skr

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Everything posted by skr

  1. > full page memorial to her in the July 09 Parachutist Yes, I just saw that. She was like Dave Rickerby - not someone you could capture in words. She made some powerful impressions on me. I wish she hadn't had such a difficult life.
  2. > Paul was a good man. Yes, he was. A flood of memories. Some of those times were stressful, but his laugh often cut through the undercurrents. Tall Paul .. I'm sad .. I'm glad I knew him.
  3. Good post. Not only am I a poignance junkie, but I know about this life cycle, so I got a double hit. And I think you are right, skydiving permanently changes us, and it will probably somehow influence how you pursue this and the music that you come up with. Good Luck. Skr
  4. > speed stare demonstrations. Yeah, those were pretty intense. Some of those guys could stare at you for over 2 hours in less than 8 seconds. I really liked the C-130. I seem to remember each engine having over 4,000 horsepower, and with just 50 or 60 people instead of serious cargo they took off and climbed like they were practically empty. And I remember the excitement of standing on that giant tailgate, with my toes hanging over the edge, looking back at Stan Hicks spotting out of the side door talking to the pilot with what looked just like an ordinary telephone, waiting for his left arm to drop. Those are strong memories even after all this time.
  5. > I am somewhat puzzled by the horror stories associated with jumping rounds. You have to allow for the jump story effect. I made about 1,800 jumps on rounds and most of them were stand ups, but I wouldn't admit that in public. You can't let facts get in the way of a good jump story. Skr
  6. > Newcomers to sports tend to do stupid things until they realize how much they don't know. > Cars, motorcycles, drugs, airplanes, parachutes, snowboards, snowmobiles, it's all the same. > Once you start hanging around with adults you'll find that nearly all the survivors in a sport for enough years have a less cavalier attitude about safety. Reading my thought balloon again, eh? :-) :-)
  7. > Here's the illustrated version... Thanks, Howard. You know, the context of that was that most people were focused on the concreteness and measurability of hookups, and I kept thinking that all the good stuff is in the flying around between the hookups. The hookups are just something to do while we're skydiving together. It's the flying around and the shared human experience. So in order to make that explicit I started designing dives firstly out of moves (analogous to dance moves), and secondly out of vibes and mood. What emotional feelings are we trying to engender on this dive? The hot dive feeling? The sunset loose load feeling? The helping newcomers feeling? The stately waltz feeling? The rowdy polka feeling? And so on. Some people obviously understood that point of view or we wouldn't be in this thread, but for some reason it never went mainstream. It's hard to believe that it's been 30 years since that was in Parachutist. And Robin almost got fired for putting it in there because "Parachutist doesn't do poetry." :-) :-) There was one typo in the Parachutist version in the third line up from the bottom. "How do you create the consciousness *for* the Skydance dives?" It was not to create the consciousness *of* in an advertising sense, but consciousness *for* in the sense of giving rise to this kind of skydiving in the first place. And Pat was right when he spoke of the the skydance resonance. Since it was more of a viewpoint than a concrete form it was hard to convey to people, so I thought maybe if I start a "team" of people who see it and we all think those thoughts really hard at the same time we can get some kind of 100th monkey effect. It was called the "Skydance Resonance" and started with 11 people, but it only lasted a week or two because those people were all creative, independent people who wanted to go off and invent their own stuff. And eventually time moved on, people got killed, Pope Valley closed, and now it's pretty much old leaves blowing in the wind. Or maybe not, after all we are in this thread. Maybe it's just me that has moved on.
  8. Ah .. Been off world for a while .. DJan told me .. > . And even now, > . that bell tolls still for me in thy dreams. Yes, me too, although it's mostly dreams now. My rig is in date, but my checkbook is missing some zeroes at the end of the numbers. > . Know echo-reflected matches your own. I know. I just wish we could have somehow conveyed it to more people. Skr
  9. > made me feel welcome That's one of the things that I remember about traveling as a jumper. You could go all over the world and be part of the jumping family. Maybe we'll cross paths sometime again. Skr
  10. > I met this guy :-) :-) He's still around although it is somewhere between sporadic and intermittent lately. Small world, isn't it?
