Al-borak

Hi Bill. Actually, I'd be pretty surprised if you remembered me, although I remember you. My name's Frank Preyde, and my sister started jumping at Baldwin in the spring of '66. Her name is Mary Preyde. While I never ended up making that many jumps when I got older for a number of reasons, I hung around quite a bit. As a 14 year old at the time my memories of all that are fairly vivid, but still, filtered through the eyes of a kid. You may or may not recall that Mary was finally grounded because even after corrective surgery, her shoulder kept dislocating during freefall. She even rigged up a system whereby she could reach both toggles with one arm, but the more safety concious people didn't go for it. (frankly, I can see their point) When I saw this forum I picked the name Al-borak just because it's so totally obscure. I was wondering if anyone would pick up on it. About Steve, I couldn't remember if it was the 100 or the 200, but after hitting that number, he went on to make 11 or 12 more. I suppose you're aware that they're jumping at Baldwin again. I went up with my kid this summer to look around. God have things ever changed! I kept expecting old Doc Marshall to come out and start bitching about something or other, or to see Jan Felkowski buzzing the tents. I brought my log book which caused some interst among the younger set, and I even have some old jump tickets from 1977 that the guy said were still good. I've been thinking maybe of getting back into it, esp. after lurking about here. Seems like people can jump in bunny slippers rather than french boots these days, so I'm a bit less worried about my crappy knee. Still need to get in shape though.

WOW! A jump every 2.7 minutes. Looking at your link I can see why his conditioning must be so good, and that photo speaks volumes about how tight the organisation was. I thought ours was pretty impressive at the time. Setve was in his early 20's and reasonably athletic, but he wore out by 9:30 - 10:00 after what I think was 112 jumps.

Just out of curiosty, what is the greatest # of jumps in a day. The reason I was googling Steve Sutton in the first place, was that he had that record for a while, and I was on his packing crew that day. He did a bit over a hundred, but I've forgotton the exact number. Just a bit of ancient trivia. At one point in the '60's, Bill Cole's brother Harry was thought to have the Canadian record at 15 jumps, but due to poor record keeping and the fact that no one cared, it was never official.

Hi There! My first post. The reason I'm resurrecting this ancient thread is because I googled Steve Sutton just out of curiosity and ended up linked to Bill's list above. Brings back a lot of memories. I first started hanging around skydiving when I was 14 and went to the DZ at Baldwin Ont. in the summer of '66. My sister was a jumper and I went every weekend, ended up packing chutes, ficheting (sp?) at events and trying to stay out of the way. Started jumping when I was old enough. Anyway, just dug out my old logbook, and I got: Nat Pond, US D69 Barry Brand, CAN E1 Floyd Martineau, CAN D2 Buzz Bennet, D71 Rudy Jambrich, D17 Like Bill, I had a hard time making out some names. D91 and D74, take some penmanship lessons guys! In retrospect, I regret not getting a D1, but Glen was charging 5 buck for them, the mean old bugger. I shoulda got my sister to ask him. Was in and out of the sport for some years after that and ended up blowing out my knee in an unrelated incident, and had to retire with a mere 31 jumps. Of course that was back when men were men and parachutes were made from discarded fish net. With todays canopies I could probably jump again even at my age. COUGH*wimps*COUGH Anyway, reading this brought back great memories of the summers of '66 and '67. Bill was around then, and at that age I really looked up to those guys; they were giants. Bill, if you're reading this, you still owe me an air mattress from when you threw a firecracker across the campfire and blew a hole in mine. (ok, I guess at this point I'll forgive and forget)