skr

>Relative WORK just sounds so damn DULL! :-) :-) Yes, I thought "work" was an unfortunate word too, but it was already in place when I started. I don't find any of these words, relative work, formation skydiving, freeflying to be very useful. Recreational skydiving vs competition skydiving is more accurate. Relative work used to mean freedom and expression and exploration and play. When people started using it for competition and records it turned into the grim, white knuckle activity that it is now. Now re play that same sentence with freeflying. Freeflying used to mean freedom and expression and exploration and play. When people started using it for competition and records it turned into the grim, white knuckle activity that it is now. Other than being 30 or 40 years later in history, and standing on their heads, I can't see any difference in how the two are unfolding. Well, piercing body parts is more popular now so there's a difference. I've always disagreed with the unproportional emphasis that PCA / USPA put on competition. Recreational skydiving is the grass roots well spring from which all the new ideas come from. Maybe I should post this over in the freefly forum, that would probably stir things up :-) :-) Skr

>He suggested we do a hop'n'pop together Good idea - I like this instructor and I've never even met him. >what pointers would you guys give me At http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/index.html#learning I put something called "Canopy Control - Wings Level" which talks about braked turns and some other canopy stuff. I'd be interested to know what you're instructor thinks of the ideas in it. skr

>I just realized that I am ambivalent about skydiving. Only real skydivers are ambivalent about skydiving. Everybody else is pretty certain how they feel. It's really hard to know, when the scaries rise up, whether to push on through, or listen and back off. Jumping out is a big deal. Watch as the plane gets close to jumprun and the door opens, how people act. Some people are talking and bouncing off the walls and doing all these ritual hand things, others, like me, go inside and get really quiet. OK, my handles are here, the door is there, that group and then that group and then us ... Gathering your being and making 15 or 20 jumps close together is one way to get over the hump. Talking to the right people and getting clearer about whatever your real fears are and then practicing what to do in those situations can help. Sometimes you can do some kind of sports psychology move to get your fears down to their appropriate size, and the good parts up to their appropriate size. My root fear on my first jump was that the harness would come undone and I would fall out. It's now almost 41 years later and I still crank my harness one notch tighter than is probably average because it is reassuring when I'm in freefall to feel that I'm actually wearing a parachute. Jumping out is a big deal. It's mostly worth it though. I'm looking forward to your next set of jump stories. Skr

I think it's a great statistic to hand to whuffos. We're dealing in emotional impressions, not logic. I don't understand probability and statistics. I took 3 courses in college plus a couple in measure theory and integration which supposedly underlies it. I think Von Neumann was right - you don't understand mathematics, you just get used to it. Three statisticians went duck hunting. The first one fired straight at the duck and his shot went behind. The second one led to much and fired ahead of the duck. The third one put his gun down and said "We got him". skr

>All I want to do is fly through the air >Is this common, or am I an antisocial freak You're OK, follow your heart. One thing I would do is put some real effort into the parachute jump part of the jump, packing and gear maintenance, spotting and exit separation, and lots of canopy control because there are lots of ways to hurt yourself. But the freefall is all yours. I go out fairly often and just lay there in free plummet, look at things, feel the wind, feel the amazing fact of being in free fall. As you come out weekend after weekend you will find your place, meet kindred spirits, maybe jump with them, maybe not, maybe make up a whole new form that nobody has thought of yet. This whole business of either / or and rates of progress and stuff is just something we made up. It doesn't mean anything, except to the people it means something to. Skr

