Bar room Liars (jump, fly, land TYPES)

[dzswoop717 5]

Over the years I have run into people who will tell you they skydive, when you know that they haven't. Most times it starts because I am wearing a skydiving Tshirt. They say "Do you skydive" and I always answer back with "I tried it a couple of times". My last quote is the bait for a liar. If you tell them you have hundreds or thousands of jumps they will rethink weather they should try to bull shit you or not. If you give them the impression that you don't know much about the sport you can hear some real humdinger stories.
Here are a few lies I have had told to me over the years.

One guy jumped with a surfboard attached to his feet and used a "circle chute".

Another guy progressed onto freefall using longer and longer static lines. 5000 ft long.

An old drunk airborne wannabee said neither chute opened so he freefell over and landed on top of his buddies canopy, then climbed down and hung onto his buddy until they landed.

The list of leis goes on and on, sort of like the JUMP, FLY, LAND kid.

Does anybody else have any good stories from Liars?

[normiss 620]

The one that swore his tandem instructor disconnected the uppers while under canopy.

[LuckyMcSwervy 0]

Just last weekend a 60 year old dude who was drunk as eff told me he had a Mae West on a round, was trying to "flick" the line over since it was so loose as he was spiraling down , but didn't cut it away because he didn't have a reserve. This was after hanging off a Cessna strut at 1,000'. He said he landed perfectly, stood it up. Alrighty then...

Always be kinder than you feel.

[StoppieJoe 7]

Had a guy AT A DZ tell me that he was flying a wingsuit and flew through and through a high rise building in downtown new york. Said tyhe glass cut him up a bit but other than that he was fine

Carpe Diem, Even if it kills me -- "Dead Poet's Society"

"Are you getting into trouble over there?" --- "Nothing that I'm going to admit to!"
____________________________________

[Andy9o8 0]

normiss

The one that swore his tandem instructor disconnected the uppers while under canopy.

As YouTube will attest, that only happens in freefall.

[normiss 620]

Prior to exit I HAVE seen.

[earth2eric 12]

Before I started skydiving (had done a few tandems and watched and read every thing I could get my hands on) I was asking some friends about wanting to do AFF. One kid in the group started talking about how he already skydives and has "30 hours". I asked him about his AFF and where he started and he told me "his dad is a Pararescue Jumper in the Air Force and him and his buddies did 10 tandems with him and then let him jump by himself." He also didn't have any gear and stopped jumping because he just didnt like it anymore.

I also had someone at work who convinced their office they were an AFF instructor up in Canada. When I started asking about when they last jumped or if they had jumped out here they got real nervous and didn't want to finish the conversation. Apparently they had about 250 skydives......

[Ron 7]

A guy was hitting on a friend of mine at work. We were all sitting in another friends office.

He starts taking about how great skydiving is - Out of the blue, there was nothing to prompt this conversation. He starts talking about how it is the best thing ever, other than sex as he looks to my female friend he is hitting on. He just keeps going and going while everyone in the room glances at me waiting for me to either verify or shut him down... I do nothing and just let him talk.

Finally the guy who's office we are in nods at me and tells the suitor, "Ron jumps too". He stops mid sentence and there is a flash of "Oh Shit" in his eyes. Then you can physically see him make the choice to continue anyway as he mentally builds his wall of lies.

I still say nothing. I just take a sip of my coke and give an affirmative nod. I was trying to give the guy an out, let him save some face.... He didn't take it. Instead he presses on about his experiences and now starts questioning me about my bona fides. "Where do YOU jump?" he asks me. I say WTS (anyone from the area knows that is West Tenn Skydiving). He says he never heard of that place. Starts puffing up a bit like he has the upper ground and asks were it is. I tell him Bolivar, TN. He says that is where HE jumps and he has never seen me there.

Now, at this point pretty much everyone in the room but him knows his goose is cooked. Even my whuffo friends knew "WTS" but this guy just keeps trying to survive the lie he started.

The guys potential mate pretends to innocently asks me: Ron, how many jumps do you have now? When I answer 600 you can see the blood drain from the guys face as his story starts its nose dive to the ground. I still say nothing, maybe the guy will be smart enough to quit now before his story starts going downhill so fast it starts to shred apart..... Ah, nope. He charges.

