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jclalor

Bill MAher guest with bullshit skydiving story

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Anyone else see the writer on Maher tonight plugging his new book and also making the claim he made his first skydive solo from 40,000 Ft ?.


biggest skydiving lie I have ever seen.

I suspect that he made a SL jump from 4.000 feet. He either is confused about the number (most of the world uses metric and does not know a foot from a cm) or simply go it wrong. Its also possible that he said 4,000 and somehow it sounded like 40,000?
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein

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Anyone else see the writer on Maher tonight plugging his new book and also making the claim he made his first skydive solo from 40,000 Ft ?.


biggest skydiving lie I have ever seen.



Not having seen the segment...

To wuffos "solo" just means "not tandem." So he probably did AFF and called it a solo.

And he probably overhead whoever told him he jumped or was jumping from 14,000 ft and repeated it back as 40,000 ft without realizing that jumping from 40,000 ft is a whole different animal, and not a routine undertaking. Given all the stuff you get crammed in your head for your first jump I can easily see someone making one aff jump and not remembering what altitude they jumped from correctly.

See, two miscommunications and we go from wuffo who made a jump, enjoyed it, probably won't continue, but is excited to share, to a loathsome bullshitting poser.

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Given all the stuff you get crammed in your head for your first jump I can easily see someone making one aff jump and not remembering what altitude they jumped from correctly.

Hell, there's a LOT of stuff they don't remember, isn't there?:D:D

I'm glad he told his story on Bill's show. We keep forgetting how amazing jumping out of an airplane really is. :)

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I re watched it. He clearly said, " 40,000 feet solo " clear as day. He was just confused. here is a clip of the Mahr show. skip to 4:00 to see the part about skydiving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3pKltsiVMQ


here is a video of him reading from his book, as well as footage from the skydive, he is talking about about it and this time he said 14,000 feet. He said solo but you can see his 2 AFF instructors there. although 1 seems to get lost towards the end as he is kind of out of control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EX1Aewod2k&feature=share

In conclusion, he mixed up 40 and 14 on Bill Maher's show and called AFF level 1 a solo jump.


One final note, not all black skydivers are that out of control. take it from me. ;)

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So what if he said 40 thousand instead of 14. He was being glib and could just as well have said "a gagillion feet". His story wasn't about skydiving. It was about breaking out of the expectations of his peers. I like what he has to say. I heard him interviewed on Public Radio previously.

And by the way... Even an AFF is ultimately a solo. Once you pull and the JM lets go you are on your own and still in mortal danger.

jon

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I re watched it. He clearly said, " 40,000 feet solo " clear as day. He was just confused. here is a clip of the Mahr show. skip to 4:00 to see the part about skydiving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3pKltsiVMQ


here is a video of him reading from his book, as well as footage from the skydive, he is talking about about it and this time he said 14,000 feet. He said solo but you can see his 2 AFF instructors there. although 1 seems to get lost towards the end as he is kind of out of control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EX1Aewod2k&feature=share

In conclusion, he mixed up 40 and 14 on Bill Maher's show and called AFF level 1 a solo jump.


One final note, not all black skydivers are that out of control. take it from me. ;)



Nice research to find all that. I still think the guy just likes to inflate the facts just a bit. When he is reading from his book about his AFF, he states when he first deploys he is 7 or 8 seconds from the ground. He also says that any skydiver will tell you that 5,000 feet is "next to nothing"

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Rewatch it again - in the clip you posted where he is reading the passage from his book he clearly says 14,00 feet - "Jumped out of the plane solo at 14,000 feet." He says it 3 seperate times in fact.
In the interview portion he does clearly say 40,000 feet. He obviously misspoke because he got it right three times when reading the passage from the book.
As far as the solo bit, he is partly correct, only the "solo" part doesnt apply until he deploys his canopy...

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD...

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I still think the guy just likes to inflate the facts just a bit. When he is reading from his book about his AFF, he states when he first deploys he is 7 or 8 seconds from the ground. He also says that any skydiver will tell you that 5,000 feet is "next to nothing"

I caught the same thing. And I'd like to know how calm he really was when he was shaking the bridle off his arm. Looks like his instructors had gone for more pretzels. ;):D

But hey, the older I get, the better I used to be too.:P

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I still think the guy just likes to inflate the facts just a bit. When he is reading from his book about his AFF, he states when he first deploys he is 7 or 8 seconds from the ground. He also says that any skydiver will tell you that 5,000 feet is "next to nothing"

I caught the same thing. And I'd like to know how calm he really was when he was shaking the bridle off his arm. Looks like his instructors had gone for more pretzels. ;):D

But hey, the older I get, the better I used to be too.:P


If you look at the video of his deployment, it is clearly visible :P (meaning it hung up on his arm and then came off probably through no effort on his part). He probably looked at the video a hundred times and came up with what sounded cool, calm and collected. Hey, he might have actually remembered a comment about "shaking it off". ;)

However, any skydiver listening to his story would call BS on the whole scenario as he portrayed it. His memories of the the one-time jump are probably formed more from his watching the video than actually remembering the jump itself. [:/]
lisa
WSCR 594
FB 1023
CBDB 9

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Seeing the video and the plane that was used during this 'once in a lifetime' TV program, one might even doubt 14000ft agl.

