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Namowal

When Loved Ones Aren't Thrilled with You Skydiving.

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My dad was and still is very supportive of me skydiving. My mom, on the other hand, wasn't so supportive. So when i went down to visit her in florida i wanted to make a few jumps and invited her along to just watch with absolutely no pressure to jump. After making a few jumps, she actually asked me how much it was to skydive and was considering jumping!

She still hasn't made that skydive but is much more supportive of me skydiving. I think a big part of it is i showed her how safety is our number one priority and it showed at the dz.
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, all used up, and loudly proclaiming: Wow, what a ride!

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I'm fully aware of the stats on fatalities--very few people die due to equipment failure, but I actually find that comforting when it comes to my chances of injury.

The vast majority of incidents are pilot error and 100% preventable--mostly low turns and canopy collisions. Low turns are caused by people making poor decisions in a problem spot, deciding to force a landing into the wind or avoiding an obstacle they shouldn't have been near to begin with. I'm not saying I'm incapable of making those mistakes; far from it. But I do fly a safe, predictable pattern on every jump so I can minimize the chances of killing myself hooking it in.

A canopy collision is obviously a different matter, but I do everything I can to avoid getting myself into situations where they could occur. I stay the hell away from the high-performance canopy pilots as much as possible and I keep my head on a swivel to avoid traffic the entire time I'm under canopy. Note: that isn't to say swoopers are the only people who cause canopy collisions or the only people you need to look out for, but it is easier to avoid canopies flying at lower speeds. That doesn't mean I can't miss something or get taken out by someone doing something stupid, but I'm doing everything in my power to fly my canopy safely.

Is skydiving "safe"? Depends on your definition. If most of the fatalities were due to equipment failure and people doing everything right but still dying, I wouldn't jump (which is why I find the recent spate of canopy collisions really worrying). But if I die skydiving, the odds are very good it's because I killed myself doing something stupid that I should have been able to prevent. That makes the risks of skydiving acceptable to me, since I trust myself to make good decisions. So I guess I consider the equipment itself very safe and the sport dangerous but manageable.

And I should also mention that I've had this conversation with my family, too, and they pretty much agree with me. It's impossible to avoid injury/death all the time. But I've made decisions that make the benefits of skydiving outweigh the risks for me personally, and I'm doing the best I can to stay safe.

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I started jumping before I was married. My dad & my girlfriend (later ex-wife B|) came out to the DZ to catch the "afternoon jumping" after the FJC. My dad, the professional photographer, took some outstanding photos. He used to race motorcycles, so having a fairly risky hobby/sport is nothing unusual for him. He was totally unsurprised when I announced "Oh, I am _definitely_ doing that again!"

Of course, he feigns fear of heights (bullshit), vestibular problems (again, bullshit), and bad knees (yeah, ok) when I suggest a tandem.

My mom, on the other hand, lived way up in Northern Michigan and didn't come "downstate" for hardly anything, so she never saw any of my jumping.

After I'd moved out to New England, I was back in Michigan for an event at the Air National Guard base not far from where she lives, and her and her husband came over for the graduation part of the week. I'd slipped out of the base theater when all the families walked down to the flight line for the final parade, and my mom couldn't figure out where I'd gone (I'd walked right past her with a smile and a wink and said "I'll be right back).

20 minutes later, it was clear where I'd gone, as I was the guy jumping the flag into the center of the whole thing on the flight line.

My buddies who where there said my mom took one look up and said "Oh, there he is." She was quite impressed with my ability to pull off a good demo, though. :)

We don't talk about my skydiving, not because she's uncomfortable or anything, its just that its not a common subject for us. She's not terribly interested (she wasn't a big fan of my dad and his motocross racing, either) and I'm not going to press the point.

Oddly, my ex-mother-in-law was aghast that I didn't immediately stop jumping and sell all my gear when we had kids.

She said to me one day, in complete seriousness, "Aren't you afraid of dying?"

"Sure, I'm afraid of dying. Who wouldn't be? But you know what I'm more afraid of? Not living."

That shut her ass right up. She never gave me shit about skydiving after that.

NIN
D-19617, AFF-I '19

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"Sure, I'm afraid of dying. Who wouldn't be? But you know what I'm more afraid of? Not living."



I'm steering this a bit off topic, but I have to agree with this. As frightened as I was to try skydiving, the notion of me on my deathbead thinking, Dang, I should have tried skydiving. Now I'll never know what it's like bothered me more.:o
My blog with the skydiving duck cartoons.

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"Sure, I'm afraid of dying. Who wouldn't be? But you know what I'm more afraid of? Not living."



I'm steering this a bit off topic, but I have to agree with this. As frightened as I was to try skydiving, the notion of me on my deathbead thinking, Dang, I should have tried skydiving. Now I'll never know what it's like bothered me more.:o


That is the best answer to Question #3 that I've heard, yet. Please post that on the BF. :)
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4197703;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread
lisa
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Im 47 and my mom and dad support it because they know it makes me happy, My wife bought me my first tandem a year ago and was ok with the cash spent on getting license and gear. She also supports me and lets me jump whenever i want, but she will not go to the to the dropzone.

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"Sure, I'm afraid of dying. Who wouldn't be? But you know what I'm more afraid of? Not living."



I'm steering this a bit off topic, but I have to agree with this. As frightened as I was to try skydiving, the notion of me on my deathbead thinking, Dang, I should have tried skydiving. Now I'll never know what it's like bothered me more.:o



One of my favorite quotes:
Everyone who lives will die but not everyone who dies will have truly lived.


But to your OP, my dad HATES that I skydive. At first, he was super supportive & even encouraged my first jump. But, just like your dad, once he realized it wasn't a one time thing, he started to like it less and less. For a while I couldn't even mention it without starting something with him. But over the years he has come to be less abrasive about it. He even rode observer when my mom did her tandem. (She's more understanding about it, but still worries about me.) I talk to my dad as little as possible about skydiving but never try to hide it from him. It saddens me that I can't share that part of my life with him, but I understand the only reason why he doesn't like it is that he loves me and worries about me. We've come to a sort of mutual understanding about it. When I bring it up, he'll express his displeasure with it in a small way or grudgingly listen and I accept that he's just worried about me & bring it up as little as possible. Sometimes you just can't get them to like it and you just have to deal with it.

The tandem thing really worked for my mom. She still worries, but realizes why I love it and can tell how happy it makes me. For her, that is enough to be fully supportive of whatever I want to do. :)

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My Dad made a tandem, my Mom came to accept it. My wife jumps and all our kids think it's normal. So I guess I got no problems. :)
I figure I have about a 1% chance each decade getting killed skydiving. I hope to jump for 50+ years, so the odds are 19 in 20 that I'll live to die of something else. That's good enough for me. :)
Dang, I hope these words don't come back to haunt me. :D

If they do, well, I knew it could happen. ;)

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Skydiving was something my dad always said he wanted to try.. My parents were super excited when I signed up for my first tandem... not so excited when I continued doing more tandems.. and really not happy when I signed up for the long haul. Even less happy when they realized it wasn't a phase! After I got my license my Dad came out to celebrate with a tandem of his own, his quote "I thought you were crazy so I had to try it for myself. Now I KNOW ya'll are crazy". I know they're just worried about me. They constantly tried to tell me to do it less and less and that "i'm pushing it" by doing it so often. When I had my first cutaway I couldn't believe how "happy" my Dad was... (it was the weirdest thing), he said he can now finally relax a little bit because all this time he was afraid that I would freeze under an emergency and go in, and now that he knows I can do it he can accept it more (huh!?). He actually came out this past weekend to help with a search and rescue mission for my freebag.
I feel like they want to be supportive (they enjoy watching videos and keeping track of 'milestone' jumps), but feel that if they say it's okay, and something happens, that it would be their fault for not trying to stop me. So instead they keep their guard up and try to discourage it in their minds. They watch the weather during the week and make sure to call me if it's looking sketchy.

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I do think I'll try to get my parents to do a tandem. Maybe if I get them the certificate for their birthdays they'll go for it...

I say don't forget other loved ones, like significant others. They may not always tell you exactly what they think, like my ex who I think just wanted more to be supportive for me than to tell me she didn't like me jumping every weekend. The truth finally came out in the end though. Moral of the story being: make sure you know what people really think.
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I would suggest taking him out to the DZ when you aren't going to jump.

If he can go out, meet everyone, see the gear, watch the operations without having to worry about you, then maybe he could see it more objectively. If he goes out while you are jumping, he will be so focused on you that he may not be able to see what's going on.

This is what happened with my own mom. I was the only pilot available one day, so I invited her up with her understanding that I wasn't going to be doing any jumping. She came up and watched jumpers other than me and was able to see what was going on without having to worry about me.

The next time I went and jumped, she decided to come out and watch. It was one of those days with a high, thin overcast that let her see everything going on. The plane and even the jumpers were silhouetted against the clouds and perfectly visible. It helped that one of us was doing video and we'd put the video on the hangar TV as soon as we got down. She'd see us jump from the ground, and then watch the jump from our point of view on the TV.

She said that she was rather surprised that she didn't feel the "pit of the stomach" fear while watching me in midair.

Now, she comes out quite often. She loves sitting at the picinic table, enjoying the day, enjoying the entire DZ atmosphere.

It's pretty cool.
"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

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My mom absolutely HATES it - we dont really discuss it too much.
My dad, on the other hand, was very supportive... that is until his first trip to the DZ to watch me jump, which (of course) was my first cutaway. He knew what my canopy colors were, and all he saw was my cutaway canopy going down behind the trees across the field and was convinced I was still attached to it. He didnt even notice that I had landed my reserve less than 50 feet from where he was standing!
He is still more supportive than my mom but he has never come back out to the DZ to watch...

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

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My parents had a tough time with it when I first started jumping, I think partly because I was having a tough time with it and they were worried for me. But I stuck with it and settled in, and they've come to realize how important it is to me, though I may not be quite as obsessive about it as I was when I first started jumping. I was 33 when I made my first jump; I'm 40 now, so it was never about "permission."

I made my first jump in August 2004; I didn't have my parents come out to a dropzone with me until December 2008. Mostly that was just timing; when I visited for Christmas it was typically a terrible time of year to skydive where they live in Virginia; and when they visited me, I planned other things for us to do rather than dragging them out to the dropzone to hang out all day. Finally, in 2008 we decided to go to ZHills for the holiday boogie and talked my parents into driving down to meet up with us in Florida for a few days, after which they'd go off to visit some family in the area, and we'd spend a few days at ZHills. At the end of our time together, they came out to ZHills for part of a day to see what this skydiving thing was really all about.

So, they finally got to see a dropzone, and ZHills is a nice place to bring guests because there's good amenities/comforts, and plenty of great spectator space. My dad (who's always been an aviation buff) was fascinated and I think he could have sat out there all day watching landings; Mom was a little more easily bored, but she was a good sport and enjoyed seeing us jump, and we took them for a tour of an Otter on the ground (no interest in going on a tandem for either of them). I got to introduce them to a bunch of friends, and they got to see the diverse crowd that is the skydiving community.

Just so happens there was a fatality that day; fortunately we'd left the dropzone by then, and decided not to mention it (and I'm not sure that one got too much press). Not that they don't know about deaths in the sport - I've mentioned deaths and memorial services of friends, and of course they read the news. But I was glad that we didn't have to deal with it firsthand that day; I'd hate for that to be what they saw at the end of their first day on a dropzone.[:/]

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

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Its amazing how common it is for everyones freinds and familly to figure skydiving is a PHASE! I wish i had a lump ticket for every time someone has said to me " well youve done 20 jumps isnt that enough?" They dont realize that the more you do it the further you get sucked in!! The thing that bothers me the most is people that dont make a difference in my life asking my familly "How do you deal with him skydiving" First off, shut your trap!!! Second i dont get the having to deal with me skydiving thing. Im the one thats taking all the risk!!
Wait , I pull what first?

