FallingILweenie

i am scared of hurting myself badly enough to never be able to jump again.

i have been curious about getting that thing but for the time being all i have is dial-up....does it suck too much like that? That online mechwarrior game looks very cool.

the NES...Dr. Mario is where it's at. Of the new ones, PS2 is better. I have an xbox that is collecting dust because aside from Halo and Robotech, i havent found anything worthwhile. Plus, for the budget-minded, there are a bunch of great ps2 games you can get for 20 bucks because of their greatest hits series---gran turismo 3, tony hawk 3, devil may cry, tekken 4, the original red faction (wanna play number 2). granted, if you have other friends who also get xboxes and you all get halo you can have some crazy games, but for the number of games available the ps2 is it.

no one mentioned this but my favorite part of it so far has to be the fact you get to fly helicopters and a seaplane!

Rig aside (cuz it lets me do this stuff), has to be memorial day weekend this year. Did 26 jumps that weekend, and made that last step to being able to dock headdown. I've improved a bit since then, but that weekend really really helped. I jumped with some really talented freefliers that taught me a ton. the freefly suit also was a great purchase....though i am glad i learned to freefly without it.

My personal experience is that (and I am a freeflyer) I think doing freeflying helps you more in RW than doing RW does in freeflying. Obviously any type of skydiving helps you more than staying on the ground in whatever discipline you do. The reason i think this is when i learned to belly fly (granted, it was student status and the subsequent 30 jumps or so, so how "learned" i was is open to debate) i was taught more body position in that "this will work here, that will work there" and so on, whereas when i learned to freefly people that taught me to freefly were more like "i do this, he does that, it's kinda how you do it but you have to figure out what works for you". That sort of training helped me become more aware of how the air hits my body and what the cause and effect of the body position is. I think that helps speed up the learning process in rw. On the other hand, from what I have seen people who have done primarily rw from hundreds of jumps have a harder time trying to freefly because the whole RW-arch-harder body position thing is more engrained in their minds. I don't know if this is a fair comparison, but the way i see it is i have about 100 belly jumps (to 300+ freefly dives) and have gone on 15-16 ways successfully and safely. Now that isn't big to a lot of people but it is to me. On the other hand, i have been on 6-7 way headdown dives. Obviously talent-wise people are different, but in general is someone with 100 freefly dives ready for a headdown dive that big? is this comparison fair? just my 2 cents. blue skies Tomas

i agree that winter sucks. it sucks a lot. definitely a decrease in skydiving in the wintertime. and when there is jumping, it is with a million layers of clothing on that makes me freefly like an idiot.

JOE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you've been missed at archway, foo! have fun....it's shitty up here. blue skies Tomas

nothing at all. it gets to be over 60 in chicago....and it gets cloudy. figures.

i've seen em 3 times in chicago. i like it a lot...and i got to do the thing where they hang ya upside down.

pulled at 1600--in the saddle by 1200. scary.

While at Illinois I lost weight for the ability to jump. I'd spend about 50 bucks a month on food and use the rest of the stipend i got from the parents for food for jumps.

i think about the jump. then i, and others, yell as loud as we can "reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaadddddyyyyyy, seeeeeeeeeet, goooooooooooooooo" cuz we take our jumps so seriously.

I agree with what someone said earlier, where one mistake can kill you.... skydiving has extreme parts in it, but it's not extreme in that you have to make multiple mistakes usually for you to die (unless you hook yourself in--swooping i would say is extreme, for example). BASE, sure, street luge, sure...i'd also apply it to stuff like indy car racing, where it always seems liek there is a fine line between control and total chaos.

nevermind how true the actual auction is, my question is, is flying one of those things legal here?

0:2:1 2 jumps at Skydive Chicago. Beer for first time out there. Very impressive place with nice people....and their otters kick ass!

Yup, i also heard about Archway having one of SDCs otters...i was at Ottawa and it was mentioned. By the way, it was my inaugural time at SDC and I really liked the place. Everyone I met was really nice, and though it was slow and probably not an accurate picture of what the place is like in the summer, but it was cool nevertheless. blue skies Tomas

I love skydiving and would do it more if i could, but there is a point where sometimes i get burned out. Mostly it's because I get tired of having to figure out how i will pay for stuff after a great weekend of jumping. Only for financial reasons am I somewhat glad to see the winter come, so I can take a break. But once i get more stability money-wise, all bets are off..... The key I think, as has been said, is to try different things...like next year one of my goals is to get....get this....AN RW SUIT!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

talk about skydiving and bitch about the weather and watch skydiving videos from the summertime.

The ceiling fan thing was my favorite--i laughed harder at that than anything else. Mainly because of the timing--it came out of nowhere.

i agree. The Ring was teh creepiest movie i have seen in a long long time. I don't usually like horror movies--not because I get scared, but because I get bored--it's always the same tired theme with the same campy plot points and yadda yadda yadda, but the Ring was great. One piece of advice to those wanting to see it: try to avoid hearing anything about it. I went in only having seen 1 teaser trailer in july in the theater and I loved it. by the way, Jackass was hilarious. Some of that stuff was just ridiculously funny. But, as was said, you won't miss anything by waiting to rent it since it's all shot on digital video cameras anyway. blue skies tomas

A friend of mine brought up an interesting possibility....what if it's 2 guys doing some sort of competition?

I have Falcon 4.0, but stopped playing it cuz it's so buggy. I don't have broadband, but has anyone heard about Battlefield 1942? Allegedly it is supposed to be really good. Right now I am playing Warcraft 3. It's nifty.

I hate winters now more than ever before. And before skydiving, I couldn't freefly, which is the coolest thing in the world to be able to do.

freeflying!!! WOOOOHOOOO!!! i mean, "vertical skydiving".