MarkM

Burned out, bored, annoyed, but needing the money. The up side is I can pretty much find the same job anywhere, so I may just move and turn into a DZ rat when my apartment lease is up.

Uhn, I never had this problem until my current job. Agreeing with them just promotes them to continue on. I usually just invent some "thing" I have to do and sort of motor on them while they're in the middle of talking.

See, now this shit is way more interesting than whether birdman is better than pheonix-fly. Now if the west coast guys could just get 1 or 2 decent wing suit flyers, we could have some "xxx coast flyers are better than yyy coast ones" flame wars.

I think it's happened like 5 times. Nope, haven't talked to him in awhile. Someone should tell him about the beach jumps, I think he has enough jumps for his C so he can do them.

Dude. What is this reading shit you're talking about. We're on an internet forum.

Billvon. And I would ban peacefuljeffery from the Speakers Corn- Oh wait, nevermind.

Where's the mushrooms option? Who doesn't like fungus on their food????

I think the Deland gear is pretty decent, but at most DZs the risk involved with rentals probably outweighs not having a Cypres in your own rig

Geesh, you sound almost apologetic about preferring the guy with the great body. Are women not allowed to like boy toys?

This specific genre is called "pen and paper roleplaying games", because roleplaying games mean different things(computer roleplaying game, online roleplaying game, psychological counseling roleplaying game, etc). But basically, it's: You and a bunch of friends sitting around a table, eating junk food, staying up late all night. One person is the game master, who controls the flow of the game(basically makes shit up as he goes along), while everyone else plays a character. A character is very much like a character in a story, only you have numbers and statistics that make up the character in addition to a backstory. Like your character could be Elizabeth the vampire, who used to show horses professionally before being turned and since then has been playing a lot with knives. So you'd have stats that'd show you were good with horses and knives on your character and these stats come into play with complex game rules. The game master would tell you about the environment, create the situations(he'd be the story teller) and you'd react to that. You're sitting around watching TV and some robber comes in the back window. Do you kill him or maybe help him rob the rich annoying asshole next door instead? They can be very fun or very Zzzzz depending on the game, the person running the game and the other players.

The ones I can remember: D&D, AD&D, GURPS, Palladium, Twilight Zone and Twilight Zone 2000, Paranioa, Vampire the Masq, Ars Magica, Over the Edge, Amber, Beyond the Supernatural, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk 2020, Cyborg Commando, Dark Conspiracy, DC Heroes, Marvel, Doctor Who RPG, Earthdawn, Elric, Fantasy Hero, Gamma World, Lords of Creation, Macho Women With Guns, Middle Earth, Rolemaster, Millenium's End, Morpheus, Powers and Perils, Rifts, Robotech, Shadowrun, Skyrealms of Jorune, Star Frontiers, Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Talislanta, Torg, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Toon, Warhammer, and Synnibarr. Did a brief stint at a company called Harvest Moon to write my own rpg, wrote fan fiction for Cyberpunk 2020, etc. I was really into the scene at one point, but got bored of it once MMORPGs came around and now I just casually play those. Edit: Oh and I LARP'd once, but that was just to meet chicks.

It's a little too vague. Some things like a new altimeter, jumpsuit or doing a new type of exit aren't that big a deal. Just don't change multiple things at once. Other things like learning to freefly, wearing a wingsuit, or jumping a camera are much bigger deals and may require 50, 200 or 400 jumps before attempting.

Oh no, I play games. Guild Wars and Planetside are the 2 big ones I'm into at the moment. Though most girls I know play World of Warcraft. What's up with that???

Innapropriate? It's wingsuit porn. It's like totally why this forum is here.

It's really probably better to do your instruction on a day when there's not a lot going on. Typically events can bring in more tandems, which means instructors are busy with them and have less time for regular students. But Miami has a coaching event every other Sunday. They'll do RW coaching on the one event, then freefly coaching on the other and alternate back and forth. But neither would be usefull to someone who isn't a jumper yet. Safety Day would probably be interesting for you, but that happens in March at every DZ.

LOL, whoops. Well it could've been worse, you could've been trained on chest mounted ripcords and had gone for that instead.

Listen to your instructors

Evil Dead: Army of Darkness and They Live. Two awesome movies. How about: Your what!? I'll shoot myself in the head if you can tell me that cat's name. Go ahead. Your what!? Your precious little...

The sensations you had are pretty common to tandems. I did a tandem jump after doing 17 solo skydives and got really sick and had problems with numbness too. Never had issues with either before or since. You should also eat and keep well hydrated during the day that you're jumping. I know it's easy not to, especially when you're nervy, but your body needs the fuel for all the stress you'll be putting it through.

I wish I could explain it, but I just sort of feel it out when I do it. You should get Brian Germain's book The Canopy and Its Pilot. It goes into different ways on how you can affect your wing in pretty good detail.

Did you not see my: With any of the above though you have to keep in mind your airspace. Don't do funky things if people are behind you, stay predictable.

I had around 15 jumps on the SL system before switching over to AFF after a couple years off. I also did some tunnel training prior to AFF and found that to be extremely helpful. You'll get back into the grove of it once you get past your first AFF jump.

Wasn't anyone else thinking "cigars, drugs, booze and hookers" when they saw the title of this thread...?

You're paying $40 per jump to rent, so 10 jumps will cost you $400. You could probably buy used, put 100 jumps on it, then sell it with around a $400 dollar loss from the use you put on the gear. And pack for yourself now. You'll make the loads faster and one day when you're at a boogie and there are no available packers(or they're really slow) you'll know how to pack for yourself. It's really an important skill to develop, even if you end up normally using packers later on.

If I'm going to slam into something and need to cut my LZ short, initiate a flat turn and eat a crosswind landing. If I'm going really long but it's still a good landing area, just end up with a longer walk and remember to do a better pattern next time. If I'm going in just a little over the peas and want to hit them, I do some harness shifting to briefly alter how my canopy flies and make it sink in a little more on the final. Though I often get a lot if "Why were you twisting around in your harness" from others when I do it With any of the above though you have to keep in mind your airspace. Don't do funky things if people are behind you, stay predictable.