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Well, the reality is that for most people, it is a phase. I'm not saying you'll be one of those, but the non-jumper ranks are littered with skydivers who came in with ginormous amounts of enthusiasm in their first year or two or five and who thought they'd skydive forever, who, for various reasons stopped skydiving somewhere in that first year or two or five, after racking up 50 or 100 or 500 jumps. Lots of things change - finances, availability of time, family demands, work demands, competing interests, loss of interest, discovering that skydivers don't poop rainbows all the time, getting caught up in DZ politics, etc., etc., etc.

And there's nothing wrong with that - things change, people change, life changes. But for an awful lot of people, skydiving is a temporary thing, whether it be a few months or a few years. If you take the number of A licenses to D licenses as a very rough approximation of the number of people in the sport who last 25 jumps vs. those who last 500 jumps, you'll see that there are more than twice as many people with A licenses than with D licenses. Even accounting for the chunk of people who stay in the sport for a long time but for whatever reason don't get a D license, that's a big attrition in the first years of jumping.
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

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My dad isn't thrilled that I jump but he knows it makes me happy.

I made it clear from the beggining that I understood as a parent where he was coming from, but that it was an activity that made me happy in my life.

I don't try to convince him that he should be OK with me jumping, and he doesn' try to convince me that I should give it up.

A mutual understanding.



+1


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Well, the reality is that for most people, it is a phase. I'm not saying you'll be one of those, but the non-jumper ranks are littered with skydivers who came in with ginormous amounts of enthusiasm in their first year or two or five and who thought they'd skydive forever, who, for various reasons stopped skydiving somewhere in that first year or two or five, after racking up 50 or 100 or 500 jumps. Lots of things change - finances, availability of time, family demands, work demands, competing interests, loss of interest, discovering that skydivers don't poop rainbows all the time, getting caught up in DZ politics, etc., etc., etc.

And there's nothing wrong with that - things change, people change, life changes. But for an awful lot of people, skydiving is a temporary thing, whether it be a few months or a few years. If you take the number of A licenses to D licenses as a very rough approximation of the number of people in the sport who last 25 jumps vs. those who last 500 jumps, you'll see that there are more than twice as many people with A licenses than with D licenses. Even accounting for the chunk of people who stay in the sport for a long time but for whatever reason don't get a D license, that's a big attrition in the first years of jumping.



Very astute and eloquently stated observation....for a TOURIST! :P:D


I started jumping at 18, I didn't tell my family because as a 'rebel without a clue' I didn't tell 'em much of anything. I did say something on the day I was going to make my 1st free-fall and my dad came along to watch.

My folks were always very supportive of my involvement in the sport and use to come out quit a bit with beer & food for the whole DZ.

I've only had one S.O. that voiced concerns and suggested I quit.
I told her I was doing it long before I met her, Skydiving and doing things like it were who I was...that's what made me who she was attracted to and made me happy.
I told her I could understand her fears but that changing who I am would make BOTH of us unhappy.

I explained the sport and the actual vs. perceived risks, worked to give her insight as to my skills and how I approached what I do.
I believe I opened her eyes a bit, and even taught her the static-line course and took her all the up to free-fall.

Then I dumped the controlling bitch, one god damn thing after another...:S


OTOH, when my better 1/2 and I decided it was time for the kid thing we had some serious discussion...there are things/times in life different responsibilities come into play & priorities change, new goals addressed and concessions may need to be made.

After thorough examination and evaluation we (I think) came up with logical decisions that would work, she would stop her involvement with aerobatic competition and air racing and I would stop B.A.S.E. jumping, and sell the Harley...not something either of us 'wanted' to do, but a workable solution taking into consideration the 'big picture'.










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

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