davedlg

yes and no...water is H2O so there has to be oxygen... I think skycat means no free oxygen - so the oxygen fugacity is very low. That's a plus, means the stuff under water won't rust as fast.... [geeky environmental engineer]The rate at which the oxygen dissolves into the water is a constant based on the temperature of the water and the surface area of the water touching air. The oxygen is quickly absorbed by the bacteria and such. The rate at which the oxygen is absorbed is called Bilogical Oxygen Demand (BOD). This is a primary indicator of how much bacterical activity there is in water and is one of the major ways that wastewater treatment plant effluent is tested. Right now, I suspect the BOD levels in the water down there is through the roof. Once all the oxygen is out of the water at a certain depth, the anaerobic bacteria will take over. Anaerobic bacteria are what cause dead lakes and can even kill people when lakes "turn over". It's gonna get really, really nasty down there for a little while. [/geeky environmental engineer]

Here's the clicky: http://csob.berry.edu/faculty/nmiller/sports_survey.htm

I had my girlfriend (a law student) do some research on it and the only thing she found was a civil trademark infringement case filed against Skyride by Skydive Arizona on 8/26/05. It's case number: 2:05cv2656 filed in US District Court, Arizona district if anyone is interested.

I have used a screwdriver, wood screw, and pliers. Screw the woodscrew into the cork then pull it out with the pliers. That usually works for me.

I think this needs bumping yet again.

Lately, I have found that it is best to check all the regular sites ie. travelocity, orbitz, expedia, etc and find the airline and flights that are the cheapest, then go to the specific airline's website and book the ticket through them. This is usually $5-$10 cheaper and often you get additional benefits such as double frequent flier miles and such.

Last time I had a one hour layover in vegas I walked up to the slots with $0.75 and walked away with $15

Wow...It doesn't look like there will be a whole lot of DZ.commers comming. I know there will be many people there from both of the dropzones that I frequent though. I am excited - it will be a great boogie. I will most likely get my 100th jump there too

I gotta jump in and agree with Mary about the Jet Boil. It's amazing how efficient those little stoves are. For those who have never seen one Here's the webpage. The stove and pot are integrated and the pot has a heat exchanger that fits right onto the top of the stove. I love my whisperlite, but the jetboil is much faster. It weighs a little more, but to have water or soup boiling within a few minutes is definatly worth the added weight!

When I was a whitewater raft guide you wouldnt believe the questions I would get asked. One of the more common ones was, "So, are we going to come back to the same place we started?" To which our reply was, "Yes, this is the only river in the world that flows in a circle" Someone else in our company got the comment "wow, you can't even see the rails under the water". At that point the guide pulled the boat over and had to explain to the customers that this is not disneyland, it's class 5 rafting, you can get hurt, and if they didn't pay attention and paddle it would be a very long trip down the river. I got the best one though. I was taking a family from Kansas or someplace like that down the Royal Gorge and the father asked, "so when was this all built?" Thinking he was refering to the waterline next to the river I told him all the history about it's consturction and everything, to which he said, "no, when was the whole thing built?". So I told him about the railroad and it's history and the history of the Royal Gorge Bridge. He asked again when the whole thing was built and I finally figured out that he was refering to the whole canyon. So I promptly replied it took thousands of people and hundreds of buldozers working around the clock for 17 years to build it in 1805. He seemed satisfied with that answer. Edit to add: I just remembered another good one.. Another customer walked up to the swiftly moving river and asked which way we were going.

1:13:0 1 - Extremely near miss under canopy with an aircraft that overflew the landing area at 1500 feet. The plane passed less than 200' directly beneath me and there were 20 other open canopies above, below, north, south, east and west of me. 13 Jumps. 3 RW jumps and 10 sitfly jumps. I'm amazed at how much I progressed in my sitflying this weekend.

www.skyventurecolorado.com Cool

No luck. I have illustrator version 9. Apparently these files need version 10 or higher.

And we said the exact same thing too. Gotta love it here

We're relatively safe here in Colorado. If you are in the mountains you have to deal with wildfires and avalanches/mudslides. Here in the front range we've only got the ocassional tornado and I live far enough west that it isn't a major concern. We have had a few drought issues from time to time, but there is generally pleanty of water for us.

I've got illustrator and I can try.

Here's one of the other ones: http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/storms/katrina/24425095.jpg It's harder to see because it's surrounded by water on all sides but it's in the middle of the picture on the top of the canal.

Excellent! I'm glad to hear it. I keep wishing there were something I could physically do to help. I've already thrown the red cross some money, but it must be great to know that you are going to be able to do something "real" to help out. Take care down there!

Using Google Maps: Before After

I'm afraid I'm going to send this thread off to S.C. by posting this but I just got this interesting article. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/storms/katrina/24330924.jpg Gulfport - Unbelieveable. I think that's a large barge with shipping containers scattered everywhere in the middle of the picture.

I agree that you have to look at the economics of doing so, however given how much is at stake (thousands of lives, many billions of dollars of properties) I think a large investment into the infrastructure would have been justified. The chances of a major hurricane hitting the NO area are quite high...somewhere on the order of every 50 to 100 years. Imagine if the government wanted to build a dam above a city and they said that every uear there would be a 1 in 50 to 100 chance it would collapse and flood the city. No one would go for it. Dams are built based on the 500 to 1000 year storm event. Building an entire city where it was vunerable to the 50 to 100 year storm event just doesnt make sense. I am a drainage engineer and I work with these kind of numbers every day. One small town I am working for is having to literally lay down millions of dollars for drainage facilities to protect against the 100-year storm. If a small town can cough up a few million dollars for this (with federal assistance), surely NO could have come up with the billion or so it would have cost to protect the city. edited to add: HOW much money is NASA spending on the shuttle foam issue??

New Orleans had one of the highest murder rates in the entire country. Take away everyone smart enough to leave and the law enforcement and look at what you have left....

To blame is a serious lack of preperation by the government at a local, state, and federal level. I don't think that the finger can be pointed at a single person, but the system of government that refused to react to the fact that this was going to happen. The infrastructure should have been in place to prevent New Orleans from flooding. It would have cost a lot and it would have taken funding and involvement at all levels of government. The fact that a few levee breeches flooded the entire city is unacceptable. It has been known for many years that this would happen if the city were hit with a hurricane. I can't believe the government just sat around and hoping a huurricane wouldn't hit without doing something about it (i.e. reinforcing existing levees, 'armoring' them against storm surge, and building more levees to compartmentalize the city). A hurricane of this magnigude will do a tremendous amount of damage regardless of where it hits, however there are things that could have been done preemtively to prevent this disaster from reacing the magnitude that it has. So my list of who's to blame: US army corps of engineers (in charge of the levee system) LA state government (for failing to address a known weakness) NO government (also for failing to address a known weakness) edited to add: those who didn't evacuate when told it was a virtual certainty their city would flood. I mean...come on... I wonder how many resources in the first hours after the hurricane that could have been working to prevent the flooding from occuring were otherwise busy rescuing those stupid enough to stay behind?

Here's an interesting story written about New Orleans and it's vunerabilities back in 2000... The Lost City of New Orleans