PLFXpert

Ha ha ha...Ray, Ray, Ray, you're so devoted. I voted for him...I even bought his silly T-shirt, but only b/c I had a few beers in me and he promised me a good time. Ha ha ha. A party later...what were you thinking?

He he he...I gave a little to both sides...I think I'm in the clear

Brannan, it's not hard AT ALL to start a fire here. Ha ha ha. I always stay out of the drama unless I'm REALLY ready to play.

I second your bullshit call, Skybytch. Although, typically I am a classy dresser, rather than slutty, I've been known to wear a bikini top at the DZ b/c it's so f*cking hot here in the summer. I can assure you, I definitely wear it for comfort and not for attention;-). Although, giving the guys a break, I also think some girls DO purposely dress/act a certain way for attention. But, regardless, I don't consider this, "asking for it." I consider it a cry for help.

Ahhh, kicking back and enjoying my iced coffee here in sunny Florida. It was a cool 76 degrees today, partly cloudy. OK, let the bootie-kicking begin.

Ha ha ha! My boyfriend has already said 100 x if I weren't a skydiver, he'd NEVER bring me around the DZ. Ha ha ha.

Yea, b/c the girls are better than guys. Ha ha ha! I'm just teasing...Brannan is in for it now, now that we just realized we knew each other formerly.

For some reason, I don't have that problem riding in commercial airplanes, but I do occasionally riding in skydiving airplanes. I also used to have that problem driving...I always wanted to be the driver. But after being pulled over 28 times and getting 8 speeding tickets, I'm enjoying my new, clean record, since, for the last two years, my boy-toy has done all the driving. Ha ha ha. I haven't stopped speeding, I just stopped doing the driving. I can't help it. When you put me behind a machine w/ all that horse power, I just want to fly down the road! I've discovered, though, that people just can't relax when I'm behind the wheel so I eventually learned to concede the driver's seat to someone else and now I love being chauffered;-).

I started skydiving to learn to skysurf. When you're a whuffo, you really don't know about anything else to do in skydiving but either hang out and fall, or skysurf. When I started jumping, however, a lot of people told me skysurfing was a dying discipline b/c of the high risks, recent deaths, and just no people to do it with or nowhere to learn to do it. Part of me still wants to learn, but the other part of me is more than satisfied with freeflying. I LOVE it. I'm not qualified to say for sure, I only know what I've been told by various people, but the main reason I know of that people don't do it anymore is the rate of death involved.

Ha ha ha...that reminds me of when I went through AFF...the pilot at the DZ likes AFF students to wave to him after they exit b/c he can see them. I was ALWAYS stable until I tried to wave. Ha ha ha. Every time that would cause me to turn around and I'd have to get stable again. It was funny, though. It didn't hurt my progress any. I got through AFF in 5 levels. It was pretty funny though.

I don't know what causes it. I can only speculate. It almost always happens before my first jump of the weekend. It's been all week, I've been dying to jump and I get all pumped up and excited that I get a little nauseous until I make that first jump. I definitely don't think it's nerves, I think it's excitement or something. I used to get that way before a big vacation trip or before a fun night out. I get a little nauseous until it happens and then I feel MUCH better; like a drug almost.

"erroneous" Ha ha ha...every time I hear this word I think of "eggs errOneous" from Ernest Goes To Camp. Ha ha ha.

Is anyone else one? When I started skydiving two years ago, I immediately signed up for AFF, not a tandem, b/c I knew I would want to do more jumps later. However, I didn't know AFF would take all day and I didn't have all day, so since I was there, I did a tandem. LOVED the ride, HATED being strapped to someone else while they manuvered the parachute. I remember my instructor asked, after we landed, "So you still going to do some more jumps?" and I replied, "Hell yea, but I'll be damned if I have ANYONE strapped to my ass ever again." Ha ha ha. When I'm learning something new, I also refuse to jump w/ ANYONE until I get it down. I think for their safety, and my own, I should be 100% in control before I do. I can hold my head down and be stable but I still sometimes have forward or backward movement unintentionally and so, even now, I still haven't done headdown (except a couple headdown exits) with anyone but my boy-toy. I'm not a snob, I just like to be in control of myself. I think, too, being a control freak, you learn faster b/c you're overly eager to be stable and not cork out. I think quite a few skydivers, like me, are control freaks sometimes. I wouldn't say I am all the time, but a lot of the time, I am. Anyone else?

Speaking of being sick...how many people have had bad experiences b/c they jumped when they were sick. The way I've always looked at it: I can feel sick on the ground or feel sick in the air. I'd rather feel sick in the air. I play it safe and know my body well enough to decide if I'm okay to jump or not, and almost always, I'm okay to jump. But I'm curious if anyone has any personal experience. I should mention, though, that if I'm sick enough to have taken drugs for it, I won't jump. Drugs make you drousy and slow your reaction time, so I won't jump if I've taken them, but most often, I purposely won't take them until after I'm done jumping. Also, does anyone else get, what I call, "ground sickness"? When I'm waiting to jump, I get a little nauseous sometimes until I'm in the plane on my way to altitude and then I ALWAYS feel better. I'm not kidding. It's the weirdest thing. Once we start flying to altitude, I feel better. So, I call it ground sickness. Ha ha ha. Does anyone else hate the ride to altitude? Sometimes, if I'm really smushed and can't see out the window, about half-way there, I'm ready to get the f*ck out of the plane. Once, in the casa, I was on the verge of getting air-sick I think, and I swear I almost demanded the door be dropped for me to get out at 7k. Ha ha ha. I held it out, though.;-).

