Deuce

Well, I had my Coach rating for a while and then got my AFF rating, and my Tandem rating about a month after that. I've used both ratings every week for the last year. I think it is really important to get to using those skills hard and heavy right after they are aquired. Somebody getting ratings that aren't needed by the DZ where they jump might be doing themself a disservice. A jumper who is not going to be on the AFF or Tandem wheel and thus kept current, probably should put off the rating until they can be kept current.

It depends. On an AFF jumpe where the light goes on for the student and they progress and experience joy, it's like stealing. When they try to kill you (I mean make serious unintentional errors that put their lives and the instructor's at risk) it's not so fun. ChopChop? I doubt you were experiencing much joy when that recent student injured himself on landing. Icon, even when the instructor does everything right sometimes the student doesn't or can't learn, and that's frustrating. It can also be frustrating to be dependent on the instructors who came before you having taught everything that the previous levels require, only to find out they were glossed over. I love doing all of it, tandems, AFF, and video. JP

Michael Anthony Walker was one of my best friends in 5th grade. He even showed me the safe his dad, John Walker Junior, kept his "secrets" in. I'll never forget watching that meathead get perp-walked and seeing in on TV and then getting my 5th grade picture out. My brush with "tawdry" fame. I met and talked with Rosie O'Donald at South Lake Tahoe about 8 years ago. Very funny lady surrounded by a coterie of what seemed like female Mossad agents.

Stay with me here. The reason the eyes fall out is the mind gets too big for them. BillVon is usually the reason for this. A normal person is exposed to the BVon and their personal horizons expand faster than their eye sockets can compensate. The brain and consciousness expand so quickly the eyes just fall out. Talk to Amy, or better yet, buy a JFTC calendar from her. She knows. And if the eyes are out, roll with it!

Don't panic. Same thing happened to me at work once, but I had this giant lizard to fetch the eye. Check your filing cabinet for a giant lizard. They can be quick at getting the eye, but those fuckers have really sharp teeth, and there's just nothing worse than watching a big-assed lizard chewing on your eye and feeling the phatom pain in the empty socket. Don't you think? Just get a large jewelry box and put the eyeball in there with a damp sponge. When the box is closed you don't get that "double vision" thing like then you are carrying your eye around and you can see where you are walking and the bottom of your shirt pocket at the same time. Experiment! The out-eye can be great fun, depending on the transmission range you have. Set the eye somewhere where you can watch what sites your boss watches when noone is around. It's great fun to find out somebody is into sex with carp and then drop that fact into conversaton like it's common knowledge. Roll with it Shanannanannananon. When it loses it's lustre, just have the lizard fetch it back and I'll use gaffers tape to fix it real good next time I see you!

We've entered the "Boogie Radio Silence" phase, where nobody is going to post what's happening because they are too busy making it happen. Like when Apollo re-entered and nobody could talk because the ablative shield was burning. Maybe tomorrow somebody will be too hungover to jump for a while and can post an update.

Craig, what we do at Byron is have the student fill in the narrative of the logbook with their feelings about the dive. We make kind of a ceremony out of it: "Bridgette, I ask everyone who jumps with me to sign my logbook. You were on my 1398th skydive, and only you and me in the world can say that. If you have any feelings about the jump, please write them down, and sign in the signature box. Thanks, you really did great today!" "JP was awesome! He really calmed me down when I was thinking about backing out! GREAT fun, everybody should do it! Bridgette." In the event, somewhere down the road, someone has a less than stellar experience with me, I'll have three hundred signed testimonials about how everybody else had fun. As to ratio, about 1/2 and 1/2. As to the poofter discomfort, it's not a factor here in NorCal. Edit: As to training, that's up to them, completely. If they want to learn how to do arm turns I love to teach them, and we'll drive the canopy as hard as they want. I am often last out and first down cause I get some top gun student with an iron stomach. I tell them we can have a fighter pilot canopy ride or a hot air balloon canopy ride, it's up to them. "I'm not having fun if you're not having fun" My anecdotal experience is that just as many women as men want the full-g, yank and bank ride.

Yep, Thanks! I'm still looking through it!

At least you aren't stuck at work while people are landing outside your window. And you aren't stuck at work while the freakin' Otter taxi's by outside your window. Fukkit. They've tempted me far enough. As soon as this last piece of embroidery is finished I'm goin' jumpin'. Figures this last piece of embroidery takes damn near two hours to sew out. Tent City is already taking shape nicely. The Otter arrived a few minutes ago. The Casa will be here tomorrow. Where are you? I'm stuck with a previous commitment. My suit's done already?! YOU ROCK!

Ding-Dong! "Candygram for Mongo!" Actually, I just got my package of 10! They are very nice! Very impressive. On the September 2006 page there is this REALLY exceptional picture that JP SoCal took. I'll have the ones I'm not giving away out at Byron next weekend for those who want to buy one local. Nice job, ladies! That was a wonderful project to be a part of.