Bladder Cops #2 Mon 2003-4-7 --------------- ------------ Welp, I am often surprised by the response, or sometimes total lack of it, when I post one of these things. Friday morning DJan called me and told me she had resigned from Mile Hi, and why. I thought about it for a couple days and posted something on Saturday night. Now it's Monday night and close to 1,000 people have looked at 3 separate threads on dropzone.com, looks like about 30 responses on rec.skydiving, and the local skydiver mailing list has a bunch of discussion. And judging by the responses, which are too much to assimilate in a short time, I'm not nearly as clear a writer as I thought I was. I thought I said two things: - Another DZO has announced that he is starting drug testing - He says he is doing it for safety reasons - I think the real reasons DZOs do this are: - Advertising - Competing with the neighboring drop zones - Guarding against whuffo juries and - Drug testing is an example of the trend toward intrusion into people's private lives and the erosion of civil liberties - I think that trend sucks. The first point that came up on dropzone.com was from Wendy / wmw999 > Oh my. Is that for staff, or for everyone? Ville Huttu-Hiltunen / BMFin pointed out > During boogies that are ran by our club, everyone that > are manifesting have to take a breathalizer test on the > first two loads.. Ha! :-) :-) I remember Finland, and an amazing amount of Russian vodka, but breathalizer tests on the morning after get more to the point. There is good reason to think people will be jumping impaired, and it tests for it in the actual moment. Maybe if a drop zone required a drug test from everyone, staff, jumpers, first jump students and tandems, and then didn't even advertise it, I would believe they might be doing it for safety, but I think I would believe more that they were doing it for protection against whuffo juries. Boy, I can hear the outcry over that, and I haven't even posted this yet. But by their own logic, if this is for safety, and you can't tell whether someone is impaired without a drug test, how can you tell that a student or a tandem isn't impaired if they don't have a drug test? So, when DZOs claim they're doing drug testing for safety, I just don't believe them. When they say they're doing it for advertising and competition and whuffo juries, I do believe them. And I do think about how we had something special in America once, and a lot of it is still left, but so many people seem so willing and eager to just toss it away, like it isn't precious, that it's really painful. I've had feelings the last year or two that I've never had before, like, I'm glad I'm an old fart, and probably won't live to see what I see coming. ---- Tuesday 2003-4-8 I ran out of steam last night. Now there's about 70 posts on rec.skydiving, a fourth thread on dropzone.com, more posts on the local skydiving mailing list, including some info on how to pass a drug test from some helpful soul :-) :-) Here's what I think about drugs (in a very small nutshell). People, and even other mammals, have been altering their state with all kinds of techniques for a really long time. Delving into states of being is part of what we do and are. Through ignorance, lack of better techniques, lack of training in life skills and a bunch of other reasons, people use drugs for social acceptance, for coping with life, for escaping from life, for making money and so on. The goals, the motives, are pretty understandable, but the technique is not a good one, and if they persist for those kinds of reasons, life in the long haul will get worse. I see this as a health and education issue. If I wanted to make the situation worse I would make drugs illegal and call it a war. We could get a couple million people into prison, funnel *huge* amounts of money into the wrong hands, stigmatize it and make it hard to get help and education, we could knock down doors, destroy respect for law and law enforcement, we could get people used to being watched, and tested ... Sounds like a real, self sustaining, growth opportunity business, *and* we can have the smoke screen appearance of doing something about it. I think this drug war drug test approach is tackling symptoms and making it worse, and a health and education approach, while much harder to do, would address root causes and make it better. ---- So when people ask whether I'm in favor of testing pilots and others in really critical positions I would have to say no, I'm not in favor of this drug war drug test approach. I'm in favor of making the effort to actually do something about the root causes, and have people in those positions stay clean and unimpaired while on the job because that's how it's done and they have high standards and want the acceptance of their peers. I accept that that's probably not going to happen, and the drug war drug test approach will be around for a long time. But acceptance doesn't mean I agree with it, or like it, or am in favor of it. It just means that I accept that it's true. ---- I have thought this stuff for a pretty long time, but the effort to write it out is really helping me clarify it to myself, and I would like to thank everybody for bringing up all the other viewpoints to think about. I need to take a break for other stuff. I saw some other points to respond to, and if I can think what to say I'll be back. Thanks everybody. Skr