That said, there's a whole lot more going on in the world to get all worked up about than this 'black men don't jump' episode.

Though the writer exaggerated (Hey, since 'Point Break we all know that in free-fall you can have an ongoing scene of more than a minute from 1000ft on) he somehow grasped the 'do-or-die' aspect of the whole endeavour pretty accurate and there IS a distinction between a tandem 'carnival ride' and AFF level one where indeed you are on your own, once deployment is initiated and can be on your own if your larger-than-life AFF-instructor is having an off day. (this possibility was clearly mentioned to the hero of the story when his instructor told him 'whatever happens to you, I'll be OK')

So all-in-all, the guy jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane and lived to tell the tale. If that sends swarms of African Americans to my or any other DZ, I'm sure we are all going to smile as we take their money. :)


"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci
A thousand words...

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ok, so did most of you miss the entire point of this mans story? I mean you should have seen the fish i caught? (yes everyone even skydivers have on the occasion exaggerated a story for the affect) I think everyone on this here should be excited that another person got to experience and feel what we do most every weekend. Even in my short time skydiving 21 jumps now. I often feel exactly the way this man felt, awesome jump chute opens and wow look at the view the experience that time after time has brought me to say wow.....how can people NOT believe in God. From under canopy i always am in aw of what God has given to every single one of us... And how awesome is he that he brought each and everyone of us to such and an amazing sport to reveal in his beauty....Whats the point? The point is dont get so caught up in 40,000ft, 14,000 feet solo no solo...be grateful that God has given someone else the opportunity to see the world from our perspective and how amazing it truly is..I hope that God blesses all of you and gives you many more opportunities to use skydiving (our love and passion) as a tool to bring not only ourselves but others closer to Him....Blue Skies

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I re watched it. He clearly said, " 40,000 feet solo " clear as day. He was just confused. here is a clip of the Mahr show. skip to 4:00 to see the part about skydiving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3pKltsiVMQ


here is a video of him reading from his book, as well as footage from the skydive, he is talking about about it and this time he said 14,000 feet. He said solo but you can see his 2 AFF instructors there. although 1 seems to get lost towards the end as he is kind of out of control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EX1Aewod2k&feature=share

In conclusion, he mixed up 40 and 14 on Bill Maher's show and called AFF level 1 a solo jump.


One final note, not all black skydivers are that out of control. take it from me. ;)




I watched both videos. And after reading the posts on here I really don't see what the big deal is. The guy made his first skydive, albeit one of the ugliest AFF LVL 1s I've seen, he still did something that only most dream about. 98% of the general population that saw this probably didn't even notice the 40k remark. He's already mentioned skydiving so they're automatically thinking death thanks to the media and the perception they have of skydiving in general.

I did get a kick out of the "straight from skydiving into church" remark. But I have to agree, being in the sky, high above the earth, can show oneself just how insignificant they are in the big scheme of things.

As much as we complain about the media and the way they portray skydiving, we should be grateful that someone in the media actually portrayed skydiving as colorful as he did instead of the usual it's unsafe, you could get killed crap. Yeah and I can get killed by one of the idiots that are constantly pulling out in front of me at the red light down the street from my house. Matter of fact the odds are probably in their favor.

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I re watched it. He clearly said, " 40,000 feet solo " clear as day. He was just confused. here is a clip of the Mahr show. skip to 4:00 to see the part about skydiving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3pKltsiVMQ


here is a video of him reading from his book, as well as footage from the skydive, he is talking about about it and this time he said 14,000 feet. He said solo but you can see his 2 AFF instructors there. although 1 seems to get lost towards the end as he is kind of out of control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EX1Aewod2k&feature=share

In conclusion, he mixed up 40 and 14 on Bill Maher's show and called AFF level 1 a solo jump.


One final note, not all black skydivers are that out of control. take it from me. ;)



Holy Shit!!!! his description of going from freefall to canopy is almost verbatim what I said 10 years ago. It's also how I got my skydiving nickname.

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even skydivers have on the occasion exaggerated a story for the affect



Say it ain't so! :D


You know the difference between a fairy tale and a skydiving story?

Fairy tales start with "Once upon a time..."
Skydiving stories start with "No shit, there I was..."

and thats where the differences end.
NIN
D-19617, AFF-I '19

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