wartload

And thus the invention of the "Potato Count". It was actually a really practical way to get a fairly large crowd moving through a fairly small door in a short period of time.

Funny thing ... I never got a legitimate tailwheel endorsement. I bought an Aeronca Champ (7AC)from a guy who reluctantly said that he'd check me out in the thing. He flew with me from where I picked it up to my home airport, and then sat in the back, giving me sparse advice, while I managed to land it twice ... then he took a bus back to his hometown. My first clue was when I asked him to sign the logbook with his license number and he didn't know what it was. I soon found out that he never got a license, and sold the plane because nobody would give him instruction in it. Oh, well, I got 2,000+ hours in taildraggers without breaking one.

C'mon ... confess!

Hehe...YES. Now I better understand one of Aerosmith's songs.

ANYONE would be allowed to like that! (She's got great eyes, too, for those who didn't notice!)

Ah!!! I think that you mean Porsche goggles!

We are still talking about goggles, right??!!

How about my eye color ... "bloodshot"?

My mother taught me to practice Zen ... "You just sit there and think about what you did!"

Some of you may get turned on by a woman with great boobs or a great butt, but I've always thought that the biggest physical attraction was their eyes. Someone here has a tantalizing profile pic that just shows one of her eyes. I begged and pleaded with her for days (ok ... I asked her once, a few minutes ago) to let us see both of them at once, but she refused to remove the shroud of feminine mystery. That left me with only one option! CLICK (Posted with permission, BTW!)

We're all with you in our hearts, Laurel.

I honestly go for a great personality first, then look at what's attached to it afterward. I'd rather have a woman with a 100% sexy attitude than just a sexy bod. The biggest shame is women who think that implants will make them sexier. She can have boobs the size of eggs ... fried ... over hard ... and they'll be an incredible turn on if she's got the right attitude.

Yep. Those were the ones that I was talking about. The best part about them was that you could get a pair for about $2 at any of the off-base surplus houses, or for free if you knew the right people. The ski goggles that I used were, I think, Scotts. They didn't fog quite as badly, and were lighter, but were about $12 a pair.

I don't recall the name of the place (prolly isn't there anymore), but there used to be a little hole-in-the-wall pizza shop in the old part of New London, Ct. that made the best pizza on earth. It was a few doors down from a place called "The Puritan Tea Room" -- which was either an old ladies' hangout or a brothel ... never investigated. On a similar note, the best Chinese food I ever had was at a place in Rota, Spain ... that was run by Greeks.

Hmmm ... that opens all sorts of possibilities for "haters" (another idiotic term) to glom onto. I wonder when all of those folks who are against the Beautifuls will start burning Barbies in front yards to let people know that they aren't welcome in a town full of Uglies? Grafitti will show up on walls, like, "Blonde girlie, you better get your cute little ass outta town before the sun goes down on it! And take your little dog, too!! ... Oh. Never mind. It's a chihuahua. He can stay here." Signs over bar doors will read, "No 'beauts' allowed!" There will be separate rinsing sinks in Hair Cuttery. Motels will display "Ugs Only" signs. Civil war will ensue, with historians spending the next several decades debating whether the war was actually over beaut prejudices, or if the rest of the country just wanted to beat an earthquake to the job of breaking LA off and into the sea.

Just curious how many of the people who started skydiving before, say, 1990 also hold a pilot's license? If so, what sort of flying do you prefer to do?

I wonder if they were also called something else? The big breakthrough that I recall in goggles were Israel Kroops. The harness racers and jockeys used them first, then we (the skydiving community) figured out that they worked well for skydiving, and then Kroop started looking for ways to manufacture models just for us. Before that, I used two types -- snow-skiing goggles and military goggles used by Navy carrier crews, Army tank crews, and the like. They were hot, a bit heavy, and sweated/fogged up easily.

I have two kids. They are pains in the ass some of the time (the time that they are awake). The are expensive. They are demanding. They have cut former vacations to Jamaica down to present trips to a beach a few hours away. They have turned "dining out" into a stop at Domino's Pizza. They suck up all of the disposable income ... and more, at times. They keep the house dirty. They sometimes don't obey. They were the main cause for getting a dog that helps them keep the house dirty (but she usually obeys). But I'm not green with envy at all. I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, now that I've got 'em, and I spent many more years without kids than I have with them. I don't think that anyone without kids is selfish. Everyone's mileage varys. I wouldn't criticize anyone for any lifestyle choices, just because I do something different. I would, however, offer two comments for consideration. One is that lots of people, myself included, never really thought that we were going to outlive our teens ... maybe 20s. It's almost a shock that we did (especially given that many of our friends didn't). The other is that most people who have kids really change their priorities drastically, but they find that they do so willingly. Being a dad's the best thing that I've ever done, in spite of the fact that I'm not all that good at it.

What makes a "Welcome to Ohio" party ... is it polka and peppermint schnapps, or is seeing Indiana (or Michigan) in the rearview mirror celebration enough?

You also also need to have a good logbook. Maybe you can clean up a copy of this one CLICK and print it to make your own. (The masking tape binding was an aftermarket option!) It might also serve as a model for you to have the right "look".

Maybe just wondering if I could pick up the 7-10 split.

I bought my last pack of cigarettes and scotch taped (LOTS of tape!) a photo of someone that I loved more than cigarettes on each side. I had those cigarettes with me all the time. All I had to do was destroy the photos to get to them. After about 4 days, the nicotine addiction was over. After about 2 weeks, the psychological addiction was over. It took over a year for the habits of thinking about reaching for a cigarette first thing in the morning, wanting one with coffee, etc., to end. It was harder than hell to quit, but it *can* be done! Two other things that helped me were: -- Figuring out how much they cost me per year (including ruined shirts, lighters, and other incidentals). It was a lot of money to waste. -- Realizing that, after the first one in the morning, I really didn't enjoy the rest I smoked that day ... I smoked them because I was addicted to them.

Silk played a huge role in early American aviation. It was such a fashionable fabric at in the late 1800s and early 1900s that special express "silk trains" were chartered to speed the fabric from west coast harbors to the New York fashion district. It was very strong, light, and could be varnished with a fairly flexible concoction to make it essentially 0 porosity. It was first used to make gas balloon envelopes, then for the envelopes of the early dirigibles. Some of the wealthier (not the Wrights) early airplane manufacturers used it to cover the wings of some of the first aeroplanes, including a fabric made of two sheets of silk with a very thin layer of natural gum rubber sandwiched between them ("Baldwinized" cloth, used on many of the earliest Curtiss and Curtiss-type planes). Want to know something that almost no skydivers could tell you today -- the origin on the name "bungee cords"? Glad you asked! An early type of rather stretchy silk was (and is) called "Pongee". Cords made from this silk weren't intended for use to open packs, but they were relatively springy. When we started making stretchy cords out of elastic cased inside nylon, they kept the old name, even with new uses ... just like "hit the silk" continued to be used, even when the canopies were all made of cotton twill or nylon.

What HE said! It was 1862, early in the U.S. Civil War, to be precise. If you wanna see a relic of the good ole days of Bacardi--made weeks before Castro and his revolutionaries landed-- CLICK! This was a gift to me from the distillery in Santiago. I've taken the pic so that my name, carved into the end of the keg, doesn't show (protecting the guilty). The funny thing is that, at the time, I wasn't anywhere near the legal age to drink or drive in the U.S., but they knew a good prospective customer when they saw one!

Three colors (white, OD, and orange)? We used to see those going around for very reasonable prices ($15 unmodified and w/out a container). We called them NATO canopies...I'm assuming that was for a reason.