One of the local DZOs here just announced that he will be doing drug testing - in the name of safety. As I think about this it seems to me that - Drug testing and safety have nothing to do with each other - The real motive here is advertising, and, by implication, putting the other drop zones in a bad light Safety is about training and procedure and attitude and custom and paying attention. Drug tests are about pissing in a cup and looking for metabolites. Alcohol, cocaine, heroin, speed, all pass through the body in 24 - 48 hours and leave no metabolites. Marijuana is the only one that leaves traces easily found by urinalysis. The only point of contact here is impairment while actually jumping. Impairment from lack of sleep, life stress, lack of currency, being loaded, are all valid concerns, but pissing in a cup two months before has nothing to do with that. So this looks to me like a ploy for advertising and attacking the other dropzones. ---- Another point that comes to me is the presumption of guilt, and the unwarranted intrusion into people's private lives. As I watch the news and hear of the troops crossing the Tigris and Euphrates and going into Baghdad I am struck by how many conquering armies have walked that same ground. And in all those thousands of years, empire after empire, not once has there been a presumption of innocent until proven guilty, until recently, the last couple hundred years, right here in America. And now, people are willing to just casually toss that aside, like it means nothing. ---- The false connection between safety and pissing in a cup also comes out as - "If you're against drug testing then you must be against safety." - "Only drug users have a problem with drug tests." Another one you hear is - "If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?" It's hard to answer such people because it's hard to imagine what they could be thinking of. Have they never heard of the persecutions, the witch hunts, the pogroms, the communist under every bed? Have they never heard - They came for the Jews, and I said nothing. - They came for the communists, and I said nothing. - They came for ... several other groups ... and I said nothing. - Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. ---- Sometimes I hear "Everybody's doing it, so it must be OK.". Well, my mother was no constitutional scholar, but even she knew better than that. Other times I hear "He can run his business any way he wants.". But the point here is that if he were actually interested in safety he would interact with his employees and know how they were doing. ---- The only possible point I can see in all this is the whuffo jury. But I was on a jury once, in a medical malpractice case, in which I am a total whuffo. Now it was much harder to listen to the whole thing before forming opinions than I expected. And I had serious difficulty taking the show the lawyers put on as the only evidence, I kept wanting to raise my hand and ask questions. And some of the jurors really were unthinking whuffos. But when we got in the room alone there were 6 or 7 who had been paying attention and took it seriously, and after about 3 days we came to a conclusion that I thought was well thought out and correct. ---- So I'm for safety in terms of training and procedure and attitude and custom and paying attention. But I'm not for people pissing in a cup as some kind of phony appearance of safety. Skr

>Are there any alternatives to PayPal? I don't know but finding some ways to make it easy and normal to support Sangiro's efforts seems like a good idea, whether it's PayPal or jump tickets or ... Skr

>How do I select part of a message to respond to? I use the mouse to highlight, copy and paste. I also use the "> quoted text" form above because with the horizontal lines that come from the quote button it's too hard to tell what's quoted and what's reply. I also usually quote whatever I'm replying to so that whoever reads it can tell what I'm talking about. I notice that lots of people just reply, but whatever they are replying to is often several posts up from where their reply is so if I want the context I have to notice who they are replying to and then scroll upwards looking for it, which often means that I just scan their post or even skip it. I also leave lots of white space when writing for the computer screen to make it easier to read. I find the long posts with no paragraph breaks too hard to read. They may be saying great stuff but it's like ascii sludge running down the screen. If I really really need to read it I'll copy and paste it to an editor window and create my own white space. Maybe they're just 20 years old and their eyes are still good, I don't know :-) :-) Skr

> Anyone got any tips on spotting? You probably need to make a couple hundred Cessna jumps, most or maybe all the turbine places use GPS. From the point of view of keeping the dropzone machine cycling and processing revenue units (jumpers) the GPS makes sense, but when you ask what kind of jumpers do you want to produce maybe manual spotting makes more sense. But even in the 60's, as soon as you got a big plane like a Beech, it was common for a few people to spot most of the loads and many people to let it slide. In theory everybody was supposed to know how, but we all knew who could spot and who to keep away from the door :-) :-) Skr

>Do you think gear has truly become safer over the years >or just technically superior in performance? Technically superior. The stuff I started on (1962) was perfectly safe, even fashionable if you liked olive drab :-) :-) Is a square safer than a round? Well, you have fewer unintentional water landings (the leading cause of death in the 60's), but a whole lot of landing in a turn fatalities. Do 3 rings work better than capewells? Yes, but the only reason we started cutting away was these new fangled canopies with their violent malfunctions. Safety is mostly a human thing, not a gear thing, at least for the typical gear you see in today's sport parachuting world. Skr

