Muffie

Just another thought to share with you. I was talking to one of the very experienced guys at my dz about progressing and learning in the sport and he told me when he was a new jumper he found another new jumper and they committed to doing 50 2-way jumps together and it was one of the best things he did for his skills. Consistently jumping with one person lets you work together to progress. You can come down, discuss the jump, and then work on whatever didn't work the time before. As opposed to jumping with different people all the time or jumping in larger groups where you spend half the jump just trying to figure out where everyone is. I could see how you could easily get to 200 jumps that way without really building a good skill set and it would have nothing to do with your inherent ability.

So, let me get this straight, Shah. You complain and complain and complain that women don't hit on men (or maybe don't hit on you). You finally have one hit on you and you turn her down? Granted she asked you to buy her a drink, but instead of being an ass about it you could have said "I think you're cute, too, why don't you buy me a drink?" and maybe you could've kept it going without any cash out of pocket. Guess she was over a size 8....

+1 After reading the Craig Kuske incident thread yesterday, this bears repeating. I had trouble with mastering turns on my AFF. Best thing I did was just decide that for one jump I didn't care if I passed or not. Turned out to be my best jump of all. ETA: The Craig Kuske incident was from 2004. I was just reading about it yesterday.

Use "Quote" instead of "Reply"

I agree with the guys about the education issue. Education does not equal career stability and it doesn't necessarily equal intelligence. I happen to have a few degrees, but the best match I dated so far was a guy that went into the military right out of high school and then was very motivated and driven in his career choice after that. Give me a guy who I can communicate with who has his act together over a guy with some fancy degree and too much debt from trying to keep up with his classmates any day of the week.

To the OP: Hope it works out. Never seen one, but would've loved to.

I would split the active student operation category into: Active tandem operation Active SL/AFF/etc. operation Or just add active tandem operation as another factor if it wasn't supposed to be part of the student operation category.

As someone very new to the sport, I think the back and forth discussion is invaluable. Sometimes it makes me wish I had some serious migraine medication at hand reading through it all, but I learn ten times as much from the discussions as I would from a dry summary of the incident. Not to mention that very rarely is there a true, solid, complete, and accurate summary of any incident available. What might be nice is if after a reasonable period of time one of the moderators could come through and provide a summary at the very end of the incident with name, jump numbers, equipment, and what it appears happened or at least what has been agreed to and what is still conjecture/debate. And then maybe lock the thread barring new info.

To me it depends on the nature of the posts. Most of mine are in the Bonfire which has next to nothing to do with skydiving. I jump probly three days a week at the moment and am probably at the dz five days a week, but my post numbers are higher than my jump numbers because I work from home and get bored very easily and I don't have enough facebook friends without lives to keep me entertained. Thankfully there's dropzone.com for that.

I kinda had it with him when Tam was in two story lines at once because it turned out Sanderson was progressing the characters along two very different timelines in the latest book. That just sent me over the edge...plus it seemed like he subtly changed the interpretation of a few of the character's personalities in a way I didn't think was true to the earlier books. Agreed on RRM. Taking forever to finish. There's another series by Melanie Rawn that I've finally given up on her every finishing that I read back in '98. I know it's harder to write a good book with such complex story lines, but it sucks when they take too long to get the next one out. I read too many books to remember a whole complex plot line five plus years later! That's why with Robert Jordan I went and reread the whole series before starting in on the two Sanderson ones. Might've been part of the reason I had such an issue with Sanderson's take...

I know that had to be a joke! I can't tell you how annoyed I am that I'm going to have to read that final book just to see how it all ends. Not everyone can be a master at their craft, but still...

Agreed. First time I ever went out I was about half an hour late. I was nervous walking in the door and my dad gave me the clear indication that he was extremely unhappy with me and said the next time there would be serious consequences. If I'd come home and he'd just shrugged it off I would've decided it wasn't important and acted accordingly in the future.

I read that last year because I'd heard so much about it over the years. Interested to see what lauralicious thought of it, but I hated it. I found the woman way to whiny and neurotic and incapable of just taking charge of her life. May have been groundbreaking when it was written, but didn't connect for me. I did get a few good quotes out of it, though.

