NickDG

After all these months of modern politics (I'm drunk now) I cannot help but say: Benjamin Franklin, Great Person, Great BASE Jumper . . . In modern terms being a BASE jumper means having the gumption to huck yourself off an object with a parachute that may or may not work. However, in real terms the essence of BASE jumping is leaving behind the common wisdom, to seek out new ideas and to push the bounds of what's acceptable. To risk it all without being overly afraid while displaying a willingness to accept all the possible consequences. Everything that Ben Franklin accomplished, as an inventor, a statesman, a printer, a philosopher, a musician, and an economist, would not have been possible if he'd been unwilling to take a chance and to go against the common wisdom It can easily seem, in these modern times, that although we have the same guile, the same courage, and the same wonder of the world around us that Franklin showed, we cannot rise to that same level of achievement because it's all been done already. But that's wrong. The idea that everything new is already conceived prevailed in Franklin's time as much as it lingers in ours. There is among us, right now, the new Mark Twain, the new Philo Farnsworth, the new Thomas Jefferson, and the new Mahatma Gandhi. There names will mean nothing to you now because the modern age has too high a signal to noise ratio, but history will bear them out. So go ahead. Be Ben Franklin. Find your own way. Don't follow, don't hold back, and don't think for a moment you can't make difference. Take the gift of life and the ability to dream and to imagine how good it can be and roll those ideas down the table like a pair of dice. And don't let your contemporaries, the fat and the too comfortable, deter you from giving yourself over to the possibilities of your own account. And say NO to everything you know to be untrue in your own heart. They would like us believe that we live in a country where the only choice is red or blue. But we really have all the colors of rainbow at our disposal. Ben Franklin knew that and he re-invented the world. And so can you . . . Nick

The URL basefatality.info is down for some reason so in the meantime you can use . . . http://hometown.aol.com/base194/myhomepage/base_fatality_list Tried to make it clicky, but it's too long or something . . . Nick

Something Bill said in 1972 . . . "During the interview he was asked to comment on whether it could be feasible to jump from the side of the Grand Canyon. Bill answered that it could be done. When CSPA heard his comments they were misconstrued and he was once again suspended for life." Bill, There's a whole generation of elder jumpers grappling with the same thoughts as you. When you wrap your entire life around parachutes it's very hard to walk away. But after living through the military stage, hippie stage, yuppie stage, and now whatever you want to call the current stage of skydiving, with all the recycled BS, we can certainly hold up our heads and say enough is enough. Collectively CSPA, BPA, and USPA – is like a king who looks out the window to see all their subjects running down the street and says, "There goes my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them." It's always amazed me that such a dynamic sport is overseen by such a stodgy bunch of conservative thinkers. I think you (and some others) deserve the USPA Lifetime Achievement Award. But, USPA will wait until our generation is dead and buried to realize that fact. This year's award reminds me of a refrain heard over and over again at Lake Elsinore many years ago, "Gee, another award for Al Krueger," Except for a couple of exceptions that award always goes to USPA insiders. Of course Al deserves it, but it's just so typically mainstream in a sport that's anything but. http://www.parachutehistory.com/skydive/uspa/achaward.html Anyways, there is life after skydiving, come to Bridge Day this year and we'll carry you around on our shoulders . . . Nick

We Got Over Stuff, You Need Closure . . . It’s very interesting how things change from one generation to the next. My theory (very general and not a slam) is that we are more alike than not. We are cool and you are sick. We changed the sport of skydiving with relative work, and you did the same with free flying. We grew our hair long and you pierced your belly buttons. We wore tight bell bottoms and hip huggers and you wear baggies and let your drawers show. We didn’t respect our elders and neither do you. We shocked our parents with Rock & Roll and you did the same with Hip Hop. But there are some big differences too, and I think it’s in the way our generations were raised. We being brought up in a 1950s and 60s mentality and you in a 1970s and 80’s mentality. Our parents were all cookie cutouts of the same type (think Ward and June Clever) while yours all had different ideas and methods of raising their children. We had a common enemy, in our parents, to rebel against. Your parents being the free thinkers they were gave you no common enemy. (How can you rebel against the rebellion?) Yet, you did find some ways. To my generation your arguing for helmets, or the “just say no,” campaign, or being so pro-war makes us cringe. You sound like our parents! When you call someone “stupid” for not wearing a helmet are you so against free will and freedom because it’s all you have to rebel against? Is all this because your generation was raised with too much freedom? No, the real problem is your generation was raised by my generation . . . Oh, and can we drop the, “he died doing what he loved,” bit. Nobody wants to die doing anything whether they loved it or not, and it’s only a hollow sounding comfort to you the still living. Sweet dreams Larry, you were a true freedom fighter. Nick

