after peaking two decades ago, largely because more couples are choosing to live together -- and to split up -- without any official knot to tie or untie. The number of cohabiting couples soared 70 percent just in the 1990s, and it continues to climb. Still, "marriage has enjoyed something of a comeback in popular culture," conclude authors Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. "From hit movies like 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' to top-rated dating reality shows like 'The Bachelor' to best sellers on sexier marriage, popular attention has turned to the pursuit and pleasures of matrimony." And that, says their study, is part of the bad news: "Indeed, though Americans aspire to marriage, they are ever more inclined to see it as an intimate relationship between adults rather than as a necessary social arrangement for children." A 2001 Gallup Poll bore out that prevailing view, especially among young adults. Nearly 80 percent of American men and women ages 20 to 29 disagreed with the statement that "the main purpose of marriage is having children." An astonishing 94 percent of unmarried respondents in the same age group agreed that "when you marry, you want your spouse to be your soul mate, first and foremost." And eight in 10 said they believed the special person destined to be their own soul mate is somewhere "out there." Keeping things neat While the origins of legal marriage are murky (by some accounts, ancient Mesopotamia drafted the first marriage laws to keep fathers from fleeing), its main function today is to provide order when things go wrong. Who should care for the kids after a divorce? Whose medical bills are covered when only one spouse can afford insurance? Who gets Social Security and inheritance benefits when somebody dies? Strictly unromantic stuff. "Yes, a competent attorney can draw up any agreement" for unmarried couples, said Kansas City lawyer Michael Dailey. But that won't keep the government away when children are caught in a breakup. "Child custody isn't like passing on the family puppy," Dailey said. "Whether you have a contract or not, the courts are going to get involved and look at the best interests of that child." Recent polls suggest two-thirds of Americans believe marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman. Citing those surveys, social conservatives argue that gay rights groups are relying on judges to trump the public will. It wouldn't be the first time. Until a Supreme Court ruling in 1967 expressly forbade it, 16 states refused interracial marriages. Still other polls show a majority of Americans opposed to government encouraging or promoting conventional marriages. It's a matter of whom you ask and how you ask. "The issue (gay marriage) matters intensely to some people, but it hasn't resonated at all as a burning issue with the general public," said Carroll Doherty, an editor at the Pew Research Center. In a Pew poll conducted at the time of the State of the Union address, Americans overall ranked the question of gay marriages next to last in a priority list of national issues, "right down there with space exploration," Doherty noted. But among respondents reporting strong Christian viewpoints, 40 percent considered the marriage issue vital. "Marriage is a natural institution" as well as a legal one, said Sprigg of the Family Research Council. "It takes the combination of a man and a woman to contribute to the growth of the human race." "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Yeah, yours. Nobody made you use a packer. Nobody made you use a packer that you couldn't trust. Most people are perfectly capable of packing their own main parachute. If you flip someone a five-spot and get screwed, well, shame on you. The rig was left at the DZ for maintenance of some sort. Was packed at a time when the owner was not around. Sure he could have opened and repacked himself but in our normal lives we don't do things like that do we? Do you take this same attitude in all things in life? If your breaks fail after a break job do you just say, damn I should have done it myself? "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

It also beats the hell out a 182 and it is good to have a round on days when there is not enough business to fill a bigger plane. I am on my to jump that GC!

Look at it his way, he obviously liked the photo. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sorry, guess that last remark should have been directed at mww115. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

BTW I have word that the Grand Caravan was there today even though the Otter was gone, just as Phil said. Damn. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ken, why don't you explain your agenda so we can all decide who's side we are on? Or is just bad for the other side to be secrative and it is fine for you to be the same. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

No, I'd look at the packing data card and seal and assume that the rigger who packed it isn't out to get me. I'm comfortable with trusting "a" rigger; I'm comfortable taking on the risk of not physically seeing the reserve. And if it were packed with socks instead of a canopy and I were injured or died, I or my heirs wouldn't sue. The same risk I take every time I jump. Actually less because I don't open up the main either. But if I pulled the "rip cord" and laundry came out, even if my reserve worked (get the scenario) I would sue. There is a certain responsibilty on the part of a business to make sure the basics are OK. A person I know opened his main and was flying backwards. Perfect opening except the main was hooked up 180 degrees out. He cut away and landed fine. Got a lot of crap from "more expreinced jumpers" who said they would have landed it. Packer even admmitted he had a little to much to drink before repacking the main after some sort of total disconnect of the whole system, maybe a reserve repack but I honestly don't know. Did he sue, no because he walked away. But give me a break a drunk packer is someones responsibility. I don't want to hear about contract labor either. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

So if tomorrow you had to rent some gear you would open up the reserve to make sure there were no socks packed in there? "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Guess you don't want me to order dessert or coffee or anything else. A simple "Do want something else or should I bring the check?" might be OK but even that is pushing it, especaily at diner. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

52% (Dixie). Barely into the Dixie category. That's what nearly 20 years in Texas will do to a born and bred Yankee. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sorry but even in my most liberal moments I can't see this as "big brother." "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

No wonder it took you so long to get it done. If you people had been awake while jumping it might have been easier!

I went the golf glove route too. Got some "winter" ones. Nice grippy palms and fingers and I could still feel the hackey. "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

http://www.bodyflight.net/adren-l-n.html $30 for 3 minutes "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I would have prefered that we not go in in the first place. Lacking that I would have prefered a plan for what to do after we toppled Saddam. Something a little more detailed than "foster democracy." Maybe this country isn't ready for democracy. I don't really think you can impose democracy. Maybe it needs a king, or maybe it needs to be a bunch of smaller countries, or maybe it needs some other solution. Our government should have thought all of that out ahead of time. Fixed a typo "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes