wan2doit

"What's red and green and goes round and round and round and round?" Ok I'm ignorant so what is the answer?

Remster says "Besides, having one competitor in the market may just be what the market needs in the US." I agree - up to a point. What point - Who knows?

None of us may know exactly what could go wrong and lead to injuries (not crashes) due to rough competition and cost cutting it would cause.. In any case I don't think it would happen anytime soon due to one more supplier of indoor skydiving opportunities. The intent of my remark was just to forward the concept that sometimes what we wish for (cheaper tunnel time) might come with unforeseen unintended consequences. Then again on the bright side competition could lead to higher pay and better benefits for instructors and employees plus better wind.

Healthy competition is one thing but I would hope never to see some kind of a price war on tunnel time because I think that could cause cost cutting (maintenance etc.) by operators that could endanger tunnel flyers. I remember way back when the airline business got very cutthroat with cheap below cost fares and there was a surge of crashes accidents etc. Healthy competition yes - Cutthroat No. PS - No I don't know exactly where to draw the line on competition.

True, I was just trying to demonstrate how other actions by Federal authorities are irritating many folks in a somewhat serious manner. I do recall apologizing in advance if I was straying too far off topic.

kelpdiver your critique is appreciated. I usually do seperate paragraphs in other situations but for the life of me don't know why I didn't do that on these seige posts. I tried to edit them and after a bit of searching here found out [posts cannot be edited after 6 hours. Oh Well Thanks

Truth in advertising - I a hunter for 50 years here with and w/o ORVs mostly w/o and support ORV access in these type lands and have advocated heavily for that. These ORVs in the past sometimes in certain areas would run some open areas pretty flat but the areas would recover from hunt season to season pretty much. Admittedly it looked pretty bad on occassion to me and absolutely terrible to some on the other side of the fence. Over a long period of time and implementation of the ORV plan of 2000 in Big Cypress I grew to understand that we didn't need all of the 23,000 miles of trails (mostly one pass) that were documented to be there. On the other hand as per published demographics of ORVs in use the 23,000 miles of trails only impacted about 1 % of the 582,000 acres of the original Preserve which is actually large enough to absorb 2,416,000 miles of buggy/ATV tire tracks. When ORV access was limited by the 2000 record of decision to only 400 miles of primary trails that was unacceptable to the ORV community and still is even with some (maybe 60 miles) additional secondary trails still in use due to the FACA group's endeavors. Info - primary is a thru trail connected to other primaries and secondaries that originate from primaries are dead end for the most part - The cut from 23,000 down to 400 was a 98% reduction causing 5+ mile gaps between trails which made foot access to the interior of these gaps all but impossible for most folks (a denial of access to all Americans IMHO) and we believe they knew that. The big coincidence with a 400 mile trail system + some trails (50 miles or so) to private in holdings within a 900 square mile landscape is that it almost perfectly matched the max allowable trails /sq mi as per The Wildlands Project (TWP) which is 1/2 mile of trail/road per square mile. I have read the land management strategy for TWP authored by Reed Noss and possibly Michael Soule and have a copy of the original document distributed to 70,000 folks in government, colleges, environmental community etc. by the CENZOIC Society. David Foreman of Earth Firsat ran it in a special edition of his publication somewhere around 1993 not totally sure of year. The idea of a structured trail system is accepted by many including myself now but not one as restrictive as what has happened even if all the FACA groups trail recommendations were still in place which aren't. A truly functional trail system in this very swampy area needs 2000 or more miles of trails which don't look to be in the cards after 14 years of negotiating. One thing for sure is that one as meager as the one in hand will never be functional or bought into by those that use it. This pimple will keep growing and one day burst in a bad way IMHO. Having attended so many meetings I have actually had opportunities to sit at dinner at local restaurants in Everglades City Fl with extreme enviros and discussed these issues as calmly as possible. One night I asked a representative of the Nat Parks Consvtn Assoc NPCA a question - Why is it that after you and the other enviro groups successfully removed us from 22,600 miles of formerly legal ORV access trails that you can't seem to leave it at that + some secondary trails? He never really answered then I said "You must just be doing it for a paycheck and care less that you destroy a culture and many folks lives". He responded with a sheepish half smile of uneasiness. PS I didn't yell at him but wanted to.

Not at all sure what to do about federal agency incompetence in running NEPA processes and subsequent litigation stemming from agency (NPS down here) mistakes which are sometimes such major whoppers I begin to suspect conspiracies with between environmental groups and NPS at highest levels to have plans challenged in federal court so a judge can decide major issues rather than folks that participated in NEPA. Remember that in the ESA it says all federal agencies will further the purposes of this act. I am beginning to understand that includes the federal judiciary. I am not looking to stray to far off topic here but the only examples I feel qualified to discuss are local ones I am very familiar with. An example of a NEPA whopper just happened relatively recently. Basic info rerquired here - Any NEPA plan process especially a controversial one (as per the Center for Environmental Quality CEQ) needs a federal register notice before commencing. Well in Big Cypress National Preserve the 5 years of a FACA groups work was recently challenged in court. Then NPS unilaterally prohibits use of 40+ per cent of the secondary trails for ORVs produced by the FACA 5 year process. After that NPS began a NEPA process to address all the issues hashed out over 5 years by the FACA group. OBTW I was at all FACA meetings and was appointed to 2 very important trail review sub committees and attended all those meetings. This new access plan process was intended to cover trail specifications and try to end a multi year debate over what a few vague sentences in a 600 page ORV plan from 2000 meant. Here is the whopper as per a very knowledgeable NPS staffer I trust - NPS at Big Cypress (who were in a hurry to do this plan) felt compelled to check with their upper level lawyers as to whether this plan process needed to be advertised in the federal register. Upper levels told them NO it wasn't required. So, the scoping portion of the plan process was begun very quickly and ran along until eventually the comment period closed and we were waiting for the next steps. Surprise surprise - Recently we became aware of a federal register notice issued for this plan and a while later local NPS totally began a re-run of the scoping process that had already stupidly been begun improperly. Now as to who caught the mistake - I don't know but it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that NPS either doesn't know how to run their own show or there are real shennanigans going on within the Dep't of Interior and it's sub agencies. NPS staff has even suffered dismay at mistakes being made by their own employer and can't believe some errors are happening. As far as solutions I can think of only one that can work for So Fl. That solution in our case would be to remove NPS from the lands of the Big Cypress due to due to their being a federal agency and the access the federal NEPA law mandates for those who's mission in life is to disrupt proper land management in favor of their own warped idea of what is right. Until such time as this happens in Fl State agencies can change nothing since at best they are only cooperating agencies with NPS and can dictate NO actions without agreement from the Federal agency at the local and/or Wash. D.C. levels. I am sure this same sort of thing happens routinely across America and has been for many years. Very sad but true INHO.

I have read the posts from pg 13 to 15, some in the beginning and a few in between. I'm not the best informed on this particular issue but have participated in many Federal and State land management planning processes in So. Fl. over the last 16 years as an advocate for public access to so called public land. The points from craddock, mastwerrigger and GeorgiaDon have been very enlightening and interesting. One underlying subtle problem I haven't noticed being focused on is the way the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the expertise of extreme environmental groups and their lawyers effective utilization of it to impose their own desires on the outcomes has impacted land decisions over the years so as to lay the groundwork for removing humans from the landscape that they don't think should be allowed to be there. From what I've witnessed NEPA allows many outsiders from anywhere to load comments into any NEPA planning process to sway management in the direction they want it to go. Now I realize both sides of any argument have the same right to do this but for the most part few locals have the time or understand how to effectively comment to these processes and are heavily outgunned by these environmental pros that are very well funded with many specialty lawyers on their team to challenge almost any NEPA process due to even Federal agencies incompetence in running these NEPA processes. The big issue down here that I have worked for 16 years on is off road vehicle (e.g. airboat, swamp buggy ATV etc.) access in swamp lands and endangered species such as the ESA fraud referred to as the Florida Panther which is the same cat that roams many areas of the West, Northwest and Southwest. The last 3 or 4 federal plans having to do with the Big Cypress Nat Preserve are being challenged by the hi-powered enviro groups because they didn't include ORV restrictions to the level they desired. ORV folks even worked for 5 years with a Federal Advisory Committee (FACA) to resolve outstanding issues that had extreme enviros on it to no end since the environmental FACA committee members have now begun litigation to undo those 5 years of work because they didn't get their way with the FACA group they were part of. Now what I am whining about here in So Fl isn't just happening here - it is happening all over the US and is part of underlying hatred of the Feds in this Nation IMHO. Don't get me wrong though there are some great level headed feds in management down here but they cannot do what they want due to environmentalists, their lawyers and Federal judges inevitably making major agenda driven decisions over land management that are seriously compromising the ability to monitor what is happening on large land masses due to access restrictions on everyone including State and Feds. Just wanted to bring this up to see what folks here know or think about this info. I'm sure I will get ripped a bit or more but that's OK. On a lighter note - Georgia Don your dz location brought back fond and not so fond memories of a sweet Georgia Southern Bell that broke my heart many many years ago. Some great/sad memories never die. That dz is a mere 50 miles from where she lived. It's been over 40 years so at least I'm over it now.

Is the May 10 camp sold out yet? If not - what time slots are available? Thanks in advance.

Done

Hopefully that info can be added to the review page. Thanks

As sad as the Bundy's problems are, this EPA takeover of all watersheds/wetlands is much much worse for all of America's ranchers, agriculture and rural private property owners. http://growingfl.com/news/2014/04/op-ed-epas-proposed-water-rule-largest-land-grab-ever/?utm_source=Growing+Florida&utm_campaign=c03be9bdbe-growingfl-daily_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a00cf5c16f-c03be9bdbe-296613269 Sooner or later a revolution of some sort is coming.

I thoroughly agree with the post I am replying to. The Feds are the thugs in my book(NPS,BLM and the like) based on personal experience with assault weapon carrying rangers with body armor supposedly roaming the Everglades Big Cypress protecting a place hardly anyone goes to anymore due their presence. I have also heard of many problems due to the Feds near Kane County Utah having to do with a handful of ATV enthusiasts being banned from old settler routes along seasonal dry river beds (e.g. Pariah Creek or River) due to the endangered species de jour. The same name keeps popping up there Harry Reid attempting to have ranch waters diverted to more urban areas such as Vegas so his fat cat friends can develop more once they get the water out of the aquifers. Sooner or later all this will come to a violent head. I am surprised it hasn't happened yet although it sort of did at Ruby Ridge and/or the Koresh compound. Sad but True

Here is a link to see where passwords need to be changed http://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-sites-have-patched-the-heartbleed-bug/

Not looking to go around DZ's administratore in fact I will leave posting this link to them or they can tell me where to post it if they want to. A friend in the IT world sent me this link http://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-sites-have-patched-the-heartbleed-bug/ today to assist me to know what sites we all go to need to have new passwords installed.

While writing an iFly orlando Review last night one question came to mind. I wondered if a if a 5 was the best or worst rating but didn't see any guidance on that. I assumed 5 was the best and went ahead and completed it. If I was wrong maybe let me know so I can edit it. Maybe an info note could be added to help folks. Have a Good One

Best Place in Florida This activity is fantastic as iFly Orlando say "for people ages 3 to 80+". I am 65+ and loved it as much as any activity ever attempted. Not cheap but well well worth every nickel. The sensations of flight there exceeded all expectations. It wasn't even as physically challenging as I thought it would be. I also talked 4 sedintary relatives from 3 around 65-70 and a 33 year old niece into going to iFly and they also loved it and couldn't talk about much else the rest of our small family reunion. They thanked me for convincing them to go and agreed it was the most fun they ever had while on a vacation. I will definitley be returning often to iFly Orlando. Hopefully one day iFly will come to Southeast Florida where I reside so I can go very very often . Happily Hooked :) Will return as often as possible to learn bodyflight.

I actually noticed the pop up while on a web site a day or two ago and have forgotten which one it was. Sorry about that - it's the gray hair problem.

I know very little about inet stuff and was just worried and mentioning it so as to possibly learn if folks here are vulnerable. I saw a heartbleed alert on some other web site I was on the other night and was wondering if DZ would be doing something to indicate when users should change passwords here since changing them before corrective action is taken is useless. I don't remember the site though or I would share it here. One thing I do know for sure is that inet security programmers at the highest levels are going nuts to defeat this heartbleed thing.

