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Sharing The Love

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I tried three times to express in writing the joy I experienced yesterday taking young John, who is confined to a wheel chair due to cerebral palsy, on a tandem skydive for his 20th birthday. Then Arvel (BlueSBDeath) sent me the pictures.

Simply sharing Arvel’s email along with the pictures seems the most fitting way of expressing how he and I both felt about our experience with John. You can see it in my face! My only regret is that I didn’t get Arvel in any of the pictures. :(

This was John’s second tandem, and my first with a wheel chair bound person. (Yes, I bought :D x 24). It was an honor to skydive with someone with a heart and level of courage as big as his. It is true what they say: when you give and give without expecting anything in return, it comes back to you one hundred fold.

Arvel’s email:

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Subject: Sharing The Love

John,

I can not express how these pictures make me feel!!

I have a smile on my face and tears in my eyes from the joy that is given to this young man during our jump with him. This is truly what it is all about!! I love to make people this happy!!

Please share these pictures and the details of the story with our peers!!!

Thanks for letting me be part of this incredible event, it is one of my most
memorable experiences!!

Arvel



Arvel, here’s to many more like that one my brother. You are the ultimate people person!

John, you are truly a gift to this world – thank you for sharing yourself with us!

Many thanks to TonyT, British Bob, and Packajoe for their support and to Chris at Eloy for the strap design.

John

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Wow, great story!! The pics of your young passenger were incredible. The expression on his face was sheer, life. That's the only way I can put it. This will be the memory of a lifetime for both of you........

Bob
Bob Marks

"-when you leave the airplane its all wrong til it goes right, its a whole different mindset, this is why you have system redundancy." Mattaman

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Being able to share in the joy with someone experiencing skydiving for the first time is the number one reason why I would want to be an AFF or Tandem master, most definitely. Sharing the skydive with someone who you know enjoyed it that much is just awesome.

Not only were those great pics to see (I am very happy this individual got to experience a skydive) but they also make me take a minute to reflect on how fortunate we are as skydivers to have the ability to jump/spend the extra $/ have the camraderie, etc. There are lots of people in the world who can't even touch being as lucky as we are. :)
Blue skies and SAFE landings!
~Amanda~

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John and Arvel,
This is the second time in as many weeks that you guys have brought tears to my eyes. First the pictures of John and his mother and now these.
What a fantastic thing you get to do. Both for your tandem students and yourselves.
karen

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Um, aren't you landing cross-wind in that photo?



That sock is out by the runway. What you don't see is the pea pit, wind streamer and the surrounding trees. The Raeford dragon can do funny things to the wind sometimes so it is not unusual to see the wind direction change abruptly from the runway to the landing area.
"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

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Um, aren't you landing cross-wind in that photo?



LOLOLOL!:D

I knew someone would ask me that! We had one of those days that the windsock was moving around a lot - in this case more than 90 degrees. What I do in those situations is pay attention to the changes from about 1500 feet to my turn on final, then I "split the difference" and commit myself to the dominant wind line.

It worked like a charm - we had a beautiful seated landing.

And to lisamariewillbe: I didn't mind the question - hopefully someone learned something from the exchange. Since you reconsidered and chose to remove your post, I removed the reply in which someone quoted the text you removed.
Arrive Safely

John

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Being able to share in the joy with someone experiencing skydiving for the first time is the number one reason why I would want to be an AFF or Tandem master, most definitely. Sharing the skydive with someone who you know enjoyed it that much is just awesome.

Not only were those great pics to see (I am very happy this individual got to experience a skydive) but they also make me take a minute to reflect on how fortunate we are as skydivers to have the ability to jump/spend the extra $/ have the camraderie, etc. There are lots of people in the world who can't even touch being as lucky as we are. :)




this is so true amanda....what made the whole experience that much better with these guys is to see these two gentleman come and pay completely in change.......i was proud to jump with one of these guys and was more then willing to do it for free.
"Professor of Pimpology"~~~Bolas

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