DesertDevil

A friend of mine took a blind man on a paraglide tandem last year. The guy asked his instructor if he could fly on his own some day. The instructor initially said ok. The blind guy kept following up with him, but the instructor didn't know how the guy could acutally do it. We think we can do things, but sometimes it's too difficult, especially when it involves the life of another person. A guy who could neither talk nor hear went on a tandem and wanted to take the AFF course. But he wasn't allowed to take the course. A year later, I was BASE jumping at Twin Falls. The guy had 70 BASE Jumps. Sometimes we think they can't do it, but then they surprise us. Good luck with this

I do both. I did a lot of BASE jumping and I've seen a lot of swoopers. Swoopers seem to get hurt more. Maybe because BASE jumpers know BASE is extremely dangerous and so they take more precautions.

One rather elderly guy came from a SL dz and had 19 SL jumps. He wanted to switch to AFF. We put him in the AFF course, and he failed the first jump.I recommended he go to the tunnel, and he went for about 5 minutes. He did really well after that. I'm a SL instructor, but I think AFF is better. It saves money and time.

I've never seen anything quite like that! Ouch :) One guy's camera fell off his helmet during free fall. It landed about 100 feet from a crowd of spectators. Imagaine if that fell on somebody, or a moving car, or an airplane. . . scary!

Congrats on graduating! And good landing!

Psst. We knew that. Before you be a smart ass again, maybe I'll just write one more thing. The Iranians took the life of my brother. I didn't miss the point of your post; I jumped at the straight line. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. Obviously I didn't know about your brother, and I'm very sorry for your loss. When I was in college in the 70s, there was a group of Iranian students who lived in my dorm for most of the 4 years I was there. I imagine their families were probably in the good graces of the Shah's government for them to have been sent to America to study. I became close friends with several of them, and kept in touch with them after they went back home. After the revolution in 1979, when the country was being turned upside down and so many people were being rounded up and killed, all contact from my friends stopped. Since then, I've never been able to find out if any of them were OK, or even which of them survived. I wouldn't begin to compare that to the loss of a family member; but nonetheless, it's a real loss that I feel to this day. I apologize for my language. I just know probably more than anyone on dz.com about this region of the world. I spent a lot of time there.

Love it! Very sweet. Thank you!

Psst. We knew that. Before you be a smart ass again, maybe I'll just write one more thing. The Iranians took the life of my brother.

Psst. We knew that. I'm very sure you do. You saw it on t.v. or read it in the newspaper. You missed the point of my post because you think the fire isn't going to touch you because you're so far from it. Take a moment and search online for children who have been victims of this war, of other people's egos and greed. Don't forget to hug and kiss your kids before you go to bed because many people over there don't get a chance to do that.

I would like to share something. In the 1980s there was a bloody war between Iraq and Iran that lasted eight years. Even when Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran, the Iranians would not give up. There were two holy cities in the middle of Iraq. Muslim shi'ites around the world would go there to pray. Many Iranians are Shi'ites.When the Iraqi military was on the border between Iran and Iraq, thousands of Iranians would ride dirt bikes and vehicles with no weapons through war zones to these holy cities. They believed if they died, they would go to heaven. The Iraqis killed thousands of these guys. The Iranians would wear keys around their necks because they thought the keys would unlock heaven. I just hope this war never starts because it will never stop. Millions of people are going to die. It would be terrible if the Iranians get their hands on a nuclear weapon. They believe in death and that death is the way to heaven. In the Arab world, there is a joke that if you see an angry man, he's probably Iranian. If a war starts, God help us all.

We had a guy who came to our dz to pack. When he discovered the wind tunnel, he stopped jumping and just went to the tunnel. In a few years, he came back to jump, and completely lost alititude awareness.I think you're completely right. They think they have a longer freefall time.

Very nice pictures, Dave! They are not easy to get. Last weekend a friend of mine told me about how a camera guy kept running into them during the freeefall portion of the AFF Instructor course he took last season. Again, nice pictures!