I wasn't a fan of Shah's response either, mostly because it's so one-dimensional. I think he quoted something about a woman being lucky she was attractive or she'd go hungry? And, yet again made reference to the guy who gets stuck with her being the loser/sucker/whatever. And how there's some point where she'll lose it all. Agreed, looks are valuable. They are a currency that can be spent when needed. But they're not the only currency. Intelligence, education, a good work ethic, and specialized skills can all get you somewhere, too. Especially in this day and age where more and more work is done virtually. And it's not like a woman hits some magical expiration date at 30 or 40 and suddenly loses her looks. She may no longer appeal to men who are looking for 20-something beach bunnies, but a woman who trades on her appearance can still do so for a very large portion of her life if she doesn't completely abuse herself and as long as she appreciates that her target market has shifted.

True, but it wasn't clear why he was asking. And as I recall that thread had some good discussion about the pros and cons of doing them, etc.

Do a search. I'm pretty sure that Rhys posted about doing night tandems on the South Island of NZ a while back.

I have this up on my facebook wall and firmly believe it: "I must remember that things, events, and people only have the ability to influence my happiness to the extent that I give them the power to do so. And that if something makes me unhappy I can change it, eliminate it, or change the value I have placed on it." My father faced more challenges in his life than most people I know, but he managed to face them head on and with a positive attitude. And many of those things were out of his control. Try poverty, a father who died when he was three, a mother who was married about ten times, a terminal illness that was supposed to kill him before he was 18, etc., etc. And yet he also accomplished more with his life than most people I know, because he chose to live his life rather than bitch about how it wasn't perfect. Shit will happen in life, it's up to you how you deal with it when it does. But I agree with the earlier poster that we all have a predisposition one way or another.

I've only done tunnel time at the Colorado tunnel, but I think it's excellent, so good choice IMO. I can't comment on how much time. Since you're coming from out of town you'll want to get what you can out of it so you'll probably do more time than I was doing since I was local which was 15 minutes each week. Have a coach for all of it. I think there are one or two coaches from the tunnel on here who can give you some contacts, but if not PM me. I wouldn't recommend just coming in on Sunday. The tunnel is pretty exhausting and if anything goes wrong with your flights you'd be screwed. I would recommend flying in late Friday, maybe getting in two fifteen minute sessions on Saturday and one on Sunday and then flying back. If you contact the tunnel they should be able to point you to some cheap local hotels. It also may be just as cheap to get a rental car as taking Super Shuttle, depending on the deals that are on. Enjoy! I did some tunnel time (2.5 hours) when I had about 30 jumps and it was an amazing difference when I jumped again.

Good lesson/reminder for all of us lower jump number jumpers. Just in terms of your comment about following another student in - we had some crap weather here this past week or so and I was doing some reading up on canopy collisions and there was one from about five years ago where two students collided because one was behind the other coming in and the front student did a 180 to get back towards the landing area. So, just something to think about when other students or jumpers with low numbers are in the air with you - don't count on them being predictable or heading in the direction you think they will and give yourself enough separation from them to react to whatever they may do. I'm sure you had plenty of separation coming in, but figured I'd get that thought out there for anyone reading who may not have thought about it before. I'd thought through a number of scenarios, but not that one. Loved the video of your first jump BTW.

A lot of the stories I've seen with dislocations have also involved exits. Exit with arms too stiff and extended, have it not go perfectly, but try to hold on and bam! dislocated shoulder. What other sport do you have where people are spinning around in the sky trying to hold onto one another?

48. But I relied heavily on the two free letters. If I'd just gone by images I immediately recognized it would've been closer to 20.

They're going to be on Celebrity Apprentice - that HAS to make them legit, right? Throw all those years of schooling out the window and go sell all your friends on the idea!

Only once??? Hmm. Given a few of your other posts, I'm thinking that is the perfect reason for someone to get you drunk again. I'll bet you'll laugh at something when you're drunk and well, yeah, other things. Can someone with realworld access to davjohns please get him drunk? And take pictures!

This made me laugh today! And something in the bonfire makes me laugh pretty much every day.