snowmman

377 said "Things break under those airloads and torques. " I'm an expert on car drops because I posted once on a thread where a guy who was in a car drop posted and I watched some youtube video. in any case, one of the car drops there (yellow car) was interesting because the door opened while the car was flipping (from the forces I presume) and I was surprised the guy flipping out of it didn't actually get creamed by the car/door/whatever. Think of the forces on that car door once the car flipped sideways.

It still amazes me that the river travel folks, hold on to tributaries as something that obviously MUST be analyzed, yet rarely bring up the issue of storm drains. If the money bag separated, it could have landed anywhere, since Cooper could have jumped anywhere. If you don't like the Columbia, pick some open thing feeding to storm drain to Columbia. Explain why that is less plausible than any river you're in love with. If you can't, you're part of the conspiracy. I know. An old lady in Florida asked the FBI to prove her husband wasn't Cooper, for 14 years. The FBI wasn't able to do it. Why? For the love of god...I ask Why? Why? Why?

http://www.corporatesupply.ca/coin.htm has some interesting stuff (at Lead Coin Bag Seals) about tying off coin bags (which are open neck) at least, current stuff. hemp string may have been standard at the neck?

377 said "They found a dead Cougar on Highway 17" I heard some weird crying in the woods two nights ago. two animals definitely calling to each other. Couldn't tell if it was deer...strange sound, wasn't coyote. One was on the side of a big gully. I was wondering if a fawn got separated from mom...it was that sort of "come get me" cry...could hear the other kind of crying "this way" pitch black..I don't know how they get around at night. I see their tracks all the time. See them a lot too. Nothing like deer to get the old dog excited though. She thinks that's her job (to keep them away).

377 said "It isn't bad Snow, but if you want a blue ribbon, edit the post to show Elvis in the Bubbleator. " So you don't think I have a picture of Elvis holding hangdiver's new grandson in the Bubbleator? I mean, hangdiver has already admitted the Ranger connection...what do you want, egg in your beer? Don't you remember when Elvis broke on thru to the other side? August 16, 1977 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley And the WOW! signal was August 15, 1977 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal Those FBI just don't know how to run an investigation.

Love it. A friend has my copy, must get it back and look at that sequence again :) I have the one with some of the 'behind the scenes' stuff and it was really interesting to see how scared the guys were about the plane-to-plane jump (I mean rightly so, but it wasn't at all obvious from the clip) There's a bunch of clips from "The Good Stuff" on youtube..for instance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIAnG56FMMI although that's a bit of a longer one. some more at this search http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22joe+jennings%22+good+stuff&search_type=&aq=f I saw a bunch. I suspect hangdiver's is probably in there somewhere.

nigel99 said "put your feet together bend at the knees slowly, straighten your legs quickly while simultaneously extending your feet towards tip-toes. Thats roughly how you jump! I believe most humans over the age of 3 have mastered that skill. " See that's why I'm having a few doubts about this process of learning how to skydive over the internet. I read an accident report about a guy who "jumped" and hit his head on the wing, and problems ensued. With the comment that it's more about "falling" or stepping out of a plane, then jumping. How could Cooper have had a chance in hell, if all the advice he got on the internet was crap? So: which is it?

guru: a couple of thoughts 1) Ckret posted a picture, showing a bag without handles, as the money bag at one time. So it's weird we're talking about handles now. I can't tell which is true. Handles or no handles? (edit) my posting about the bank employee Grinnell. Unlikely he just carried an open bag before he gave it to Lee who gave it to Tina? unless there was plenty of loose fabric at the top? 2) Your talk about Cooper tying to himself sounds about right. But if cooper cinched the bag up, and then used another piece of cord to tie it to himself, worse case he's got a bag tethered to him. Unless the cord breaks, it's just flapping around giving him grief. So I dunno. I'm not sure you can guess anything about whether the money detached or not. Both seem equally possible. (edit) oh and: first post on the page.

These were two important bits of evidence that I thought I didn't get enough mileage out of when I first posted. So reposting. First is Miss Issaquah flipping the switch at the new sewage treatment plant in 1968. Second is Elvis receiving a ham at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. (edit) actually in reading the caption, Elvis is "giving" the ham, not receiving it. I erred originally. These are both actual true photos, as you can tell when looking at them. Why have they been covered up? 377: this is a good post, unlike most of the crap posted here. (edit): 377 suggested that the addition of Howard Hughes completed the conspiracy cast. I beg to differ. No conspiracy is complete without Elvis. I'm not sure about Miss Issaquah.

