nerd137

lol... awesome

Oh, my bad. I thought this was www.dropzone.com, not www.hippiecommune.com.

Yeah, they're called Visa, MasterCard, and Discover.

I used nicotine gum when I quit. Helped a lot. Just don't expect quite the same relief as you'd get from a cigarette. The best way I can describe my withdrawal symptoms is this way: it was like having to piss REALLY bad, but being told not to go to the bathroom; eventually the sensation will go away. So just imagine walking around with a bladder on the verge of explosion for 6 to 12 weeks... and that's pretty much how I felt.

Heavy Drug and/or Alcohol Use & Its Affect on AFF Instructors - by nerd137 Heavy drug and/or alcohol use preceeding AFF instructions is bad. The End. There's your safety article.

120 Put it on a credit card. Sheesh. Dolphin? Bleh! That's like choosing between a BMW and a Pontiac Aztek.

+1

I know this doesn't really square with what you said about the cable and housing being all jacked up, but purely based on what I can see in the video, it's almost as though the pin simply slipped out of the closing loop.

Horrible: http://www.skydiveorange.com/ Awesome: http://www.skydivecarolina.com/

Five years ago, when I was looking for a dz to do my AFF, I picked Elsinore over Perris almost entirely because of their websites. I felt I was able to get a pretty good idea about each dz's vibe just from the vibe conveyed on their website. Perris's site came across like a Home Depot to Elsinore's Ace Hardware. I honestly can't say what specifically left me with those impressions, but five years later that's pretty much how I feel about both dz's. Not that either website, in my opinion, is a sterling example of superior web design. Elsinore's is totally half baked and Perris's is all beauty and no brains.

Got a tunnel nearby? 15 minutes - with a coach - would in all likelihood forever cure you of flat spin issues.

Something seems..... not quite right here.

Different AAD's have different parameters for firing. It's important to know what combination of freefall speed and altitude causes your specific model to fire. Edit: Whoops! I missed DanG's post before I wrote this. Oh well, I guess I'm like Ed McMahon now.

There's no one "right" answer for this situation. Both have pro's and con's. Sounds like you made the right decision for you. Me neither. Knock on wood.

I damn near started this exact thread after hearing from a friend who was on that load. I haven't thought about this situation in quite a while, but after reading everyone else's responses my personal EP remains unchanged. At 1800', I would go for my main. I know from personal experience that I lose very little altitude on my main when dumping out the door. I would also be much quicker than normal to chop if my main mal'd. (As opposed to trying fix it.) At or below 1500', I'd go for my reserve.

Read the owner's manual. It's important to know how your specific AAD operates.

My guess, based purely on my own experience, is that most skydiving careers only last a few hundred jumps before the expense and commitment wears away the average jumper's enthusiasm. A friend of mine once commented that you need to have a skydive shaped hole in your life, otherwise it just won't fit.

Do you understand the difference between "rough equivalent" and "equivalent"?

Wow. What an amazing, thought-provoking criticism. "Your argument is lame." Man. I'm blown away at the insightfulness of that one. More than a few posters in this thread, in my opinion, seem hell-bent on creating the impression that the dangers of skydiving are roughly equivlenant to that of Russian Roulette. It is dangerous, but it's not THAT dangerous.

I like tattoos. I'm just saying that the average skydiving career is very short.

You are soooo not who I was directing my rant towards. Haha. I don't recall you ever getting "way bent out of shape" when someone here argued that skydiving is on the safer side of the spectrum. While my point was largely just that distinctions such as "safe" and "unsafe" are highly subjective, you do make a good point that there will always be people completely miss the mark in their assessment of skydiving's inherent risks. I'll give ya that.

I love how, no matter how many times this debate resurfaces, people get so angry in their attempts to sway the entire skydiving community to believe the sport is roughly the most dangerous thing - EVER! (I'm exaggerating just a little.) Seriously, isn't thinking of "safe" and "not safe" in stark black and white either/or terms kinda silly? Aren't those both largely subjective assessments? I perceive skydiving as risky relative to bowling and driving but safe relative to BASE jumping and Russian Roulette. So what? That's my opinion. Agree, disagree, whatever. But some of you guys are getting waaaaaaay bent out of shape when someone has the audacity to claim skydiving isn't all that dangerous. Really, who fucking cares? Besides, if the discussion is framed in absolutes, as frequently is done here, it's totally pointless until someone defines "safe" and "not safe" it absolute terms and everyone agrees on those definitions. Personally, I don't think it's even possible to do that in a meaningful way. [/rant] I guess I'll go back to my shit work now.

I recommend you wait a couple hundred jumps before you permanently emblazon your love for skydiving on to your body. By then you should know if it's really true love or just an infatuation.

Unless it's someone you know and love, in which case intense mockery and teasing is absolutely required.

That man has huuuuge balls. HUUUUGE. http://espn.go.com/action/news/story?id=3055619