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Reginald

Blue Skies, Black Death

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Being new to the sport I hear this a lot.

I looked around on the net and found differing interpretations of this. I’ve heard everything from it’s a line from an old movie to it’s an old way of thinking that says that skilled skydivers won’t die to it’s a yin yang thing.

What is the history and meaning of this phrase?

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Thanks for the feedback. Of course I did a search before I posted the question. I came up with an unmanageable number of hits. 99.99% of them used the term in signatures, accident notices, etc. Not much help in understanding the meaning. I even tried a variety of search parameters and continued to get a untenable number of unrelated hits.
"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things." CP

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I used to have a friend who drove a hearse to and from the DZ, and he used to call skydiving "Sport Death". Although this seemed quite funny at the time, I'm still not sure why he did this. He was very anti-establishment, and hated the government at the time. He was an ex-helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Maybe this was just another way of ruffling other folks feathers. and making some sort of statement.....In another words I don't have a clue where the saying came from.....Steve1

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I believe it came from a group from the Gultch

Back in the 'Old Days'
When the "Jumping Flower Children"
were over using the 'Blue Skies' mantra...

Gultchers would coldly retort;

"Black Death!" ;)

...Or we could go with the "Crayon" thing! :)










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

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In the 70's Dana Morrison used to have a VW with the license "SKYDIE". Her nic-name was "Ma Death". She was on the all girl 10 way team out of Deadland called "Snoots are for Toots". It was a wild time to be in the sport.

The world meet was held in Z-Hills in 81. The DZ was brand new having just moved from the center of the field to the SE corner. Just before the meet George Kabeller decided to burn off all the grass in the landing/packing area. The meet became known as the "Blue Skies/Black Feet meet.

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Skydiving Rastafarians?



***
The principal context of all 'safety meetings' during the 70's...

"You wanna have a Safety Meeting?"
"Sure...got any Twinkees!?" :$



Damn airtwardo, I just can't seem to remember the context of any safety meeting I ever attendedB|
The older I get the less I care who I piss off.

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I seem to remember falling out the side door of a van in a cloud of smoke after hearing a 20 minute call.....
If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

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I seem to remember falling out the side door of a van in a cloud of smoke after hearing a 20 minute call.....

***
WAAAAAY back when...:)

On a rainy day, waiting for the clouds to clear
I reached into my car for a frisbee to throw around
in front of the hangar..

The DZO says to me,
What...no hackey sack???

Ya ever try to seperate seeds with a Hackey Sack!! ;)B|

He just walked away shacking his head! [:/][:/]











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

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Skydiving Rastafarians?



***
The principal context of all 'safety meetings' during the 70's...

"You wanna have a Safety Meeting?"
"Sure...got any Twinkees!?" :$



Hmmm, you obvously never when to a safty meeting at Z-Hills when Hooper was ASO;)

-----------------------
Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

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We had one kinda like that in Covington too.He cut away right over a class in session..and did a backloop...screaming "sport death"before pulling his reserve!He was kicked off for a while!I thought it was super cool at the time.This fella bucked EVERY rule you could imagine.

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Blue skies, black death...
Knew this group of jumpers once back in the day... they'd come out and set up at the dz for days on end... all of em' bike riders. They'd set up this flagpole and would fly a torn black flag... under it would fly the shirt of a jumper friend of theirs who'd burned in... all tattered and ripped... scary group of guys too...don't know what happened to em' but they say that blue sky, black death everytime they got ready to jump

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It doesn't originate with them though. They just picked it up when they were going through their skydiving phase.

-Bliind
"If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

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