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jimmyh

16 Year Old Deathcamper

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Great then...you are golden!
Have fun... don't die.
Congratulations on your high school diploma!
I was not aware that a highschool diploma was a prerequisite that would help your skills for base or even skydiving.

To be frankly honest. Your answer is the one of a 16 year old! Nothing wrong with that... cause duh!!! you are 16! But to me, the association of base jumping with your high school graduation tells me you have the maturity of a 16 year old. Again, nothing wrong with being 16. We ALL were 16 once. But base and a 16 year old maturity is receipe for a not so good outcome IMO.

oh and one more thing
from Jimmy's post
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Tom, even if Clair dies BASE jumping and I go to prison, I would still say the venture was worth it.



Must be really reassuring that this whole thing is just a "venture" to your mentor to "see if it can be done".

Maybe you should think about trading spots with a guinee pig in a research lab! Your odds of survival might increase! [:/]

Be smart.

Take care.
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"I am graduated from high school" Fuck that is priceless.
"In one way or the other, I'm a bad brother. Word to the motherf**ker." Eazy-E

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Nice Jimmy, I'm banging a 20 year old here, and I'm 31. It's worth it.



If I were her, I'd dump you just for writing that. :|


On the subject of age, however, I wonder if you would condone a relationship between an 11-year old and a 22-year old.

Same thing, right?

Hmmmm...maybe not.

As people get older, significant age differences between partners is reasonable. But there is a veritable abyss between 16 and 20 in terms of emotional maturity, and in professional circles dealing with the issue, a relationship between a teenager and an adult is considered child abuse. No matter how grown-up a 16-year old seems, s/he lacks the wisdom to discern consequences, and there is an inherent power imbalance in such relationships that make it unhealthy and dangerous for the child.

In another day and time, people lived shorter lives and children grew up faster. Children today give the appearance of being mature at an earlier age, but it's no more than a dangerous illusion. They have the accoutrements--because adults provide them--but the substance is lacking. It is only when a child takes on adult responsibilities that s/he can be considered an adult regardless of his/her age and therefore equipped to engage in adult activities.

rl
If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

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It is only when a child takes on adult responsibilities that s/he can be considered an adult regardless of his/her age and therefore equipped to engage in adult activities.



Obvious question now: what would you consider adult responsibilities?

And, are adult activities and adult responsibilities not closely related? I mean, if you can't participate in adult activities, isn't it more difficult to take up adult responsibilities then?

Feel free to PM me is this is going to much off topic.

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Hey babe you know you look so fine,
Send shivers up and down my spine,
I don't care about our different ages,
I'm an open book with well thumbed pages,
You're Jailbait, and I just can't wait,
Jailbait baby come on
;)
You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.

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It is only when a child takes on adult responsibilities that s/he can be considered an adult regardless of his/her age and therefore equipped to engage in adult activities.



Obvious question now: what would you consider adult responsibilities?

And, are adult activities and adult responsibilities not closely related? I mean, if you can't participate in adult activities, isn't it more difficult to take up adult responsibilities then?

Feel free to PM me is this is going to much off topic.



I'm going to take it even further off, and then come back round again.

When a child becomes self-supporting and able to attend to all his/her needs w/o parental assistance, one may consider that child an adult. (Some people never attain that status but the law says that they are adults anyway. Nothing we can do about that, although perhaps we should.)

My mother was 16 when she married my father and 19 when I was born. It took her many years to understand the consequences of that impulsive act.

I was in foster care when I was 16 and molested by my foster father's 31-year old best friend. At the time, I did not understand it as child abuse, because I valued the attention, but that's exactly what it was. And the consequences for me were terrible on many levels, because although I was very bright and capable, I was already damaged, and the experience damaged me even more.

I did not have the judgment to know what the consequences would be. A teenager does not have sufficient emotional maturity to evaluate the outcome of adult actions. By definition, teenagers believe themselves to be invulnerable. It is only as we age that we begin to understand irreversible consequences and the permanency of death. Unfortunately, in the absence of that kind of comprehension, risk analysis fails.

rl
If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

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BTW, when Clair did her first jump, her friend Cris jumped as well. I'm not sure how old he is, but he doesn't have any skydives either. He did make some rope jumps with Dan Osmond back in the day.
He stuck it too. They both stood up their landings,



Come on man surely you have to be trolling, I read these 3 pages and laughed, then I'd stop laughing and think "maybe he is serious" then think "nah he can't seriously be" and start laughing again.