  11. > while in the air I couldn't find it Maybe you could use maps.google.com to look at it during the week when you're not having to think about making a jump. Pick large, identifiable features, roads, a race track, a river, an oddly shaped feature, runways, and practice seeing it with your eyes closed. Maybe try drawing it from memory. Practice it several times until it starts to get easy. Skydiving is pretty overwhelming and the more of the ingredients you have practiced ahead of time the better. Learn general features within 5 or 10 miles of the airport, and then when you take off notice which runway and which direction, and glance frequently out a window as your climbing out. That way you always know where the airport is. You keep from getting lost by staying found. I do that at every new DZ. Everybody has to. The only difference between you and me is that I have more experience so I can go through it in fewer jumps. It's not something you automatically know how to do, it's another skill you learn, and it takes a while. Skr
  12. > I STILL miss this DZ. Me too. > Maybe reality will make me less nostalgic. > Pope Valley has become the perfect DZ in my mind with the passage of time. Oh, I think it really was perfect, you're not making that up from selective memory. The Gulch was perfect in a pure sort of way. There was no reason to go over there 5 light years from the nearest anything except for the most fantastic skydiving I'd ever experienced and the people doing it. Pope Valley had that plus everything else. Oceanside in the early sixties had that feeling of special too, that feeling of family and community and special times. Those are the three dropzones that really stood out for me. Skr
  13. > I'm sure you're thinking of "The Mighty Quinn" Right now I'm just trying to not think. > So I guess that leaves the question, do you know Joy? And that's just the kind of question I'm trying to not think about :-) :-) Skr
  14. > I don't think that's the same Owen Quinn.....but I could be wrong. I think you are right. I never knew the Quinn I'm thinking of well enough to know his first name, everybody just called him "Quinn". I never met the east coast version, but the name was really familiar and the Seattle Quinn came to mind because he made such an impression on me. It's a good thing we're not all having old age moments at the same time or we'd be in trouble :-) :-) Skr
  15. > Owen Quinn I remember him as a Seattle jumper. A plane load of Seattle jumpers came down to the Gulch one time and he was one of them. The first thing that struck me as I walked toward the plane was this group of pale faced guys sort of hiding in the shade under the wing peering cautiously out at the blazing Arizona sunshine :-) :-) The next thing that registered was a tall guy emerging from the door with some gear bags. He had this wild, spring loaded hair that looked like he'd stuck his finger in a wall socket, and a great big smile. I talked to him that weekend and a few other times when we happened to be at the same place. He was a really interesting guy, and one of the central inspirations in the Seattle scene at the time. I wish I could have known him better before he got killed. Skr
  16. I remember that as Oceanside in the early mid 60s. That's Lyle up on top, Suzie Bateman in the door, Jim Hyland (blue jumpsuit) and Bill Spargur (big guy) hanging underneath, Hector Nunez with the blue piggyback, Chip Maury sitting on the wheel, and the rest were Oceanside regulars plus a couple people (Billy Lockward?) and a couple others who came down just for this picture. We did it several times, with Jack Zahnizer, the pilot, going up to 6 or 7,000 ft, then everybody climbing out, and Jack coasting slowly over the country side, gradually losing altitude, until people got tired and fell off, or he made a pass over the dropzone and people got off. I'm pretty sure it was Luis Melendez filming. That Fairchild was a great airplane. My logbooks are still packed from this move, but I'll look one of these days and get dates and more names. Skr
  17. My first jump, a static line from 2,500 ft, was $2. Higher jumps were tach time.
  18. I went to settings and hid the "my stuff" stuff on the left side of the pages and now there doesn't seem to be any place to logout. And I seem to remember having to look for it before I did that. I guess I'm not coming over here often enough to keep up. Skr
  19. > Ask a lot of questions. I've become known at my dz as "that guy who asks questions about everything", but I've learned so much. Any time I see someone do something new or interesting, I ask them about it. Any time I see something go wrong, I talk to the person and find out exactly what happened, why, what the best response would be, what they did, etc. Remember, people tend to love to talk about themselves, so if you frame the question in a way that they get to talk about what they think and what they do, they're almost always happy to answer any questions you have. ---- This is a good answer. It is hard to formulate experience into written words. And even when you do get a verbal description that is close to what you mean, you don't know what meaning those words will generate in the reader's mind. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how things work, but I also watch and listen to people, sometimes directly and sometimes just in general eavesdropping mode. I get a packing trick here, a new viewpoint there, or sometimes a response to some situation I've never thought about. Of course I have a certain depth of background so I can filter out a lot of the weird babble and brain foam that makes the dropzone so entertaining. Picking good mentor and role model type people to learn from is perhaps the most important thing a new jumper can do. Skr
  20. > wood frame thingy didn't really sound like the hot ticket? Well, getting those wooden chutes into the box could sometimes be a bear if you didn't fold the hinges in the right order ... But the real difficulty was some of the weird malfunctions. The nail-over was probably the worst .. If you forgot your claw hammer .. Plus using a saw to cut away was a bit awkward ..
  21. > been round almost long enough to be one of them there pioneers You've stumbled onto the secret. You have to be born early enough to be on the scene before very much has happened. Or if someone just got here, they just have to hang out for a few decades and remember a few stories about how it was back when people were still using parachutes. Imagine! Parachutes! Trusting your life to a few strings and rags! Plus we had to peddle the airplane to altitude too! None of this new-fangled levitation stuff!
  22. > Barbara Roquemore Hey Howard, I'm not coming to this one but would you tell her I said hi if you think of it while there? I've wondered a few times what path her life took. The last time I remember seeing her was at UCLA in the late 60s, where she was majoring in Russian and I was ostensibly getting a PhD in math. Skr
  23. > interested in the thinking processes involved with skydiving I'm guessing that you had in mind how people are thinking when they are making competent, intelligent jumps, and that's a great question, right at the center of things, but equally interesting could be what people are thinking in all the shenanigans that go on at the dropzone in between jumps. "Jeez, what were those guys thinking!?" :-) :-) Also, remember that you have one really good case study already, which is your own thoughts as you go through this process. Skr