Yey, I'm in the norm. I can afford about 3-5 a week. I'm a college student. I have a well-compensated part-time job and I pay all my bills in full on time, including car payment. After all that, I am left w/ enough for, usually about 3 a week. I am hoping to eventually move to the "I'm sponsored and my jumps are free" category, but that won't be for a while off. I pawned ALL MY gold jewlrey (I don't wear gold anyways) my scuba gear, 2 surfboards, 2 wakeboards and 3 formal gowns when I started jumping. That was all I had of value. I kept one surf-board b/c it's a piece of crap and I wouldn't get much for it anyways, so I still ride it. And since then, I've acquired some really nice furniture that I'm ABSOLUTELY NOT pawning. Now, instead of saying "what can I pawn" I say, "what risky investments can I make" and pray for ample returns. So far, I've been lucky. Geez...I think skydivers must have the most creative minds in the world b/c we're ALWAYS coming up w/ new and exciting ways to pay for jumps.;-)

Flyhi, did I meet you? Geez, I'm so out of the loop. I didn't know anyone from DZ.com was there, except I FINALLY formerly met weid14. Ha ha ha. The first time I met him, Skymama was on him like white on rice giving him love (a hug, folks, nothing more...she would kill me if I didn't clear that up) so this time, I actually got to meet him (and give him a lil kiss;-) formerly. Ha ha ha. I saw jceman...we go way back, don't we;-). Other than that, if you are from dz.com and you were there, i'm sorry I didn't meet you. I didn't know;-(.

I HEAR YOU! Last weekend, a small problem turned into a big one and we ended up having to buy a new toilet and install it. It definitely isn't rocket science, as it is a fairly easy procedure but YUCK! I had to scrape old wax off the floor to put the new wax ring down and...just gross. Ha ha ha. But, it was a learning experience.

I don't know which # goes where so I'll just elaborate: 0 firsts 3 jumps (all a poor college student can afford a week) I had a blast though! Being a 120-pound freeflyer, I've had to seriously increase my fall rate to meet that of all the other freeflyers. I had gotten in SUCH a bad habit of it, that I could sit while a 185-pound guy flew in a slower headdown next to me. Ha ha ha! So I had fun this weekend siting in a million different positions, all felt comfortable and just feeling myself increase in speed and then decrease. If you haven't tried it...YOU SHOULD! It is the coolest feeling falling fast and actually feeling yourself slow down and then speed up again. Ha ha ha.

Yea, I feel really bad for the men. I LOVE being a minority in any sport and kicking male bootie;-). But, I know it must really suck for sky-guys looking for a relationship b/c there just aren't as many women skydivers and most whuffo women would eventually leave a man over his devotion to the sky. You're right, freeflier, most of the women who DO jump are married or in a committed rel. But, you never know. I'm not married, yet...ha ha ha. You sky-guys should smarten up and snag us while you can, otherwise, as my favorite saying goes, "You never know what you have until it's gone...and then it's too late."

SkyVan "RocketVan" and Twin Otter "Supersonic"

You can go to the USPA website and they have the demographic information on all their members. You have to fill out your age/sex, etc when you join so they have a census of all members and I'd say most regular skydivers in the US are member. I was also surprised to see only 14% are women. I knew it was a male dominated sport but I thought at least 30% were women. Guess I'm more special than I though...Yea!

OH, I have one more to add: Never befriend a girl named Stacy. Sorry to all those named Stacy on the forumns...and by the way, I really liked you, Stacy, when I met you in Deland....I've just had REALLY BAD experiences with girls named Stacy. Maybe I should say: Never befriend girls named Stacy who don't skydive.

I think he calls it Florida, b/c everyone wants to go down to Florida at least some time in their lives...right? Ha ha ha!

I've never willingly had time off from skydiving. I try to go every weekend, but sometimes $$$ keeps me from doing more jumps, like I want to, or obligations to school or work. I'm a full-time college student and I work part time. I make good money but I also support myself while in school. I've been jumping almost two years and I only have ~150 jumps. Still, I like to think those are quality jumps since I've basicaly had my own personal coach on each jump. I also, for a short time, had a job for the company that owns the windtunnel so I had some free time in there. I've thorougly enjoyed every jump. I feel guilty sometimes but not all the time. I just have to remind myself that I'm 22, and statistically, 75% of regular skydivers are over the age of 28. I have plenty of time to rack up my #s. I've heard people say you're not a "real"skydiver if you don't jump all the time, but i just don't buy that BS. I love skydiving, but it isn't my life, nor is it most of our lives. We all have to have jobs, support ourselves somehow, etc. Not many people can do that through skydiving, and those that can, their sponsors will eventually dump them when they're 50 years old and they will have to get a job then. I'd like to retire at age 50 and skydive now and until the day I can't anymore. To do that, I need $$$. I need to finish my education (YEY DECEMBER GRAD!) and keep investing. I know once I grad I will have more $$$ for more jumps and I'm looking forward to that. But, my advice is just to do what you want to do and not to worry what other people do or say. If i listened to all the times people have told me I'm not a "real" skydiver b/c I can only do 3-5 jumps a week or every other week then I would have lost something I truly love to do.;-)

The only nicknames ever give to me by someone else had nothing to do w/ my body parts;-). "lil ripper" when I used to wakeboard "smoky " when I was really drunk and burnt the hell out of my neck w/ my friend's curling iron "sexy lexy" my code name at work "laser lips" as in, "hey laser lips, yo mama was a snowblower" "hoochie mama" from my varsity volleyball teammates since I was nominated class flirt...even though i never dated anyone at my high school...go figure. and that's about it...most people just call me "Care" or "Cares" Pretty boring;-)