DZBone

At least we tend not to take out large numbers of spectators... Story

Nice job, A! Can't wait to have you in another botched dz.com record attempt! haha Seriously, I can't wait to see what you can do when you put together skydiving with your obvious talent for photography. Another Norman Kent?

AA, these feelings are perfectly natural, and are something all of us have gone through at one point or another. It's just a part of being a skydiver! This is just your body's way of telling you that alcohol and drugs are poisons to your body. Your body has a fight or flight response. You can either "fight" the feeling that you are going to hurl, surpressing the urge, or you can try "flight", ignoring it, trying to keep moving, making some skydives in an attempt to run away from the feeling. The problem is that the feeling is inside you. You cannot run away from you, you cannot fight what is naturally happening to you. What you can do, however, is what I call the "flow" response. Let the feeling of nausea flow through you, feel it, let the puke just flow out of you naturally. Let more alcohol and drugs flow in to take its place. Surf the waves of pain and sickness and use them as a tool to let you reach higher highs. Once you can learn to do this, you will know that you are a try alcoholic and drug abuser, and can party with the best of them. It won't help your skydiving any though, I'm afraid.

Oh, gosh yes. I meant the 2% stuff you get in the drug store for first aid at home, not an industrial-strength oxidizer! Oops.

Yup. This was something I had never heard of before. [plug for sympathy gear] I was going to get me one of these, but now I'm so traumatized, I don't think I will [/plug]. Seriously, tho. We were just breaking off from a four-way. We had done a free exit out the back of the skyvan, and Nick was second out. He hesititated [generosity]a bit[/generosity], so he, Albitross and I had a lot of work to do to catch up to Shark. Nick and Albi went head-down a couple of times, but made it down. I was just getting [generosity]close[/generosity] at 4k, so I lurked to see where the open quadrant was going to be. I saw Nick turn and start to track, when it fired. At first I thought he had just pulled in the center, but then I saw the freebag go. On the ground, it was obvious what had happened, just not why. The reserve closing loop had been cut by the Cypres, and his handles and main p/c were stowed normally. Everyone found this very odd. He's going to send it back to the manufacturer with a heater. Strange.

I'll give a full report next week, but after a dozen jumps this weekend, I am pretty happy with it. One thing that has been consistent is end-cell closures, sometimes to the point of inducing spins, sometimes taking long enough to clear to be "worrisome" but not "scary". They always cleared with a few tugs on the brakes, maybe a stall to reinflate, but then the brakes are unstowed, making it a hassle to collapse the slider, whine, whine. Other than that, it opens very nice, packs nice, flies great! I hope to get some advice from you guys or Dan on the end-cell thing, and try it again this weekend. Blue Skies Carl

How about a dorky frap hat?

Note to self: cancel nipple-piercing appointment. Hydrogen Peroxide. If it's bubbling, it's working.

PIE!!!!! >splat< Dude, got ya big time! yuk

Again, if that's the case, you aren't doing it right!

I know, it's "kudos". It's also Atair, but too bad. Sue Me! haha Anyway, I am really impressed. Susan from Atair called me yesterday afternoon to say that they were ready to ship out the demo they had for me. I wanted to jump it this weekend so I asked if she could send it overnight. No problem! The hotel just called, it just arrived. Dude, it's like 9:30 in the morning! This is so cool!! Not only will I have it for the weekend, but I can sneak out early from work and jump it this afternoon! Waaaahooooo!! Big points for Atair and Susan. I'll let you all know how the canopy is next week. Carl

He may have also used a silicone spray.

Oh, well then you aren't doing it right!

If you can't compare the safety of skydiving to driving, you can't compare the rapture of sex with skydiving. It's all good, everyone needs more of both!

Well, I'm sure he had some interesting weight and balance changes he couldn't figure out!

I'll be there! And I can't wait. Is it Saturday yet? Work. Grrrrrrr. Carl

Awesome! We'll be there waiting for you! I hate to do this, but in the interest of actually not missing each other, here is a picture of me taken at Perris a few weeks ago. It's not a great shot (subject?), but it is me. See you there!

Oh, good idea! We may have to use 200-mph tape, tho.

Well, maybe not. But, we are ready to set the record for the largest formation of all dz.commers! Those of you who have let me know you are attending should be getting an email from me with the details and contact info. For the rest of you, it's not too late! We will be organizing whomever is able to be there, even if we have to split off smaller groups. Again, the goals are safety, fun and kicking serious booty! We will meet after the sunset load on Friday at the Bombshelter to plan and imbibe. We will start at 9am on Saturday by manifest. If you come later, look for the group of geeks, or have manifest page me or Mark Brown. See you there! Carl

What a bummer. Hope this ends up being a catalyst for positive change for you!

Nice one, kiddo. One more to go. No pressure, but you should have quite the audience there for your graduation! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Oh, he's smarter than that! % telnet dropzone.com 80 Trying 216.122.89.120... Connected to dropzone.com (216.122.89.120). Escape character is '^]'. HEAD / HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:07:32 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.1.1 SSL/1.15 PHP/4.0b2 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html Connection closed by foreign host. %

In case you didn't get the sarcasm in the other posts... Um, no. None of the airlines I know of have a problem with bringing gear on board. I travel frequently with mine, and have never even been asked about it (except as piece of luggage - couldn't take two on once - omigod, do I trust them more with my gear or the laptop?). My regular-sized gear bag with one rig in it (and all the other junk I haul around in it) fits nicely in the overhead. I haven't had to use it yet. Good thing, as I don't pack a bail-out bottle, acetyline torches, or a full kevlar body suit. Carl

I think I would go right for the door.

OK, mini statistics lesson here. Mind you, I'm not an expert, but this I do know... You can't say "oh, I had a mal, now I won't have one for 600 jumps". Nor can you say "I haven't had a mal in 100,000 jumps, I'm due!". Every jump has the exact same odds of including a malfunction, no matter what has happened previously, or what might happen in the future. Note I am speaking in pure terms here, obviously the packing, weather, body position, etc. change the odds drastically. In fact, there is nothing about the jump other than real, physical factors that will cause you to have a malfunction. Think of it in terms of coin tosses. If you happen to flip a perfectly-balanced coin several times in a row, and have gotten heads each time (highly unlikely), what are the chances you will get tails the next time? The answer is 50/50! The coin doesn't "know" that the previous flips were all heads, there is no "statistical pressure" building up that will force the molecules in the coin to move in a certain way to make the coin land heads-down. (aside: the apparent paradox here is solved by understanding what the "events" are - one flip is different than a series of flips - getting heads five times in a row is highly unlikely, but any one flip always has the same odds). OK, so in malfunction terms, there is no "statistical pressure" building up for the lucky 10,000-jump skydiver, nor is there any released for Michele, or someone who just had a mal on their last jump. The only factors are environmental, usually packing and body position. Statistics can't cause or prevent the malfunction, there are no inherent reasons for having one. I would guess that having a malfunction probably lowers the odds of having another soon, as it will cause you to review the factors that led to it and correct them. Unless you blow it off, then it will increase the odds, as the same factors will exist on subsequent jumps. Live and learn and live! Phew. Needed the coffee to make the late drive home, but this is the unintended side effect. Sorry. Carl