BikerBabe

hmmm...GoFast is much, much better tasting. Works better, too. Yummy. Try it sometime at a boogie (I'm not sure they ship anything to FL yet). I dunno if they have a sugar free version, though. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

PMed you Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

I'll need this tomorrow morning, since today has been such a sh**hole. Thanks.

Dada! I love that CD. I need to go find a copy, since my original got stolen. What a great band! Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Bumping, and adding that I sent my donation via paypal just now. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Hey girl! It's going well...Christy rocks. I guess being a tunnel and skills camp whore will do that to you. You NEED to come visit AZ...especially in the winter when it's cloudy and cold over there. Oh, wait, it's ALWAYS cloudy and cold over there! I'm leaving Friday night for 9 days in AZ...I can't wait! Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

I'm sure you'll get many suggestions, but one of my newer faves is: www.cousindave.com Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

hey, I know it's not a word, but it seems to get my point across better than "the most fun". When I'm competing or training, I'm like a little kid in a candy store. I was trying for the giddy little kid feel... Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

If you're near New Mexico, let me know, I've got some to sell. They are really great looking, they were designed by my friend Adam, and you'll be helping out two of the greatest groups of folks I know! PM me, and I can send one to you... Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Hi Skratch, I'm sorry that you feel that way about competition. Yes, there a lot of competitors out there who take it waaaaaay too seriously. However, there are a lot of other competitors out there who think turning 15, or 10, or even 5 points in round ten is a f#%&ing blast! Maybe I'll bring my team up to Colorado sometime to show you how much fun we can have during a meet, training, or with each other If competition wasn't the FUNNEST thing around, I certainly wouldn't be doing it. I hate it when people come up to me at the end of a training day and ask "want to do a fun jump?" What do they think I've been doing all day? Fortunately, where we train there are a lot of folks with the same attitudes (including the current world champions). I agree, it's too bad there are people out there who take themselves and their training way too seriously...I also wonder what those people are doing on a team. What are their motives? Speaking for myself and my team: we're not out there to be better than everyone else (HA...we know our limitations). We're out there for the fun and challenge that competition brings. And we're learning all the time, which is another one of my favorite things. Andi AZ Audacity ps:

I just heard about this from a friend of mine who is out there this weekend for the boogie...I hadn't even logged on all weekend. I didn't know Holly that well, but I remember the first time we met...she came up to me in the coffee shop at Eloy during the christmas boogie and introduced herself, and gave me a hug. From then on she always said hi whenever I saw her, though she was a free-flyer and I was usually training with my 4-way team, she never let that stop her. Bye, Holly. You will be missed. But I know you'll be watching us from someplace better, where you get all the freefall time you need.

www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Well, the little thing you get from Southwest that Zenister mentioned actually says that parachutes with a Cypress (yes, it's misspelled) are approved by the Department of Transportation as checked or carryon items...the only thing that says southwest is the watermark on this printout. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

hrrrmmmm, actually, I partially disagree with this. Yes, you have to change your body position in an agressive manner to the degree that it changes your fall rate, but I've also found that everything (even slow-fall) comes easier when I'm relaxed, calm, and emotionless. The best skydives are emotionless, calm skydives. Pissed off=tensed up=not relaxed=harder to do anything. Now, note that "emotionless" does NOT equal "not thinking". How much emotion does answering the following cause you to have: 15+37 = ? Not much, I bet. Who cares, right? Maybe when you were in 2nd grade it might have caused you some emotion, but now...nothing. But your brain still used an analytical process to solve the problem (even if it's only memory recall). See what I mean? This is another reason why I love the tunnel so much, and why it's a great tool for new skydivers. The whole big EMOTION (fear) is taken away, so you can be calm when practicing flying. Like anything, the fear factor will go away as you get more experience, so don't expect that to come right away. However, one thing you can do is try to lower your "give-a-shit" factor on the freefall/flying skills portion of the skydive. You don't HAVE to get it right every single time. Hell, people with 15,000 jumps, world champions, will tell you that there will never be a "perfect" skydive, so why not lower that factor a notch and see how you do. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

This is very hard to explain over the internet, but here's a shot. First off, if you go low, turn sideways to the formation. That way you can still see it without craning your neck and arching more. your arms, to be quite honest, don't matter as much as your hips and your legs. think about what has more surface area. The biggest thing is to de-arch through your hips. many people I work on this with de-arch just fine in their chest and upper torso (they've been taught to hug the ball), but do nothing with their hips. You should be able to feel yourself pressing your lower spine into your container. When you do that, your knees will naturally drop a bit...that's OK. Actually, it might help you de-arch more if you think about dropping both knees down while driving your lower back upward. The added benefit of this is better awareness of your legs and learning how to fly using them. Basically, if you can do a good slow fall dropping your knees, you can do turns and sideslides using your legs, as well. It's the exact same motion, except only using one leg or the other. I wish I had a picture to show you... Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

LOL, they give one away once a year, I think. One of the guys at my DZ won one. A brand new, red and yellow tie-dyed Mirage. Lucky bastard. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

We use Turbo Tax all the time, except this year ours was so complex we actually did it by hand first. My hubby just finished them about an hour ago, and our refund is, well, rather exorbitant, to put it nicely. We're bound to be audited, based on our income vs. our deductions. I can already see all the red flags raiseing at the IRS... You'd think I'd be happy about a 5-figure tax refund, but I'm not. That's a lot of money that could have been used to pay off debts or invest somewhere... It's hard to determine how much to have taken out of our pay in order to avoid this since we started our own business last year and incurred a lot of expenses from that. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to the personnel office to have them reduce the taxes they take out. If you do get a big refund consistently, talk to your employer, they can help you balance it out. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

are you going on a trip? There's only one you really, really need to know: cerveza = BEER! Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Oh, Michele, hon, you know you're in my prayers. God bless you and the little one, too. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

We're filing tomorrow to try to avoid being audited (we've been told the later we file, the less chance there is), but I'm about 95% sure that we will be. See, we started our own business last year and we are going to have a LOT of large business deductions (a vehicle, a trailer, mileage, etc), on top of a couple thousand in charity. Has anyone on here ever been through an audit? If so, how bad was it? I'm bracing myself now. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

I've never had anything but dial-up (we live in the boonies), so no on-line for me. I don't think I'd like it, anyway. My current addiction is an RPG called Morrowind...actually, I've played the game already, it's just it came with this construction set that lets me build my own dungeons, houses, people, quests, etc. and just add it into the game. I'm hooked on making dungeuns and super-duper magic weapons and quests to find them, then firing up the game and playing my own stuff. Too cool. Yes, I'm a geek. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

Michele, he qualified 15th (which is awesome) but during the race a guy bumped him and forced him over a curbing, which bent both rims and caused his tires to go flat. So he didn't even finish. He was really disappointed. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

I bet you can guess what MY vote was!! The computer stuff will all be obsolete in 6 months anyway, so buy something that will last and help pay for itself in the long run with gas prices and fun factor...go with the bike. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

No estimate on when, but your story is good to know, Stacy. It may take a little longer for me since I'm 1500 miles away, though... I spoke to Michele on the phone and she said "as soon as we can".

argh, I know. Luckily I still have my stilletto in the closet, I can switch it over. I just like flying the Jedei so much better. Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!