arlo

mmmmmmmmmmm, cadbury. i have a stash entering the country tomorrow. but more is almost ALWAYS better. i credit richard.

i beg to differ. you make a skydive with contacts (L: 3.0, R: 4.0) with 100+ other people and have one or both blow out on a steep dive down to a formation. it DOES matter what i see without correction. going from fully corrected vision to 20/400, 20/500 when they blow out is INDEED a difference. being able to see 100+ people to not seeing a SINGLE person during the same skydive is BAD. i had lasik 3 weeks ago for this reason and will be jumping again this weekend. i would highly recommend people look into having the procedure done if contacts are a pain in the butt. i'm now L: 20/15 R: 20/20 no correction needed. telling people they shouldn't say "i think you should have lasik" seems kinda picky. have you never said to anyone "oh you HAVE to try skydiving! it'll change your life!"? it's an opinion...an enthusiastic one. of course, if everyone had lasik, then optometrists wouldn't be selling so many contacts or glasses. blues, arlo

PM'd. :) thanks chicas. arlo

hang on a sec. do you mean to say do not "COLLAPSE" the slider? if so, then it's a confusion of terminology. it sounds like you're telling him not to pull the drawstrings on the slider and 'collapse' it because people sometimes forget to return it to it's full position. "QUARTERING" the slider involves bringing the slider grommets up to the slider stops on the canopy and bringing each side of the slider between its respective line groups. for example: the left side of the slider would go between the left front and rear riser line groups. the leading edge of the slider would go between the left front and right front riser line groups. etc. PLEASE make sure you use the correct terminology regarding the slider because someone can be seriously injured. the slider is meant to work by slowing down the opening and it works well when packed properly. you're jumping a stiletto, you SHOULD be quartering your slider. that's what PD recommends...trust me on this one. i hope this is indeed the source of the confusion. please verify that it is. thanks, arlo

no WAY you're stealing my thunder!! you're adding to it!!

hey everyone. JFTC will be holding a raffle with the drawing to be held saturday october 1st (last day of the event). prizes include: * 100% off Mirage container + options * 50% off RWS Vector 3 container * 50% either a HiPer USA Nitro or Blade main canopy * Z-1 full-face helmets by Parasport Italia * Evo open-face helmets by Parasport Italia alot of JFTC participants world-wide have already gotten their tickets to sell. The tickets are $5 or 5 for $20. if you can't find someone who is selling the tickets, contact me by PM or email me at groovicool AT aol DOT com and i'll get ya sorted out. Thanks to all the sponsors who were generous in donating their products. an especially big "THANKS CHOM!" to sangiro for approving this post in Bonfire. any JFTC participants that would like to get in on the ticket sales, lemme know. any non-JFTC participant that is interested in selling tickets at your DZ, contact me as well. on behalf of JFTC... blue skies and pink ribbons, arlo edited to add: the ticket sales are credited towards the fundraising total of the person selling the ticket. i'm just the messenger. :)

http://relativeworkshop.com/Memorial/tribute_page.html there's a very nice memorial page with lots of photos of our friends there. edited to add: this sucks.

OMFG! thank you soooo much ian. you have no idea how much we all needed that. i'm looking at these pics just laughing. these are the guys we know and love. :) moon on....

one of my dearest friends wrote this on the 27th: Life is constantly in motion - Life is fluid and unpredictable. One day we are here, the next we are not. Sometimes death is unexpected and catches us off guard. I think that only when we experience death do we begin to understand life. I think we have all had some experiences with death and life, and I think it makes us richer inside. Neither can exist without the other. he's right. life can be taken so quickly. we found that out late this afternoon when we heard the news. i'm sick of losing friends, but i'm also so fortunate to have known them and have them touch my life. I tell them that, too...all the time. we tell each other that every time we talk on the phone or see each other or text each other...and we truly mean it when we say it. life is not something that we should take for granted, nor should the love we share for each other. friends are the fabric of life. they are what we're woven from and they help us live and they help compliment us and help us just BE. take the time to tell people how much it means to have them in your life. otherwise, a day might come when you'll never be able to tell them. would you really want to go thru life thinking "why didn't i tell my friend how much they meant to me before they died?" godspeed, my friends. until next time... my friends here in deland: hang in there. we will get thru this by supporting each other and loving each other... just like we did when gus left. love and light. edited because my brain is full and wants to continue dumping.

send me an email with your mailing address to: groovicool AT aol DOT com and i'll get ya sorted out. hang in there darlin. arlo

you're super welcome!

