Justpin

Its stupid, its unlikely he'll get a job anytime soon! I 'quit' in 2009 though they were trying to push me out anyway. The bullying and tears at the desk daily (not a manly thing to say but it is true) and the belittling and unhappiness I experienced there caused me to implode infront of my boss. He gives me bad references all the time for this. I checked because I pretended to be an employer for me and he laid into me pretty badly. It only stopped when he did it to Neil and Neil knew where the bodies were buried and got him done for fraud.

Ireland has had lots of fake growth! A lot of corporates relocate there and use transfer pricing to exploit the 12% corporate tax rate in Ireland. This produces bog all jobs and Ireland is facing an exodus of youth like in the past.

In the UK its quite funny, people moan about the cost of petrol $10.89 (for a UK gallon 4.54 litres!) Yet they don't complain about the cost of beer @ £32.3 a gallon!

I'm not a tandem master or a TI, or anything like that. But I used to jump at a tandem mill Friday/Sat/Sunday tandems were jumped till 4pm. The odd slot here and there. The TIs would work hard, jump land tear off the rig, put on another one get on the plane and manage 3-4 lifts per hour. On the videos it always showed them as thumbs up smily happy. But on the ground he was a miserable sod.... he did it purely for money and at £40 per drop three drops an hour for 5 hours a day lets say couple hours for lunch thats £500 for a days work. I wouldn't say no for that. I need to pump 78hours a week to merely get £500 a week in this bad economy.

Its not the cost of gear that has gone up. Its the fact that the US$ and many paper currencies have gone down in purchasing power. Due to the Fed printing tons of it! Crap as a kid 15 years ago a packet of crisps (potato chips for you guys) cost me 22p, today this same packet of crisps due to uber inflation costs me 72p. I used to think 62p a litre of petrol was expensive when i started driving 11 years ago. Its now £1.42 a litre of petrol! Or a can of coke (soda) cost me 35p in 1999, today this same can of soda is 75p!

Meh, it happens in many walks of life. For instance I work in hot food currently. And tbh I have to stop myself punching the customers out on a daily basis as they absolutely love to rub it in and think you are scum and beneath them. Working around hot water and hot oil I get burnt EVERY single freaking day. It is impossible not to be. You get splashed by 250C oil on your hand and you can see the flesh sizzle and burn instantly. But you can't scream you can't cry and invariably a customer says bit hot is it? Searing pain through my hand I have to suppress the rage to punch them out... I think really its that people can be dicks and love to rub in peoples misfortune and try to big themsekves up by putting others down.

This is my home DZ. So I am slightly biased towards this drop zone though I did not learn to skydive here nor did I qualify or do my consols here either. It felt nice the fact that on my first day here a large number of people approached me and said hello without me approaching them first. The vibe is the best feature here, people stick around after jumping and make you feel at home. From the air the DZ is pretty easy to spot and the landing area is enormous. The DZ also is not a shouty type DZ whereby mistakes and errors are dealt with by a quiet word. I've made a few minor mistakes landing in the wrong field. The fact that many university clubs are based here makes it even more interesting, the DZ owners are fairly young and don't come across as high and mighty as they do in some places. The resident instructors here who are very very easy going and actually have faith in you and your own decision making. Some might not like this if they prefer to be told but then its a bit like marmite tbh the fact that being told I've jumped enough to make my own decisions I felt was nice though. They will put the PAC750 up without a full load. Other places absolutely insist on a 100% full load I suppose this is to keep us fun jumpers happy. They might break even but it keeps us coming. It's not perfect though, kit hire is very scarce for the visiting jumper and all of the kits seem to be made for giants as the harnesses don't adjust enough for waifs. The landing zone and the fields beside the PLA have quite a few surprises. Surprises in the form of cow pats while fields adjacent to the PLA are filled with actual cows. The manifesting is very basic to say the least though. Its a whiteboard and some marker pens. There is also almost always a big audience for your skydives and canopy flight. Seeing as Cark is situated next to a giantic caravan park and actually has a caravan/campsite onsite, though camping is not free (their bunk house is though). Cark is also a bloody difficult place to get to from the motorway. It takes me about 90 minutes to get here from Oldham. Finally the low wing loading of the PAC can be a bit off putting to some jumpers I've met. The other things I've jumped out of PC6, Dornier G92, Airvan, 206, 186, Islander, SMG, 208GC. The wing is above your head and out of sight and out of mind. With the PAC its right in front of you. But you forget about it pretty quick, the door is a touch small though I've seem some pretty big formations go out the door here.