He looks at me, "Well then why have I not seen you out there?" Finally, I start to engage him. "I spend almost every weekend out there and when the king air is out of town I often go with it. What kind of flying do you do, RW, sit (yes, before it was called FF or Vrw), freestyle, skysurf?"

He says, "Well, I am still in the training program".
"Oh, that explains a lot then. Who is your instructor?"
He replies with a guy who's name I barely know. He was a TANDEM instructor that was kicked off the DZ about a year ago.

"Ah that explains it, he has not been at the DZ for a year. I thought he was only a TI? How many jumps do you have?"

Silence.... "Just the one, but I am going back".

He didn't get laid.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[tigra 0]

My niece has never made a skydive. She went to a party once where she did not know many people. Just for grins and without any warning, the host decided to introduce her to everyone as a skydiving instructor. She went with it and spent most of the night BSing about skydiving. I thought it was a pretty funny way to break the ice.

Honestly, the pretend jumpers and wannabes don't really bother me. I do hate when someone finds out that I skydive and immediately tells the story about his or her best friend's neighbor's cousin who made a jump and his "chute" didn't open.

[yoink 321]

Posted this in 2004 when I had a couple of hundred jumps.


***In a bar today a mate and I got playing pool with a couple of lads... we got talking about extreme sports and one of them says "yeah, we skydive... it's really cool".
Great! This perks my interest so I ask where and how long they've been doing it... they look a little uncomfortable and say 'down south' and 'a while'... okaaaay.. time to have some fun with them Sly
Me: wow! how high do you jump from?
Them: "oh, usually 35,000 feet - about 2 miles"
Me: sounds really cool! but what if your parachute doesn't work
Them: Oh, I used to jump with two just in case, but only have one now.
Me: How often do they fail?
Them: once every three or four times you use it, I guess... I've made a coupla hundred jumps, so I know the risk - that's why I only use one...

....

so apparently there's a UK DZ that jumps at 35 grand! I'm going - but only if I can pack my own gear! A mal every 4 jumps?!! The repack bill would be horrendous!

[yoink 321]

dzswoop717

Another guy progressed onto freefall using longer and longer static lines. 5000 ft long.

I would NOT want to be humping that rig around all day.

[airtwardo 6]

Doesn't only happen in skydiving...

My better half is a senior Captain for a major airline, 5' tall & 110 lbs soaking wet, she certainly doesn't look like someone with 30,000 hours of 'jet time'...

Some of the "I'm a pilot" pick-up lines she's heard are 10x's funnier that what 'we' hear!

She tends to give enough rope... then comes back with "You REALLY picked the wrong girl to try THAT line on!"

The best was watching the color drain for some asshats face when she pulled out her license with endorsements for 727,747,757, 767 & 777 on it..."let's see YOURS!"

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[format 0]

I started 10 yrs ago with a friend who stopped after 3rd jump.
Years after, while hitting on woman, he said: "How many? Hmm.. I don't know, 3-4 hundred jumps I think"
She asked him how can he not remember whether it's 300 or 400 jumps (already smiling)

He told me it was embarassing when she said that her ex-husband was a skydiver BUT... all that together didn't ruin their good times
women

What goes around, comes later.

[wmw999 2,116]

I've probably heard more jumpers pump up their numbers than non-jumpers lie about jumping (well, actually, I don't believe I've ever had that happen -- and I was 20 when I started).

But more than a couple of times, I've heard jumpers talk about more jumps than I knew they had -- "Oh, I quit logging"

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[airtwardo 6]

wmw999

I've probably heard more jumpers pump up their numbers than non-jumpers lie about jumping (well, actually, I don't believe I've ever had that happen -- and I was 20 when I started).

But more than a couple of times, I've heard jumpers talk about more jumps than I knew they had -- "Oh, I quit logging"

Wendy P.

I actually DID quit logging for a number of years...but with the electronic gizmos I started again.

I just download every month!