>I think low-pulling has declined over the years but I'm curious >to see if many people still like humming it occasionally. I wrote a poem once in the mid 70's which I can only remember the last few lines of - ... - So I always pull high now - Except for those times - A certain feeling in the air - To take it on down - A little closer to the ground I was never a low puller, although I was around a lot of people who were. I mostly pulled at 2,000 or even 2,500. A few times though... I remember one day at Oceanside we had clouds at 2,000 ft and we were doing relative work from the Cessna. And one day in 1970 I was down below Mexico City helping to set up for the first Pan American something or other meet and I thought I would just see, so I pulled at 800 ft. But I never really liked it down there like some people seemed to. These days I mostly pull up around 3,000 ft. I'm older and slower and don't crave that kind of excitement. I've already seen what's down there. Plus today's chutes take for fucking ever to open, and their malfunctions are way more complicated and violent. The only time, sometimes when I have a good track going right over the hangars and packing area I feel a small urge, but even then I'll throw at around 2,000. After all, I'm sliding down the hypotenuse, so some of that opening distance is horizontal, right?? :-) :-) Skr

>How loose or tight does everybody wear there chest strap? I wear my whole harness snug, not constricting tight, but snug. I don't like stuff moving around and don't want to come out of my harness. I don't know where this loose chest strap fashion came from, it doesn't make any sense to me, but I don't say anything unless it's a student. Sometimes I think things :-) :-) but I really try not to say anything. Skr

>My question is if there's anything I could do to >sorta overcome these fears? That's a vast question. Competence and experience help with one component of fear, so if you can practice the exit arch pull until you could do it standing on your head in a cold shower while playing bagpipes, then you can step off the plane and your physical body will do it even if your mind is up there freaking out. The wind doesn't care how you feel, it only cares what you're doing with your physical body. After you've done that a few times you realize that you can, and your chute's going to open, and you'll be OK, and it suddenly becomes easy. Later on, a few hundred or a few thousand jumps later, you'll go through patches of fear. It might be from a close call, or it might just be the full on realization that you're about to jump temporarily rising to the surface, or maybe you're about to do something new and scary. The question of when to push on through the fear and when to listen and back off is a deep one, right at the edge where the present is meeting the future. Skr

>Then make a conscious CHOICE :-) :-) That takes a *huge* amount of effort. I've been biting my tongue, sitting on my hands, starting responses that I don't finish, having angry conversations in my mind ... I'm glad Sangiro stepped in. I wish he didn't have to, but I'm glad he did. I was actully mulling a post called Dropzone.com as Collateral Damage. The world is at war, Iraq has the media attention, but ideologies are clashing all over the planet, and America is extremely divided internally. I first saw dropzone.com as an effort by Sangiro to create community and connection, and we need that now more than ever. Skr

>Um, if you're right arm's broken, how would you deploy that >main that you'll need to cutaway with your right hand, exactly? Long silent pause ... You know, you just uncovered some old thinking that I had forgotten about. My original idea was to be able to pull all handles with either hand. Putting one handle back where I not only can't see it, but can only get it with one hand has always seemed like a bad idea. So (1992) I got a Racer, for many reasons, but one of them was that they offered an NOS (normal over the shoulders) harness. That 80's trend of making the harness fit the container instead of the jumper, with the harness emerging from the four corners of the container and thereby making it wide over the shoulders, was not only really uncomfortable, but played into my one primal fear, the one thing I was afraid of on my first jump which was that I would come out of my harness. So I got the rig, added a little elastic thingy between the leg straps, which everybody laughed at but now seems to be socially acceptable, took the horizontal backstrap out from under the container, which made the harness fit me instead of the container and also moved the main lift webs forwards so that the cutaway and reserve handles were around in front instead of under my armpits, added a belly band to hold the rig close and take the weight off my shoulders when standing around, and then I got stuck. I couldn't decide where to put the main pilot chute, up on one shoulder or maybe on the side of the container or ... Actually, putting the pilot chute around in front on the belly band like on the original Booth rigs as we called them seemed like the best idea. After all, *I* would never twist my belly band, right ?? I even considered going back to a ripcord. But gradually the project faded into the stream of history, and my main pilot chute is still back there on the bottom of the container. Skr