I seriously hope your just trolling, letting a 16 yr old with no sky dive experience is insane, letting anyone doing a BASE with no skydiving experience is crazy,
I think you said she had like a 5 second canopy ride ?
when I did my first skydive, in the first 5 seconds of canopy flight I had simply undone me breaks and thinking "woh" took me probably 30 seconds before I had even steered both ways.

how you could have expected her to judge the right height to flare is beyond my thoughts.

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I was asked to explain why I am doing what I am doing. The answer is simple because i want to.



This pretty much sums up the issue perfectly and succinctly.

At least we know they're on about the same emotional maturity level, so, hey ya know? It might just work out.

There are LOTS of things I "want" to do... like beat the living shit out of my ex's boyfriend-now-husband. I'd love to trash his car. I'd love to do lots of things to that m%^&#@er.

But I don't, much as I'd love to. And you know why? Because I understand the consequences involved. Therefore I exercise "restraint". It's a foreign word to many people's vocabularies, I know, but if you go to www.m-w.com I'm sure you can find the definition there.

Hell. I'd love to hop behind the wheel of an Indy car and do a few 200+ MPH laps. Think any sane (or responsible) Indycar driver would let me do that just because I "want to"?

I mean, hell, what could possibly go wrong?

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

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the reason that I stated that i am out of highschool is because some one said that i just wanted to show off in school. f@#k that I don't need to explain myself any more.:)
later

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Clair,

Please remember that this is an internet discussion forum. As such it's purpose is to hold discussions. Specifically, this forum is for discussion of BASE jumping and surrounding issues.

Your friends and mentors began conversations on various internet discussion forums, including this one, about you. Presumably they did so because they desired to discuss your experience, and that experience within the context of BASE in general.

In a sense, what I'm saying is "hey, you brought it up." :)
-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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Don't know if I agree or disagree with Jimmy's decisions.. but I'll play devil's advocate.

I was 18 when I did my first BASE jump.. (I am now 22) and was taught by a guy who was in his mid-40's. I even went over to his house all by myself to learn to pack BASE. Of course, I had several hundred skydives and was a rigger. At the same time, a 31 year old guy was teaching me to freefly and to swoop a little. If my parents had known what was going on, they probably would have worried more about the guy teaching me BASE, when it was really the 31 year old guy they should have worried about.

I think the only issue here is the lack of skydives. However, if shes jumping something fairly high, and has an easy landing area, I reckon it could be a lot worse.

Besides, our taxes go to sponsor programs with much scarier and sketchier methods of freefall and canopy instruction than this. How many times have you heard a story about some military skydiving instruction and your eyes have gone wide when you heard some story about some guys 4th jump that is a 1200' static line at night with a 60 pound rucksack?

-Karen

"Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

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I think the only issue here is the lack of skydives.



I still agree that the lack of skydiving, which translates into canopy control fundamentals, is the primary issue, though her posts are now giving me pause on even that.

Is it possible for a 17-year old to have the emotional maturity do do something highly dangerous? Sure.

Jeff Gordon was racing 650 HP spint cars at age 13 (and hit the wall in his first race I might add). But he had also been racing since age FIVE. And even after winning multiple sprint car championships he STILL didn't start racing NASCAR until age TWENTY, and that was after taking Buck Baker's driving school.

What Jimmy is doing is the equivalent of tossing someone behind the wheel of a NASCAR with ZERO prior experience and saying "Have at it. You probably won't die, but if you do, it was still worth it... to me.".

Quote

However, if shes jumping something fairly high, and has an easy landing area, I reckon it could be a lot worse.



It could be, but the fact is, he's putting her off short delay from a tower. So even his selection of sites is bad... notwithstanding what he says. If she has a 180 (or a 90 close to the guys) and doesn't grab her *cough* "seatbelts" immediately and deal with the situation correctly (which is highly doubtful) she's screwed.