Well, Bill, I learned pretty early on not to demo anything I can't afford to buy . I'd hate to find out how much I'm missing. While our rigs are safe, they are a little tired, and there's no better way to begin to hate your perfectly serviceable car, than to go out a drive a brand new one!

Yeah! "Bell Curve"? Women can do anything men can do? I love scientific investigation. I am so looking forward (as I've said a ton of times) to the complete unravelling of the human genome. It'll be neat to find out if human DNA allows for "evolution" or if it's just selection from the strands. Does human DNA allow for cro-magnon right there, or was cro-magnon man a whole different animal? I'm not really interested in arguing it now. The truth is coming. It'll be fun.

Then there's always crank. So long as you can deal with the whole tooth-loss-tweaker-paranoia thing.

Watch your mouth, man-mountain, or I'll grab you by the balls. Again. You should say "Ik pak je bij je kloten mannetje" that's how a proper Dutch man would handle that one.. Dude, you don't tear off a patch of Klingon on a motherf*cker unless you're ready to go to war.

Watch your mouth, man-mountain, or I'll grab you by the balls. Again.

OK, the lightbulb just went on. I haven't been able to see the need to have that lightning-fast reserve out of the skyhook on a sport rig. All my reserve deployments on my sport rigs were fast enough pulling my own handles (camera flying, no RSL) But as you describe its effectiveness on a tandem, I'm sold. Getting belly to earth after chopping a sport rig is pretty easy, with a thrashing tandem student it's darn near impossible, and on that second one the guy really made an effort to get us on our backs during the deployment sequence. I was scared. It would have been real nice to have avoided all that drama by eliminating all that freefall.

Glad to be here. Shouldn't we be real-time in the pub, though?

Thanks for the invite, Kevin. Actually, on Sunday when I was tucking the three handles away after my second tandem chop in two days (for a total of six handles in 24 hours not thrown away) I thought to myself "TallGuy would lose a lot of money doing tandems having to buy all these handles" I care about you.

You feeling it?

Then hang out and look thirsty in the bar and when somebody asks if they can buy you a drink ask for a pitcher of margaritas and two hot links. "Can I get you something, cutie?" The just go hog wild. When the guy is all flabergasted, ask him if he has any real estate needs and drop my card on him for a referral fee. Work it. Biotch.

I'm on my third rig with the freefly pud, and would never jump anything else. It can get pulled out, because you have to pull it out to deploy. Make sure you have the correct side tucked. If it is still too loose, send it back and you'll have it returned in record time. Send it back when you need a repack, and they'll throw in a repack. Call Ankie, Wings is the best because of the superior customer service. They'll make it right.

Oh, god, shut the fuck up. Biotch. I had my first tandem chop on Saturday. I had my second one on Sunday. Did I tell the shiney happy people to shut up and tip me because my job is dangerous? I sucked it up and soldiered on, maggot. Have whoever is taking you to the game give you their credit card and then go on a gourmet junk food shopping binge. Pac-bell? You could spend two hundred dollars on garlic fries, a couple of Anchor Steams, and two shots of Cuervo. Then have him give you $40 for a cab cause you have to leave early cause of a headache. Sometimes making others feel bad can make you feel better. Try it.

Yeah, my Tandem-I, Connie Krusi has warned me about that one. Craig, honestly I really enjoyed the first one. I was over a thick, white, layer of industrial haze and was looking directly at my shadow when I chopped, and I watched the whole deployment in shadow. My student was perfectly still and arched and we just went back belly to earth and sang the National Anthem while we waited for the reserve to finally deploy what seemed like 10 minutes later . That one was on one of our older canopies that will be replaced once the next batch of A2's arrive. When the A2 opened like a bag of dirty laundry the next day it was not as much fun. It was spinning harder and my student bicycled as we went back into freefall, which put us almost on our side while the reserve deployed, spinning us up 720 degrees. Our packers are the greatest, and I'm not thinking it's them being any variety of careless. The linover was the first one ever out of zillions for that packer, who packs in the US in the summer and NZ in the "winter". I fear the slider/spaghetti malfunction might have had something to do with all the grit out in the landing area because of the fire might be causing more friction in the lines than the slider is able to overcome during opening. As to packing for yourself, I remember Marty Martinez asking me about my first sport chop: "Who packed it?" "I did" "Well, you get what you pay for."

Yes Dave, but you often forget that, being from another galaxy, your optic nerve system is fundamentally different than that of a human.

I went 260 tandem jumps without a reserve ride and then had one on Saturday (linover 380) and one on Sunday (slider hung up and just a ton of tangled line above it A2) Tried to clear them both by pumping, but both were hosed. The first one was textbook, and was kind of a relief to get out of the way (like that first sport rig chop), but the second one was a little too quick on the tail of the first one for my taste. Having frequently talked with the rest of the staff about "what it was like" it really was just what I was expecting. While clearly a malfunction, it was much slower than the malfunctions I've had on sport rigs. The big three rings make a clearly audible clink-clink-CLINK! And the reserve takes FOREVER to open. While toggle pressure is very high, and the brakes are hard-up against the riser rings, the reserve had great flare (again very high toggle pressure) and I stood both landings up.