hangdiver said to georger: "Then why did you pm me and say my post about smoke jumpers was interesting and ask for more info?" hangdiver, we discussed that and your weed problems, that got you talking about smokejumpers. Now throw out the stash...I mean airtwardo's a grandpa, show some respect and say "congrats"...lighting a big one is supposed to be a cigar, not a doobie.

since we're talking money, this is a repost of mine about the money delivery. I like trivia, and it details the handoff from Grinnelll to Lee. If anyone is working on a big conspiracy book, make sure you work these details in. This was the court case in 1975 where northwest was trying to collect on their insurance policy for the ransom. I did have a link that had the whole opinion for free, but can't find it right now. 225 N.W.2d 831 303 Minn. 16 NORTHWEST AIRLINES, INC., Respondent, v. GLOBE INDEMNITY COMPANY, Appellant. No. 44904. Supreme Court of Minnesota. Jan. 24, 1975. Plaintiff's Seattle ground personnel were notified of the hijacking and, further, received home office authorization to procure the money and parachutes demanded by Cooper. In order to obtain the $200,000 in cash, arrangements were made with Seattle First National Bank, through its airport branch. The money was taken from the vault of the bank's downtown facility, and transported to the airport by bank personnel and the Seattle police. The release of cash funds after normal banking hours resulted in a debit to plaintiff's account which was repaid by a transfer credit on the next banking day. Mr. William C. Grinnell, an officer of Seattle First National Bank, arrived at the Seattle airport at approximately 5 p.m. with the money. He first proceeded to the airport branch of the bank to pick up the branch manager, who then accompanied Mr. Grinnell to plaintiff's air freight terminal, a 'premises' of plaintiff insured within the meaning of the subject insurance policy. An authorized official of plaintiff gave a receipt for the $200,000 while it was Inside the terminal. Mr. Grinnell transferred possession of the $200,000 to Captain Elwood M. Lee, a Northwest [303 Minn. 19] official designated to transport the money to the hijacked airplane, which had landed at the Seattle airport and was parked at the end of a runway. Captain Lee proceeded to the airplane in an automobile and delivered the money to Stewardess Tina Larson, who carried the money into the airplane and surrendered direct physical custody of it to the hijacker. Upon receipt thereof, Cooper allowed the passengers to leave the airplane. Stewardess Larson also delivered the parachutes and other items to Cooper, who was still in the rear cabin of the aircraft. At that time, he allowed two other stewardesses to leave the airplane. Cooper, Stewardess Larson, and the cockpit crew of three men remained on board.

congrats! (to the mom and dad....I suppose as gramps you've got it easy..play with them when you like..then go home!)

friggin old men. make it an accuracy contest and I'm screwed. And you wonder why I'm trying to make it a rate-of-posting contest? only shot I got...

I think whenever there's a rant needed on any thread, you just need to post something like "airtwardo 6" and everyone will know it off by heart...no one can put them together better anyhow. "Yeah and your post is definitely OT ..airtwardo 9 to you, buddy!"

I didn't understand half of it, but I can appreciate a professional rant when I see one...:) (edit) I liked it airtwardo, if you can't tell..maybe that's bad though! it deserves reposting: airtwardo, in full-on rant mode, with no canopy, going in because he feels like it, yelling with his last breath: "Why if you board short wearin', spike hair gellin', pink gear jumpin' spoiled lil' brats ever got more than elbow deep into the asshole of the beast, you'd be Sumo slammed into the realization that the path was blazed and black-topped for your comfort & ease by a generation of jumpers firmly believing there's no such thing as 'automatic openers' or TOO MUCH VELCRO. The reason we made the damn thing easy enough for ya to cake walk through is because we did the math, between the booze the drugs and the gutter sluts we were gang bangin' after hours out in the peas. ...we figured the Skydiving version of generation next would either be sporting too many fingers or too little brains to keep 'our' sport alive, you better thank GOD we took the time to it dumb it up, because I'm here to tell ya ~ ~ though clearly much has changed around here, it ain't the gloves! So go ahead Skippy, shun the wisdom and choose not to follow the path of righteousness and safe travel...instead blindly continue to toggle whip your ever decreasing numbers, natural selection will as always prevail. With age comes experience, knowledge and understanding, we can see now where we went wrong...we watch feigning interest, - and with few real expectations, we wait. We know eventually all the ponds will be drained, the snot-rag sized canopies will go the way of the T-bow and the sport's evolution will take still a different direction. Next time we won't make it so easy for the N00bs, that way maybe they'll live a little longer...or at least lose the limp!" and from another poster in that thread, this was interesting insight: I saw an experienced jumper at our dz in '99 pull low after a 4-way. He was really jazzed on landing and told me he and his team mate did this sometimes but this was unusually intense. Then his team mate walked over with huge eyes and said "Did you see that?! I had a hard pull and thought I wasn't going to get it!" My friend got pale after he realized he was having a low pull contest with someone experiencing a malfunction. I have always tried to remember what I learned that day about perception and reality.