“United We Fall” by Pat Works It was dope back in 1978. And it’s online now . . . http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~esj/uwf/uwfintro.htm Nick

As of 1:30 PST today (Sunday) Larry is still alive. http://www.network54.com/Forum/13357 Nick BASE 194 '69 Shovelhead

Hey Bill, am I imagining I remember this . . . Don't ask for a date it happened, or what kind of rig it was, but I vaguely recall a wuffo observer that intentionally followed out a ten-way. I’m thinking it was sometime in the early 1980s. The observer, a woman, said she wanted to take a picture of the exit and moved towards the door. Another jumper on the load thought something was up when she started to tuck the camera away, but he wasn’t fast enough, and out she went. Someone on the ten way noticed her flailing around outside the formation and went over and dumped her. I guess she landed alright because a big part of the story was how unceremoniously she was kicked off the drop zone. Nick

This was just a typo, but it’s the comments that came later that iced it . . . After returning home from the DZ in Ramona, California (I think in) 1983, I turned on the local TV news as we'd heard at the DZ there'd been a fatality that afternoon at Brown Field just outside San Diego. (It later turned out to be a bag lock and the jumper rode it in.) Female Anchor: A Navy parachutist died today when his parachute did not open. FAA officials said the jumper hit the ground at one thousand two hundred miles per hour. Male Anchor: Oh my, that’s higher than the speed of sound . . . isn’t it? Female Anchor: Yes, Jim, it is. In other news . . . Nick

If considering your first BASE jump try taking this little test. It will measure many attributes that come in handy: -Your skill in following directions. -Your reflexes. -Your ability to beat the clock http://www.njagyouth.org/colortest.swf Nick

Here’s the difference between AM towers and other types (FM, TV, and Microwave). With AM broadcast towers, the tower itself is the radiator of the signal. On the other types the tower only serves to elevate the signal radiators (arrays of small radiators, dishes, etc) above the ground. AM towers sit on large glass insulators and their guy wires are insulated from ground (and the ground) also. On the non-AM types the signal radiators are insulated from the tower. Climbing and jumping any type of operating broadcast tower will expose you to a certain amount of EMR. However, AM towers are the worst. When climbing these you are in direct contact with the radiating part of the tower. On the non-AM types the current advice is stay far away from the radiators that are attached to the tower by jumping from below them, or climbing as quickly as you can, past them. Some AM towers are also very hot, in terms of wattage. Fifty to one hundred thousand watts in not uncommon. Walk up and touch one of these AM towers while standing on the ground and you will get electrocuted. To avoid this, when we jumped this one particular local AM tower, we had a long wooden board stashed on the top of a small maintenance shed that sat next to the tower. It was up there for years. We’d climb to the top of the shed, push the board out over the edge until it was about three feet from the tower. Then with someone anchoring the board on the shed end, you could walk out, and then jump across to the tower. (I can’t believe we did stuff like this, but we were young and crazy for BASE.) Once on the tower however, your problems weren’t over. (Keep in mind we didn’t know anything about EMR at the time.) This tower was 700-feet tall and took between 30 and 45 minutes to climb depending on what kind of shape you are in. After the climb we’d sometimes linger up there, getting our breath back, or sometimes just enjoying the night time view. One night just before getting into position to jump I was gear checking another jumper and noticed his Three Rings are hot to the touch. I checked, and so were mine. We wondered why, but went ahead and jumped. A few months later we heard of another jumper, on a different tower, who noticed the same thing, and when he deployed one of his Three Rings released on opening. Lucky for him this was the old days and he’s using skydiving gear and he just dumped a round reserve into the mess above him and it saved him. When he looked at the gear later he saw that the loop that holds the top ring in place had melted. We still didn’t get the connection to EMR and continued to jump our AM tower, but not being complete idiots, we placed metal connector links over and through the three rings so they could not release if the loop let go. There were other things happening too. Sometimes when jumping off the board and onto the tower you’d sometimes see a blue flash and sense a weird electrical smell. We later learned this was a form of St. Elmo’s fire like an aircraft sometimes experiences. None of these things deterred us until a few years later when in Florida with Tom Sanders videoing some legal FM-tower jumps and spending large amounts of time on the tower. We saw Tom’s cameras being scrambled by the signals emanating from the radiators and after spending almost the day up there several of the crew are reporting feeling sick. We never noticed the video thing back on our AM tower as these were the days before cheap consumer type video cameras are available. I’m not an expert in the field of how these towers work, or know if there are long lasting effects, but from what I’ve seen and experienced, I think they are bad news. I’ll never jump another operating tower again. And I wouldn’t really mind, knowing what we know now, dropping the “A” altogether except it would screw up a really cool name. Nick