I don't claim the ones I can't 'prove' but people are often impressed with the number anyway - until I tell 'em some of the students I've taught have 3 or 4 times as many as I do!!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[quade 3]

wmw999

But more than a couple of times, I've heard jumpers talk about more jumps than I knew they had -- "Oh, I quit logging"

When I started, I kept OCD-like meticulous records. It wasn't hard since I was only making a few jumps on any weekend. After a certain point, when I was jumping camera heavily for 4-way and whatnot, I left all the counting up to the Dytter. The numbers were simply flying by and I had little time to care about actual logging. I'd update my logbook occasionally with a new total, but honestly, it just never mattered much. In my last year of jumping or so, I tapered off and it still didn't matter what my log book said. I knew I had about 3000 jumps, but my log book had only been updated to the 2900 mark. Like I said, it just didn't matter. What was the point? Oh, the USPA merit badge? Meh. Who cares? I knew what I had done.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Baksteen 84]

yoink

so apparently there's a UK DZ that jumps at 35 grand! I'm going - but only if I can pack my own gear! A mal every 4 jumps?!! The repack bill would be horrendous!

No it wouldn't... just the one chute, remember?

"That formation-stuff in freefall is just fun and games but with an open parachute it's starting to sound like, you know, an extreme sport."
~mom

[wmw999 2,116]

It's that second part -- "than I knew they had." Someone who's been jumping a year at a weekends-only DZ (or has a weekday job), when I'm at the DZ nearly every weekend -- they don't have 750 jumps without my being aware of it. Really...

note: it's been years since I was at the DZ nearly every weekend We're talking ancient history (back when guys might want to impress me )

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[ShotterMG 0]

***Just last weekend a 60 year old dude who was drunk as eff told me he had a Mae West on a round, was trying to "flick" the line over since it was so loose as he was spiraling down , but didn't cut it away because he didn't have a reserve. This was after hanging off a Cessna strut at 1,000'. He said he landed perfectly, stood it up. Alrighty then... [/

I would bet this one is true. Sounds like typical Cessna DZ antics. Especially 20 years ago. You owe him a beer.

[Andy9o8 0]

Quote

"Oh, I quit logging"

Amazing how many skydivers are also lumberjacks.

[grimmie 173]

Craig Girard has the all time funniest "I'm a skydiver" story. He was coming back from the World Cup one year and some guy next to him on the plane goes on and on about being a jumper. And of course Craig just eggs him on. He never did tell the guy he just won a gold medal and he saw through the BS. He let the guy have his glory.

[dpreguy 14]

Mid November went to a shop for some intricate tool work.. I was wearing a shirt with Performance Designs logo with a ram air parachute silhouette. The guy sees the shirt and asks if I "parachute".
I said I did; nothing more. He then starts telling me when he was in the Marines they used "running parachutes" - explaining that they came down so fast that the parachutist had to run on landing, because if they didn't run when they hit the ground they would "really get hurt". Explained how these "running parachutes" were really small, etc..

I said "yeah that's cool" or something like that. He asked me if I parachuted now, and I said I did. He quickly said that his parachuting was a long time ago and that he guesses they have "better stuff now".

[ryoder 1,381]

Andy9o8

Quote

"Oh, I quit logging"

Amazing how many skydivers are also lumberjacks.

I put on women's clothing
And hang around in bars.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[Remster 24]

ryoder

***

Quote

"Oh, I quit logging"

Amazing how many skydivers are also lumberjacks.

I put on women's clothing
And hang around in bars.
We know. We all saw the video from the bar's webcam.

Remster

[DSE 3]

An older gent here yesterday, sees my wingsuit and tells me he was one of the stunt guys in Gypsy Moths, and how much more dangerous those suits were because they were landing straight down. Of course I'm interested. "Are you still jumping?"
"nope, I hung it up after that movie."
why?
"Ken Curtis was a pain in the ass to work with and he was really dangerous around airplanes."
I asked if he meant "Ripcord" or "Gypsy Moths"
"I know what I meant, it was Gypsy Moths."
Ken Curtis wasn't in Gypsy Moths...
"The hell he wasn't, I doubled for him for several jumps. The 182 we jumped out of is still over at Perris."
I asked if he kept in touch with Carl Boenish.
"We exchange Christmas cards, but I haven't seen him for years."

Later, he went on to explain that he trained with 2000 square foot parachutes.