> Well, what if you develop all of those skills to the same > extent even though you ARE wearing one?? Then you're in the best of both worlds. But you have to know that those skills exist *and* make the effort to develop them. I have kind of a statistical impression about today's training from seeing people blindly follow the green light, wait for their beepers to beep, doing things they shouldn't do but it'll be OK because I've got a Cypres and so on. Some people *will* learn all that stuff, the very people with the least need for a Cypres. Everybody *could* learn it, but I see people who aren't and I think it reflects the training people get. Skr

> Do you have a pillow for a cutaway handle? I started with a pillow, went to kind of loop thing that velcroed on, can't remember why I went back to a pillow for a while, and now have a pillow with a loop added (in case it's my right arm that's broken and I have to cut away with my left hand :-) :-) Skr

>Comments? Well it sounds like you have thought about what you are doing and why, so I think you should jump what makes sense to you. My thoughts for me were that if I wanted to pull my reserve, I wanted to be able to do it with either hand from any direction on a cold dark night with thick gloves. Using a cutaway pillow for a reserve handle felt like I would have to grab it just right with my left hand and peel it just so, some day when I was low, scared, confused, my left arm was broken and my goggles were covered with snot. So I use a metal ripcord handle. At the same time I avoid really grabby situations like linked exits and 3D structures and so on. I don't mind that since I like to fly around but don't really like all that grabby stuff anyway. So I think you should jump what makes sense to you. Skr

>Having given it a lot of thought as I will be getting my own rig >in good time, I feel that wearing one will not do any harm so I >don't see why I shouldn't have one and be safe. >I pose this question: Why Take the chance?, we are talking >about your life here. What if by not wearing one you develop - a greater concentration, - a higher level of awareness, - a more solid, ingrained habit of keeping track of your altitude, - a highly cultivated sense of situations to watch for and stay away from? Why take the chance of not developing those skills, and skydiving half asleep? Maybe that's not only more dangerous, but you're missing half the skydiving experience. >don't see why I shouldn't have one and be safe. :-) That captures the down side really well. The up side is that if you screw up and get low and fast, it will fire your reserve. The down side is if you think it's a magic bullet that makes you safe and you never make the effort to learn about all the other ways to get in trouble where the cypres doesn't help. Skr

> wow, what a speech huh?! scary thoughts My scary thoughts are that he looked like some kind of drugged robot struggling to keep up with the teleprompter. I just don't understand how these weapons of mass distraction work. We have a planetary ecology in shambles, a population out of control, climate change to the point where the north polar ice cap will be gone in a few decades, global corporations taking over nation-state governments, treaties and alliances decades old being abandoned, America sliding towards a police state mentality with half the population apparently all for it, a new doctrine of preemptive first strike, an economy falling apart with crooks at every turn, a health care system that would shame a third world country ... And while Bush & Cheney & Company are pushing policies to take us even further in this direction, they've somehow gotten the world focused on Iraq. Iraq is a mess, but in this context it is just a weapon of mass distraction. For years I voted against the Republicans by checking Democrat boxes but I'm so pissed at how the Democrats aren't doing shit that I'm voting for Jesse Ventura or Robin Williams or somebody next time. Skr

>anyone else outside Denver is going to have to pay $21 Well, even around Denver that is only Jeff Sands at Mile Hi. I haven't heard of price increases at Brush, Calhan or Skydive the Rockies. Skr

>Perris shows it age :-) It may seem big city-ish now, but it started as a small cessna dropzone just like lots of other places. I remember putting some UCLA students out on SL in the 60's when I should have been studying for my qualifying exams. Skydiving really ruined my career as a math major. It got hard to take the departmental games and one-ups-man-ship seriously after being in freefall on the weekends. Skr

>wind whistling through the hanger, trees whipping in the gusts >"Let's do a cross country!" Must be in the skydiver genes or something. At Taft in the early 60's there weren't any trees, but there were oil derricks, and you could climb to the top, put on a harness, hook a 24 ft twill reserve on your front, pull it, shake it into the wind, and let it pull you off. Skr

>Modern educational practice >goes along the following lines Yes, I've seen you make this point several times and I agree with it. I think the task now is to say this to the safety and training committee in enough different ways from enough different people that they incorporate it into their process. -- By the way, I was told that [email protected] goes to the headquarters people but that if you want to talk to the safety and training committee directly you should use [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] (hint hint .. nudge nudge :-) :-) Skr