Deuce

Thanks for thinking of me Andrea! Not only do I have an Otter, but a Skydive Arizona Otter from last year's DZ.Holiday Boogie with nothing but postwhores on it! Bwah!

I appear to be thread-killing. Hey Sunny, can I "hit" on you for hugs? I'll stay out of the way for "real-time" hitters like your retinue of stalkers. I promise. (Unless you need a fatherly-type to do some choking-out of stalkers. Just let me know. )

Yeah, well, yiou're a badass and deserve it.

M brother, I solder all my connections. It's bare to black, or whatever, (according to Quade) for the newer switch connections, and that's it. I'm ordering two new tongue switches this week to replace my downers. Damn things all failed on me. (Lucky I have two helmets!)

Come party in my team room Sunny. You need somebody to be your Daddy. And I am used to a very loud morning wake-up call.

That first landing, anyway.

Jeff, I just think it's a little weird to have 1500 bucks for a 10D body, but not have the money to put a OEM spec lens on it. If we're talking about a starving skydiver who inhereted a 10D body, and needs any kind of lens to start generating photos, I guess the Z lens would make some kind of sense.

Feliz Cumpleanos ese!

Landings are screamingly fast. That was my first time at that altitude (yeah, BEER!, whatever) and trying to run out my first landing there tore the holy crap out of both my knees. My home DZ is at 54 feet. I took advantage of the very large, perfectly flat, beautiful turf landing areas to butt-slide all the rest of my landings there. The swoopage is amazing.

Oh stop it. There are some people who aren't cut out for it, but you are not one of them, Clay. Whenever you're carrying the gun, and even when you're not, you are scanning the room for threats. Just remember that you are scanning for fools that will never be able to defeat you, and will rue the day that they rolled the dice and they stopped at your feet. They will give you the opportunity to let them die for his cause . Or be arrested, but that's their choice. I loved it Duderon, and I miss it. No in box, no voicemail, just a long line of people who could either go with the program or let me put them in a cage. Cheer up, dude. If your customers actually needed "customer service", it would be a whole different thing.

Billo-cockatillo, the video has been squared-away by the hostess with the mostess, Miss Betsy. Last year I got the nod to do the video on the big ways cause Bets got left stranded. Since I had all that big way video, I edited up a tape using my stuff, BigBens, and some contributions from a Washington DZ.commer and Krishan. This year it's all on-purpose and promises to be excellent. I'll have access to all of Gasson's vids, Omars vids, my stuff, BigBen and VDschoor's, and we'll have a firewire party every night. The whole thing will be edited and dubbed to a DVD and will be shipping within a month of the last day of the boogie. The DVD will sell for $25 and once production costs are covered all proceeds will go to the DZ.com website. B-Squared is directing traffic, but I suspect she'll probably want me over the 8 ways, and I'll definitely be over any record attempts we may make. I'm ready for anything, BABAY! RW, FF, Cross-Country, CRW, Birdman, Swoopsters (the swoopage at Eloy is epic). You bring it, and I'll be clicking it!

I just knew this one would bring you out! Where you been?

Skye, that circle of friends may well ruin her life. Find out who she is cutting school with and going to the snow with. That's the problem. She has a posse and she may be the only one with wheels so the rest are all telling her it's OK, and then how cool she is to chauffer them around. That includes rides to score dope. If she'll cut school to take the kids to the snow, that same peer pressure will justify her driving them to less innocent pursuits. An odd thing about California law and minors: she can't enter into contracts, but she is responsible for everything that is in her car. When she gets pulled over next time and the kids in the back put their weed into the seat cushions, it's her dope. If they pool their money to get more than an ounce and they haven't split it up yet, its possession with intent to distribute. Same thing with lesser consequences when they find the open bottle of whatever in the car. It may be time to put her in school where you live now. I hate to say it, but I think she's going to lose that provisional license anyhow for that many violations in such a short time. She gets it back when she's 21 if that's the case. I think you ought to consider putting her in school where you guys are now, and taking the car. If she really wants to be independent, have her take the GED and start going to class right there at DVC. Sorry, hon, no easy way out. Get very badass right now. It's not just till she's 18. Children are forever.

I did lock my 10D up once, but it was after I was under canopy and all the shots I'd taken were still on the card. It was one of my first outings with the camera and I didn't take the time to analyze the problem like I would now. Peter and Quade are using the D60.

I seriously doubt that they test the configuration for skydiving. When I thought about that for a moment I realized they would have to have a really neato piece of test equipment to test for skydiving use. They'd have to simulate the change in temperature, pressure and humidity from sea level to 14 grand over 20 minutes and then back in about 3 inducing vibration and wind along the way. That might be a warranty-voiding event.