Is DZ going to alert folks when to install new passwords when a heartbleed solution has been implemented

Congratulations to Skyventure for gettin' her done.

So how do you feel about selling off vast tracts of public lands.. ie.. parks etc to the wealthiest families to make them private lands such as they have in say England.? I wouldn't support that but possible the State somewhere needs money bad to support retirement or other programs. In Florida it is usually the opposite - State w/Fed money supports large landowners hard up for cash looking for easy money entering into conservation easements at 1/2 property value and the original owner is still the owner minus a few property rights (e.g. development of condos, apt's. etc.) Local county tax revenue drops since the property minus the property rights given up and taxpayers are forced to make the difference up sooner or later and aren't even aware of what drove the tax increase since gov't, ain't talking about it. Tax money pays for this land easement so public dollars are in it but the public is totally shut out of accessing the property due to land still being private. Bottom line - all of these shenannigans happen because we the people allow it by our apathy. Oh well so goes the New World Order, Agenda 21, The Wildlands Project, modern day environmentalism in Florida etc. etc.

True "Because right now we are fucking it all up." Technically yes in some areas not ALL but currently the USA and Fla plans to spend 20-30 Billion on the Everglades in So Fl largely in part according to bureaucracies due to a perception there is too much phosphorus in the water. Well humans are still allowed currently drinking the water with no bad effects until a local water main breaks and a NO drink order is given. Meanwhile even though I hold no malice against large Florida ranch owners and like beef, cowboys etc. this major source of phosphorous is being given Billions for conservation easements to supposedly protect water but are still allowed to have cattle everywhere pooping on the land and directly into rivers (KIssimmee) which eventually gets to the Glades via Lake Okechobee. I have actually seen herds of cattle standing in the middle of the Kissimmee River as the airboat I was on maneuvered in between them.. I know politicians are a pain sometimes but they are much more accountable for their mistakes than bureaucrats that can fuck up things for their entire 30 year career and remain under the radar screen getting away with it. Pretty neat though a ranch can get half the value of their property for a conservation easement, still own it, keep having cows shit on it forever. What a deal - I am jealous. Think about it - until we close the gate letting folks like us in Florida nothing can change much. Plus down here (So Fl) we were just made aware of 2 feet of additional water to be stored in the Glades due to so called Restoration - guess what - Good Bye mammals and tree islands (hammocks) this is guaranteed. Florida's Fish and Wildlife Commission knows it and has complained to no avail so far. The Feds are hard to beat without losing your Feds funding so why hit'em with the knock out punch provided by the US Constitution. These sorts of things have made me too skeptical to support/allow the environmental cat burglar to get this $10,000,000,000 BiLlIoN dollars from hard working citizens and deprive programs for school kids, old folks, fire, police etc. of more necessary funding. $100 million dollars maybe $10,000 million ='ing $10,000,000,000 Billion dollars - forget it. That's 1,000,000,000 Billion tunnel minutes at an iFly Orlando skydive overnight camp. Now an amendment to fund that I could get behind. LOL

We all may want to familiarize ourselves with Amendment 1 to Florida's constitution. Amendment 1 will be on Florida's November ballot. Amendment 1 will mandate dedication of 3% of real estate doc stamp revenue for conservation land acquisition, easements and other nebulous purposes not fully understood even by state financial analysts yet. Amendment 1 will remove 10 Billion dollars from existing programs they currently fund and more than likely cause further tax increases due to programs fighting to get dollars to replace those removed due to Amendment 1. Amendment 1 will remove elected officials ability to weigh in on how $10,000,000,000 Billion dollars of State revenue is spent. Yes, I know some elected officials suck but we elect them and if we don't like them we need to elect better ones or run for office ourselves - that is our duty. With Amendment 1 decisions over the 10 Billion will be made by agenda driven agency bureaucrats , Non Governmental Organizations assisted by their followers. All of this in the name of saving us all from pending catastrophie of Florida not being able to buy as much land as Amendment 1 proponents think should be bought. This is just my take on the subject but I have seen on this site that many folks are well spoken and enjoy learning about issues. Personally I will vote NO on this amendment for my own reasons and have delivered the issue here so as to alert all Floridians using the site and to possibly learn from any responses.