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

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Thanks Karen. That was a lot nicer than a pm I just got from TREEJUMPS. Am I aloud to post this tom?

Edit to remove PM. Posting PM's or private email into the forum is bad etiquette. Please don't do that. ~TA

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How many times have you heard a story about some military skydiving instruction and your eyes have gone wide when you heard some story about some guys 4th jump that is a 1200' static line at night with a 60 pound rucksack?



Very poor comparison to use IMO. Assuming you have never been in the military you are simply repeating a story that is far from factual. Regardless, the fact of the matter is a green static line military jumper spends far more time being trained on the ground on all aspects of military jumping than most get in AFF or static line progression before they even get to jump. Showing someone a video who has no frame of reference or knowledge of all the things that could go wrong and then hucking them off of an object is irresponsible and based on the girls age, I would bet grossly negligent in the eyes of the law.

Lets talk about the ugly reality of how this could of played out. What if she had issues on deployment, broke herself or even died? Would that be boasted about? Better yet, as was mentioned, how would that further involve the law with BASE jumping and site access at that location? I would bet the girl's parents would not be too happy had something gone wrong and their child, and she is a child still, was broken or killed. Kudos to her for hucking and living, everyone gets lucky now and then. Enabling her to do this with zero training to speak of, among the other aspects involved, is extremely poor form. As the saying goes...."there is always one..."
"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

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oh for the record I am graduated from High School.



you however did fail English it seems.
http://www.extreme-on-demand.com

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Zennie I hear you, but this is not like putting someone who's never flown a cessna behind the stick of the space shuttle.

Where I have her jumping is an object that cannot ever,ever, ever, ever be struck because of the wind. We do floaters off of it all the time. Ans if you take a two off it you will have a 45 second canopy ride.

the landing area is huge field of knee high grass

All she has to do is unstow the breaks turn and land.

I know about progression. This is hands down the safest place for a non-jumper to learn to be a jumper.

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Where I have her jumping is an object that cannot ever,ever, ever, ever be struck because of the wind. We do floaters off of it all the time. Ans if you take a two off it you will have a 45 second canopy ride.



My bad I thought you were putting her off the big tower. Re-reading I now know which one you're referring too.

Things can still go wrong. If the winds are that strong, what if she winds up in line twists and downwinds it? Backwards.

What if she turns back into the wind but they're honking so much that she's blown backwards?

Do you honestly think she has the experience to deal correctly with these sorts of situations?

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

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Where I have her jumping is an object that cannot ever,ever, ever, ever be struck because of the wind. We do floaters off of it all the time. Ans if you take a two off it you will have a 45 second canopy ride.


Can you, or some-one else, explain how this is possible? Wind and winddirections vary if I'm not mistaking? How can you be so sure it is impossible?

Thijs

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the reason that I stated that i am out of highschool is because some one said that i just wanted to show off in school. f@#k that I don't need to explain myself any more.:)
later



Hey it was just a question not a statement :P. And I said "cool" not "show off." There's a difference see... I was cool in high school without showing off.

[troll feeding]
PS- 'High school' is two words, and 'anymore' is one... Just in case they didn't teach you that in speedy graduation school.
[/end troll feeding]

_______________________
aerialkinetics.com

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Whether my example was 100% factual or not is not the point, you can't argue that 18 year olds in the military may very well have to deal with plenty of really scary shit that probably no one at any age is ready for... stuff that is scarier than learning to BASE with no skydives. The point is that we as a society deem that at the age of 18 people are emotionally mature enough to sign over their lives in a number of ways. Military service, skydiving instruction.. blah blah blah.

18 is really an arbitrary number as it is life experience that makes people emotionally mature. Sure, at 18 you would generally have more life experience than at 16.

However, I know from my personal experience that at 15 I was about as emotionally mature as I was at 20. The thing that shocked me into maturity was dealing with my mom's cancer at age 15 and having to grow up and take care of my dad. Who knows what this chick has been through?

To me this is a question about ethics, not about the legality of this particular situation. I feel like in many cases the law is fairly arbitrary. At 18 you can die for your country, but you can't drink? You can drink at 21 but at no age can you smoke pot?

The question is, is this situation ethical?