In the 1980s I was still just an itch in my dad's crotch tbh!

Older people tend to still use imperial measurements, pounds and stones, ft and inches. Gen Xers 1975-1990 tend to think in a hybrid system ft and inches for height. lbs for food measurements. But kilos for body weight etc. Heh it gets odd sometimes as people think you are talking in one measurement and you're talking about the other one... A random person asked me how high we drop from, I said 14.5K. She said wow you drop from 14500 metres (low earth orbit of 50,000ft). I said no..... erm ft even though I think in metres.

You need road presence. Smaller machines tend to be invisible though and victim to SMIDSY. In the UK angering guys in cars I've also been chased at high speed. It was scary with a 130mph 650cc NT. On a Honda Joker it it terrifying. Also small bikes are a mega target for theft.

I too used to be hyper sensitive about appearing a fool, until one day I realized that nobody gives a **** about anybody but themselves. For 100% of the rest of humanity you might as well be invisible, because 5 seconds after you've exited their immediate field of vision, you're going to be forgotten forever. Assume that other people attach the same importance to you, that you attach to them - none.

Is it just me or does everybody else wear clothes under their jump suits? I've had my own super skin tight jump suit (pies assisted in this tightness) which falls extremely quickly with me in it (a belly position full arch can get me 167mph so says the vigil). But it seems a lot of people tend to wear lots of clothes under their jump suits.... while I sort of go commando. When the door opens on a Autumn day I'm thinking cor blimey its chilly. While others look at me indifferently because they've been wearing stuff under it!

You just described the CBR600F4I then, it is so popular that parts are easy to come by. The SV is 190kilos wet The CBR600F4I is 187kilos wet. IIRC the SV is vulnerable to water meaning you need a fender extender else the front cylinder head gets engulfed in water. Though granted it is somewhat narrower than the CBR. When I switched from my NT650 (a V2 like the SV) to my CBR the CBR felt really really fat it still does sometimes and I can filter (lane split) faster on the NT650 than I can on the CBR600.

Heh, the UK is too small for an 8 hour ride. Though getting from here to Langar (a big DZ) requires a ride through this road here http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=snake+road&hl=en&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=12.687488,28.256836&vpsrc=0&hnear=Snake+Rd,+Derbyshire+S33+0,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=12 Snake pass. Twelve years ago when I started riding, this road was NSLm (national speed limit) which meant 60. But because there were no cameras or cops we'd play on it at about 90mph. We also have this quite near to us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stelvio_Pass (its quite a tiring road to ride tbh as its hairpin hairpin hairpin). Not so much my butt hutting more my hip and my knees these days.... I did something really stupid about 9 years ago. I put my knee down. Nothing out of the ordinary except I wasn't wearing sliders just a thin pair of jeans

nah what you want to do is ride at about 75mph, the relative wind lifts you off your wrists and off the seat very slightly taking pressure off your hips and your shoulders. I've done some mad rushes on the cber. Went to the tip of Italy and back in 2 days to deliver a parcel once.

WOW! 3500 miles apart at the very least somebody else calls it combat riding as well! But an SV? C'mon what you want is something IL4 at the very least! A uber down geared CBR600F4I is an ideal tool. It can get to suicidal speeds, is fairly cheap on the insurance and its better on gas than the SV650 if ridden conservatively. I go to dropzones on me CBR600F4 (with two rigs) I've travelled round the world many times on it through horrible muddy tracks like Sjaak Lucassen (though did not take it into swampy bits). It took it in its stride!