Nothing better than having your boss fill out a worker's comp claim for something they told you to do. "Go ahead Slugster! Go out there and race around and 'Team Build'!" "Uh, OK" "There goes our worker's comp insurance rates again" Bwah!

Quite the opposite. If you want to take a skydiving picture in that mode, the Zenitar will not accomodate you. I love trying new methods, that's why I am suggesting to the original poster that he save his money and buy a lens that will take advantage of the possibilities that the camera creates.

As a camera flier I'm supposed to have a rating, so I got the Coach. Plus, it's nice to have people take you on their first jumps. Getting the rating shows some commitment to the USPA process. Lots of folks get their A license and are done with ratings. Some folks are great teachers, but don't want to fuss with the USPA bureaucracy. Some folks are great at the bureuacracy, but are crappy teachers. The Coach rating is a commitment to the USPA process. If you think it's valid, get coaching from a rated person. If it's just hoo-ha to you, get coaching from whoever you want, but make sure you keep it safe.

It's cool like in prison!

That's an historically "Gay" part of town, but also a very interesting and fun place as well. It's near Civic Center plaza (a great place to buy crack), Hastings Law School, the Federal Building (FBI and Federal Courthouses) the Geary and Golden Gate Theatres. Very fun, not to bad to walk around, but the park in front of City Hall can be pretty seamy. He has the option of riding BART (our train system) and living on the other side of the bay, and taking the train. It's walking distance from the Civic Center station to the CCA. If I was in his position I would rent a room in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland and take the train everyday. Look up the BART websight http://www.bart.gov/stations/map/systemMap.asp Rockridge is a great pedestrian neighborhood, it's pretty safe, with great restaurants, bakeries and pubs. It's fairly near the Cal campus.

I get guff sometimes from people about my high-end equipment tastes. I honestly believe it saves me money in the long run. I am saving for the Sigma 14. I have seen it in action, I've handled it, I know it does what I want to do from looking at JP Furnari's and Pete Galli's pictures, and they use it for skydiving on the same camera I have. So, I generally discourage people from getting "starter" anything. If you are ever blessed with jumping with some of the greats and they choose to share a technique with you, you won't want to be hobbled by a piece of equipment that won't do it. Like using fill-flash, autofocus, and aperature priority to get a really cool picture of B-Squared . My suggestion is to save the $150 and keep saving. The best value is the Sigma 15 fisheye. I'm choosing to keep saving right past that to the aspherical 14 Sigma.

You bet! With my wife, my daughters, my family and my freinds. I've been either blessed or cursed with having known love in most of its forms. I've fallen in and out of love with the same person a few times. Love is a fire. Sometimes the coals are banked, and sometimes they get stoked! And like a fire, or a skydive, there is only one time when it starts. Using the fire analogy, it's when the sparks first fly and the very first flames appear. That consuming new beginning. A friend shared that they were falling in love, and it reminded me of the feeling. Of risk, of sharing, of exposure. It occured to me that telling someone that you loved them for the first time is like leaving the aircraft for the first time. There is a profound trust. Way smarter people than me have been curious and confused by the subject. This is a selection from Kirkegaard's "The Banquet" which is a section in "The Stages in Life's Road" (1845-we're no closer now to figuring it out ): ***So then we see: to love corresponds to the lovable; and the lovable is the inexplicable. Well, that is at least something; but comprehensible it is not, as little as the inexplicable way in which love seizes on its prey. Who, indeed, would not be alarmed if people about one, time and again, dropped down dead, all of a sudden, or had convulsions, without anyone being able to account for it? But precisely in this fashion does love invade life, only with the difference that one is not alarmed thereby, since the lovers themselves regard it as their greatest happiness, but that one, on the contrary, is tempted to laugh; for the comical and the tragical elements ever correspond to one another. Today, one may converse with a person and can fairly well make him out tomorrow, he speaks in tongues and with strange gestures: he is in love.

Falling in love is like skydiving. You know it's dangerous, you know it will change your life, but you do it anyway. It's an incomparable rush. Don't you think? Hoo-rah!

Hey Michele, I just skipped to the last post you made cause I don't care about much else. So, if I kick this guys ass, will that impress you? I could just ignore him, like I did, but I do enjoy the occasional cave-mannish foray into physical violence. And Amazon, not every Republican is chomping at the bit of opportunity to persecute and vilifile. Well, OK, every one of them but me.