#3. if the nose is pushed back into the canopy, the opportunity to disturb the lines exists. try this: next time you propack, and the nose is tucked between your knees and you're looking down at the lines, flake all the material out and dress it as you normally would. then, as you're watching the lines, grab the nose and push it as you normally do, into the center of the canopy. watch what it does to the lines.

a couple things to make sure of when you pack: 1) make absolutely sure that your slider grommets are against your slider stops. check, double check, triple and quadruple check this. when you lay the cocooned canopy down as your holding the base, keep tension on those lines and keep it against the slider grommets. people sometimes get sloppy with this. not good. 2) make sure your slider is QUARTERED. so many times people don't quarter their slider and only leave it pulled front to front or side to side. big no-no. quarter it. the slider slows down the opening. that's it's job. if it's quartered, its inflation is more uniform because there's max surface area. 3) don't shove the nose in when you propack. 4) if you're gonna roll the nose, split it and roll each side towards the center cell, but do NOT stuff it into the center cell. another big no-no. i'm not saying to roll the nose, but if you're gonna roll the nose, then don't stuff it inside the center cell. try this stuff out. this is stuff that you should already be doing with any propack. nothing shiny here. but these are the things i can think of that, if done incorrectly, can cause thine ass to be spanked...and not in a fun way. btw, this is my opinion, and mine only. i represent myself with these suggestions.

no. ron samac. he was a zhills local freeflyer but working contract in NJ. he and sara were both killed at x-keys in a canopy collision on july 4th this year.

hi doug- ron's send off last saturday was beautiful. bonnie and val were on the ground watching as rich was on a tandem releasing your uncle ron's ashes. val had karin on the phone during all of it. some of ron's best friends were there making their last skydive with ron. it was such a beautiful, moving day. a beautiful 10 foot magnolia was planted at the dropzone in zhills (ron's home dz near tampa). there was a super nice dvd that some skydivers put together of ron while he was skydiving and skating on a longboard (being pulled behind his own car....with other bored friends) for the first time. he busted his ass. if you want a copy of this, i think i know someone who can hook you up. nothing but smiles on this dvd. i'm sorry for the loss of your uncle, but you are sooooo right. life is short and you have to live it. thanks for sharing your beautiful words and letting the rest of us a bit more inside. with lotsa love, arlo

SWEEEEET! thanks linda! i had the sound turned up REALLY loud, too! that rocks! a

just excited to watch the launch of the Discovery - even if i was watching 45 miles away in deland. :) big congrats and pat on the back to my friends (and fellow skydivers) and everyone else that work at NASA. i can't imagine the pressure you were under to get this baby up. woohoooo!! it's so f-ing cool to see it take off in the sky...regardless of how many times you see it.

By Jeff Minerd, MedPage Today Staff Writer Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. July 25, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------ MedPage Today Action Points Advise patients interested in this treatment approach that it is still in the preliminary, investigative stages and is only available in the context of a clinical trial. Direct patients interested in enrolling in a clinical trial of this therapy to www.clinicaltrials.gov. ---------------------------------------------------------- Review BETHESDA, Md., July 25-A prostate cancer vaccine given before hormone therapy may improve results for some prostate cancer patients. Patients receiving a vaccine before hormone therapy had a median of 13.9 disease-free months, compared with 7.6 months for those who received hormone therapy only, reported Philip M. Arlen, M.D., and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute. The results suggest that "the vaccine acts to 'prime' the immune system, and when you add the hormone treatment, it allowed the vaccine to work even better," said Dr. Arlen, whose study was published online today by The Journal of Urology. The phase II study included 42 prostate cancer patients who had received first-line hormonal therapy but still showed increasing prostate-specific antigen levels. None of the patients had radiographic evidence of metastasis. The patients were randomly assigned to either a recombinant prostate cancer vaccine or Nilandron (nilutamide), a second-line hormone therapy, for six months. After six months, patients could choose to receive a combination of both treatments. Follow-up was about four years, and the main outcome measure was time to treatment failure. Neither the vaccine nor hormone therapy alone appeared to have a significant effect. Median time to treatment failure was 9.9 months for the vaccine group versus 7.6 months for the hormone therapy group (P=0.28). In addition, receiving the vaccine after hormone therapy also appeared to have little effect. Median time to treatment failure in this group was 5.2 months. However, for the group who received the vaccine before hormone therapy, median time to treatment failure was 13.9 months, for a total of 25.9 months from the beginning of their treatments (P not reported). No serious adverse events were associated with the vaccine, which consisted of a recombinant vaccinia virus containing the human genes for prostate-specific antigen and rV-B7.1. "Our study indicates there may well be a synergy between immunotherapy with vaccines and hormone deprivation," Dr. Arlen said. New and more potent vaccines have now entered phase I trials. In view of the minimal toxicity and the possible synergy between vaccine and hormone therapy observed in this study, the authors believe that further prostate cancer vaccine studies are warranted. "Our goal moving forward is to introduce the vaccine into earlier treatment stages." Primary source: The Journal of Urology Source reference: Arlen PM et al. Antiandrogen, vaccine, and combination therapy in patients with non metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer. The Journal of Urology. Advanced online publication July 25, 2005.

