MarkM

Who accused you of lying and what for?

That's like buying a Mercedes and not getting the leather seats because you want to save a buck. Why get the Mercedes in the first place?

It was running fine the prior weekend, I doubt it's anything severe. I was wondering why they had it tied up on the runway though for the boogie(didn't know it was broke). I thought it was just because everyone wanted to jump out of a loud, noisy, smelly, loud and noisy skyvan. Hardly anyone was using the caravan. It was very roomy on the ride to altitude

I purposely left that option out as I knew it would generate the most votes. Too bad, because that's what I always remember. The best and the worst. 4 years ago best: When Charlie my DZO climbed over me at the door to exit a C182 to do a flag jump. Just watching him exit and deploy was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Was like a moment of grace. 4 years ago worst: A blown PRCP that had me loop forwards and have the SL pull my chute out between my legs. It was the first time I ever really saw the mechanics of a canopy opening up(since I was watching it deploy through my legs), it bruised/cut my legs big time(they got entangled in the deploying lines) and I ended up upside down in the harness. Was a riot, and taught me that I get pissed rather than scared in bad situations It's the high and lows that make it so addictive.

Tried scuba diving once, but it really screwed with my ears.

I've always heard the same exact thing. It's also likely if they don't know what their place is, it could be confusing as one minute the "alpha leader" treats them as more important than the other humans and the next they don't. I was bitten by a dog once as a teenager and the owner showed more concern for the dog than me afterwards(I was kicking the damn thing off of me). And that was exactly why that dog bit me in the first place, it's owner valued it above humans invited into its territory.

Oh dude, that sucks. Do Protracks have a serial number on them or anything?

When is it normal for peeps to go to a 1:1 wingloading?

Don't believe her guys. The only time I ever saw her was down in Orlando at the wind tunnel. Most likely she really works for Disney and stars in their animations or something.

RW: Old farts that don't know how to fly any other way. Freeflyers: Freaks and clowns that like to geek in front of cameras. Swoopers: Hot shots trying to impress the whuffo chicks. Skysurfers: People too afraid of sharks to surf the real way. Freestylers: Who? Base Jumpers: Jumping out planes doesn't give them a kick anymore, so now they gotta jump off of buildings. I leave anyone out?

Oh, it is just darling. But will freefall mess with my hair?

Dangerous freeking sport. Was looking into hang glider acrobatics(paragliding's sister sport), but if your wing snaps you get to use one of those rounds to slow down your impact. Imagine trying to PLF when you're in a harness and surrounded by twisting sail, wire and pipe under a round that'll leave with with broken leg on a good day.

Patron tequila.

That's because it does require additional comments about its lack of safety. Skydiving is a high energy sport, you're dealing with extreme forces sort of like racing a motorcycle at 160 mph. That's dangerous because high levels of energy are much more likely to cause leathel injuries. Unfortunately in skydiving or any other air sport, not only are you dealing with high amounts of energy when an accident occurs, when you have an impact(with the ground) all that energy ends up going into you. It's like racing a motorcycle on a track where every corner has concrete walls. If you crash you end up smashing into a wall doing 120 and all the energy goes right into your body. You don't survive that. That's why skydiving is an "extreme" sport. A lot of deaths in the sport occur because people get complacent. They get comfortable, forget about the energies involved and start to extend themselves. It's human nature to do this and even somewhat benificial, otherwise we'd be as scared shitless on our 100th jump as we were on our 1st, but when taken too far it causes accidents. Jumpers like Ron have the tag lines they do to remind themselves that the sport is dangerous and that if you don't continue to keep watch you can have a high energy accident. They bitch at young jumpers like you and me because after we get over our fears and get a little confidence, it's very easy to get complacent and take risks we shouldn't. They've seen it 100 times before and will see it 100 times more after we do our 300 jumps, get bored and go back to golfing.

I bet that'll be easy to spot from altitude.

Tom who? Some actor guy that knows Bill Booth

Maybe the next craze will be doing a lot wing suit stuff. Loops, rolls, ground swooping and even to the point of landing in them once the tech gets to that point.

When I read the incident reports in skydiving I don't see people randomly going in, I see a lot of failures in judgements with the rare "did everything right" thrown in. A lot of times it's even a chain of poor judgements, someone pushing things too far in one or more areas and when they eventually make a mistake it goes fatal instead of just being broken bones and bruises.

Very cool vid.

Ahh, jaywalking. Now that's an extreme sport. I especially like their moto: The moment you step onto the road you're dead until you take action to move off of it. And they don't even have safety devices like AADs. Imagine if a meteor hit you in the head while crossing the road and knocked you unconscious. You'd be road pizza man, road pizza. So stay safe out there and keep looking up while crossing the road!

Nope, but I'm running Linux so it probably wouldn't work even if it was working.

Didn't you sign that waiver before you were born? The one saying you accept that life is a high risk activity and you won't sue in the afterlife should some idiot kill you via car, gun, or whatever?

Who the hell gets in an arguement, heated enough for a gun to be drawn, over a friggen parking space?

Huh, funny, what I remember the next day was, "Whew. I'm not a virgin anymore." But that was about the impact of it. Guess I've been doing it wrong all these years I'm sure there are many ways you can experience the same level of rush and emotions other than skydiving. I'd imagine hanging off the seat of a motorcycle going 180mph 2 feet from a concrete wall provides the same life-level of impact skydiving does.

Right before you go to bed you put the lenses on and then you take them off the first thing in the morning when you wake up. So basically you're not wearing anything during your waking hours, yet your eyes keep the corrected vision. It works because our eyes are elastic so you can mold them, but they retain thier shape for a day or so after you remove the force that's holding them. If you want to ditch the glasses/contacts permanently, then Ortho-K really doesn't do anything for you because you still wear them each night while you sleep(you gotta clean them, store them, etc). But if you're mostly interested in not having to wear the stuff while you're running around awake and Lasik isn't doable for you for whatever reason, then it's an option. I normally had 20/30 vision so Lasik wasn't something I could really do, because I didn't want to risk it making my vision worse. But with Ortho-K I got my vision down close to 20/15 without any risk. And as I age and my vision naturally gets worse, my doctor can just adjust the lenses every few years.