I think it would be ethical if Jimmy had her learn to skydive and they weren't romantically involved. Otherwise, I don't think its a very ethical thing to do.

The end of my story about learning BASE is that after 3 jumps I realized I wasn't suited for BASE. Hopefully after receiving a variety of views on the subject, this chick will make the responsible decision to go make some skydives.

-Karen

"Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

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I always thought a 300 foot bridge with a small round parachute over nearly still water with a pca to be the safest, assuming a rescue boat is below. i have a friend who put 5 jumpers off this sort of site in one day, none of whom had ever made a skydive or base jump. I always viewed a person's reaction to the environment without any prior adrenaline-like experience to be highly unpredictable in people, with definite physiological advantages in some and not in others.
Looks like a death sandwich without the bread - Steve Deadman Morrell, BASE 174

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Where I have her jumping is an object that cannot ever,ever, ever, ever be struck because of the wind. We do floaters off of it all the time. Ans if you take a two off it you will have a 45 second canopy ride.


Can you, or some-one else, explain how this is possible? Wind and winddirections vary if I'm not mistaking? How can you be so sure it is impossible?



I have made many jumps from that object. The prevailing wind direction at this time of year makes object strike almost impossible. I haven't seen a day, in this season, at that object, with winds at opening less than the average forward speed of a BASE canopy. Wind there is very regular, and very predictable, and usually quite high, during the summer months. To my knowledge, the only strikes at that site have occured at different times of year. When I was living there and jumping it we used to refer to it as a "vertical bridge" because of the virtual impossibility of striking.
-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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I am not a base jumper, you can call me a whuffo in basejump.

I won't say anything about how god she is in base, how well she did, etc.;. I can't judge it.

However... I wonder... and please correct me if I am wrong:

1. the girl is under age and parents are responsible for her.
2. You are an adult and you are responsible for her. The fact that she came here to tell us she does not go to school any more is not an adult reaction: it has nothing to do with the discussion!!!! Behaving responsible and as an adult adult would be telling us her partof the story and not just stating she is no longer a student.
3. The sport is illegal in most parts of the world. When things go wrong YOU will get the blame and the parents.
4. I can't judge whether one needs skydiving experience in order to basejump. Skidiving is a dangerous sport already, but base seems to me a bit more dangerous: being able to fall stable and to track without relative wind seems difficult to me, reactions must be faster... I don't know... During 50 seconds of freefall there is more time to practise some basic skills.
5. Isn't a base parachute more reactive? I don't know, I am just guessing on this one.

Well, while doing aff there are two instrucors with you in the beginning to correct you. If you don't pull (brain lock) they will pull. Under canopy there is radio contact. Jumping from a tower means jumping near to an obstacle...

If I am correct (as I stated before, I am a base whuffo), there are more risks involved in base than in skydiving.

In my countrey, people are allowed to skydive from their 16... there is a legislation that allowes it and nobody gets the blame if something goes wrong.

I just want to say... I believe it is possible to learn to basejump without having skydiving experience... but when I use my common sense, I don't think it is ideal. When I read the reactions of most other basejumpers in this forum, it seems they agree with that point of view.

My question to you: do you really want to take the risk? It seems you do, so there is no discussion about that.

Do you really think the girl is mature enough to calculate the risks? We can only say that as long as nothing goes wrong. The same about the parents.

However, it is hard for me to imagine that the parents agree their daughter doing a basejump... but who am I to judge. But if you like it or not, I find this a delicate story.

I don't think you can compare ski etc... with basejump. First of all ski is legal. One can get killed of course. But isn't it possible that in Base jump the risk of dying is higher? What would you do if she suddenly suffers from a brain lock?

To Clair... why do you do this at this age? If something goes wrong with you at this age... other people get the blame. How did you meet Jimmy? How did you get interested in the sport? Do you read this thread? What do you think when you read the reactions of other skydivers and base jumpers? Do you understand them?
-------------------------------------------------

No dive, like skydive... wanna bet on it?

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Sean, Brit,

If you have an opinion about the actual topics at hand, that's one thing.

Nitpicking people's grammar and spelling is silly. Criticizing someone's maturity by pointing out spelling errors is beyond ironic.

I'm sure we can all express our views without that kind of thing.
-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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