We have to adopt this into the liability waiver text. Forget all the legalese. 377 :) 377 is right, I do try to be a nice guy. But I remember once when it was difficult, and my friend was asking me to do something that would affect his safety, and I was just wiped out, and plus what he was asking for was just psychological anyhow....and I told him basically "If things go bad, you're just fucked". Which isn't what he wanted to hear, and I've always regretted it. But at the time, I knew it really was what was needed..i.e. he had to know that he couldn't screw up, because there was no real backup plan. Anything incremental from me, was going to have no benefit to him. I think that's one thing to watch out for when things get too social, it's easy to unconsciously think there's like all sorts of support..well there is, but not during the critical time..then you're alone. I think it's best to get used to thinking "it's all about me" we're brought up not to think that..i.e. that it's all about the group...so I think it's a good thing to think thru what being selfish is about. Then it's much easier to make the tradeoffs when you're part of something where there's group responsibilities too, that you want to be part of. You can make a strong group out of strong self-focused individuals. Its not mutually exclusive. (edit) maybe it's all just a paraphase of what airtwardo said a while back, about timing for the good lord to take a shit if he wanted to. I guess it's all the same thing.

If he tumbles, does that mean he's Cooper? (since Cooper tumbled, at least Ckret said so) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90yNsoCeORQ

Congrats Hangdiver! BTW, is there a path from the maternity ward to the alter....or is your son a skydiver? 377 Look who's talking! Is there a path to your kid talking English? hmm...actually I wonder if he's brilliant..a couple million women who want to practice English with him ..."Oh yeah in the US, when we practice English, first we have to remove all binding garments...."

I mean, just recognizing that the process is a bit flawed, and so are the instructors, who also could be burned out on running the cattle call thru the program, or just be off that day... so at every step, you're basically on your own, regardless of the best intentions of the people grabbing on to you. From reading posts and stuff, it seems like there's weird social dynamics, where everyone wants it to be a team thing etc. but it's really an individual thing..You fly or die alone, when it comes down to it.

orange1 lobbied for statistics with "i mean, it's a bit like your newspaper doesn't run a headline of "98000 cars drove without incident today"... " yeah, whenever I drive my car thru a flooded street, I always ask what the average depth of the water is. Is there a problem with that? Dismissing the outlier cases is fine, unless for some reason, you're the outlier case. Then it's a 100% certainty. So: have to decide where your dart is going to be relative to the target and what you do to hit the target, right? And it's all about "you" ..not some statistical horde. If you're saying "it's random, you have no say in the matter"...well then it's just dumb.

yeah you initially pulled high, but you got the canopy out, and got first post on the page, so I guess that's all that counts :) (edit) hangdiver said "If I have it figured out I know snowmman does too. " It's sort of like relative work, except everyone jumps and there's just one parachute. Then you see who gets it....hmm I guess it's hard to hold the formation when everyone knows once it's done there's just one chute. Tests commitment.

hangdiver "Maybe power over gravity I dunno?" I would think, at least initially, there's that rush of getting over the fear of falling, which is one of the most primal things we're all born with. Overcoming, controlling fear... Then I would think it morphs into the pleasurable "oh look what I can do" after breaking thru a mental block, compared to "normal people" plus there's a cool little subculture thing, there's cool gear, you're playing for keeps, and you stay alive thru using your brain.. yeah I can see it's addictive. Too bad each jump is over so quick though. A lot of setup for quick buzzes.

I've been watching some of the AFF hell vids on youtube. The process doesn't seem so well thought thru. The students sometimes don't seem very ready for what they're doing...Some amazing saves by instructors though! here's a crazy AFF gone bad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC-CTwe-7dI saw another interesting one where it was a big guy..all 3 going out the door backwards, they lost their grip and the guy was kind of out of control..they went thru hell trying to intercept him. A couple tries...finally they got to him. (edit) here it is..just found it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Tj2ZotItc&feature=related

Amazing how there's always a connection...hangdiver to Duane the Ranger. "I think my son mentioned Duane after he went through Ranger School. " congrats grandpa-even-more-to-be..

I think hangdiver is insane. He jumps out of airplanes. (edit) You know when people see a 3-card monte dealer on the street? ...everyone thinks they could do it. Like everyone thinks they can jump out of a plane no problem, I guess. Put your money down. Find the lady, even money bet. (edit) Maybe hangdiver is smokin' and tokin', which made him think of smokejumpers just now?