no. why should they?

hep B is not the only cause of liver cancer. cirrhosis and other virii (hep-c) can lead to it. i'm sure there are other ways, but it's too early to think right now. take care, a

By Jeff Minerd, MedPage Today Staff Writer Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. July 21, 2005 note: Advise patients who inquire about this research that this is only a preliminary study. The safety and efficacy of this potential treatment approach would have to be confirmed by extensive clinical trials before it became widely available. Review HOUSTON, July 21-A molecular pathway by which the hepatitis B virus leads to liver cancer has been mapped by researchers here, who say they have developed an approach to stop this process. According to Mien-Chie Hung, Ph.D., of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the hepatitis B virus shuts down a tumor suppressing enzyme known as GSK-3b. In healthy cells, GSK-3b degrades beta catenin when it enters the interior of a cell. Beta catenin normally sits on the outside surface of a cell and aids cell adhesion. When it enters a cell, however, it functions as an oncoprotein and activates genes involved in cancer development. With GSK-3b "turned off," beta catenin accumulates to harmful levels inside the cell's cytoplasm or nucleus and leads to cancer, the MD Anderson researchers reported in the July 21 issue of the journal Molecular Cell. A similar mechanism, they added, may be involved in a variety of cancers in addition to liver cancer, including breast, colon, kidney, and stomach cancer in which there is overexpression of beta catenin. The researchers performed genetic, histological, and other tests on 53 liver cancer tumor samples to uncover the GSK-3b mechanism. Two other key molecular players are the viral protein known as HBX and another cellular enzyme identified as Erk. HBX activates Erk, which in turn binds to and inactivates GSK-3b. This is how HBV ultimately shuts down GSK-3b, the scientists said. However, in a second series of experiments, the researchers found a way to stop the process. They introduced a variant form of GSK-3b into liver cancer cells. This form could not be inactivated by Erk because the "docking site" for Erk had been changed. The new form of GSK-3b once again began clearing away the harmful protein beta catenin. In theory, this would inhibit the proliferation of new cancer cells, the researchers said. "We think it may be possible in the near future to develop novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of the aforementioned cancers including development of gene therapy and a small molecule that will activate GSK-3b," said Dr. Hung.

happy birthday, doctor doolittle. cya in the Hills when you guys return...or somewhere in between. big hugs! arlo

http://www.thefatmanwalking.com/index.html also an article: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/07/19/special_reports/life_times/11_58_017_16_05.txt this dude is doing something pretty cool, IMO. so if his path crosses near anyone, consider showing him some skydiver support! air trash already has out of perris, i think. they're listed on the supporter page. right now he's near flagstaff. so any AZ peeps around flagstaff, hook a brother up. anyway, i wish him well... email him and cheer him on! i think his wife gets the messages to him.

i guess my issue wasn't so much with the beer, per se, but more with the lack of respect given for his choice not to buy beer itself. traditions in this sport can be fun! but faulting someone for not wanting to buy beer just didn't sound right. granted, the original poster might have been a bit more tactful with his wording (and i think he apologized for that). take care wally!

The Skydiving Outlet - Deland (TSO-D).