I know systems like these have been used since stuntman Dar Robertson did the CN Tower in the mid-80s, but they are now advertising this as a, "Cable Controlled BASE Jump," Anyone think there could be implications to Bridge Day here? Like allowing the spectators to join in the fun, or worse, they tell us to get lost, and just let the wuffos do the jumping . . . http://www.skyjump.co.nz/skyjump.html Nick

I also stopped logging all my jumps in the early 90s, as just another way to rebel I suppose, but now I really wish I hadn’t done that. When I go back and look at my logbooks it gives me a timeline, both for my life, and for my book. Chasing down dates and names has proven to be the biggest obstacle to finishing my book on BASE jumping. Sometimes those logbook entries from twenty or thirty years ago sparks memories that would be otherwise be lost to time. I’ve learned the present never seems important enough to document until it is wrapped in the passage of time. I sat in a hotel banquet room in 1987 as Carl Boenish is awarded the USPA Achievement Award three years after he had died. I sat in the back (it was all skydivers in attendance) with a little red logbook Jean Boenish handed me and I looked at what Carl wrote in his own hand about the BASE jumps he had made. It would have been a real loss if Carl had not recorded that stuff, And besides, who know what the future holds for any of us? Which one of you will be the historical figures of tomorrow? If some poor schmuck, thirty years from now, is trying to piece together events (the ones you thought weren’t very important at the time) because you added something to the human condition, it does become important. I designed, published, and sold the first logbook for BASE jumping (BASELog) there ever was, even when I wasn’t logging myself. Don’t make the same mistake. Nick

The effects of climbing and jumping live broadcast towers has been a concern in the BASE community for a long time. Basically there have been three types of studies on the effects of electro magnetic radiation (EMR). The ones commissioned by the broadcast and power industries yield either neutral, or favorable results while the ones commissioned by environmental groups and trial lawyers say detrimental health effects are dramatic. The third type done by Universities come back inconclusive, but usually lean toward “probably” causes some effects. Of course, these studies concentrate on people who reside under and around these radiators, but in our case this old advice still holds true, “Get on, get up, and get off” as quickly as possible. I personally believe we all possess a “cancer switch” within our bodies. Flip that switch and cancer cells will begin to form. It’s just nobody knows what flips the switch in the first place, and it’s possible it’s not the same thing in all people. As BASE jumpers we already know to stay off AM broadcast towers, but even jumping the other kinds, you should be making informed decisions. Nick

Gee, I wish Carl Boenish was still alive to lead us out of this . . . Carl was a very progressive thinker, and if we are to ever figure this out, we should try to carry that progressiveness on. I know when sneaking in a jump from Basic Research’s tethered (at 600-feet) balloon in the pre-potato days of their FJC, it sure felt like any other BASE jump I had made. I mean, I was wearing BASE gear and the spot where I'd crater, if it all went wrong, wasn’t moving. It just didn’t feel like skydiving, at all. However, a few years prior, while making skydiving balloon jumps, I did an emergency exit from a balloon, that blew its top on the way to 4000-feet at 1200-feet. I knew, going over the side, that I was skydiving I personally like to think a BASE jump is anything that’s not a skydive, and that includes rollovers and the like. The new definition of a BASE jump might be something like how the Supreme Court defines pornography. You know it when you see it. When Phil Smith, BASE 1, jumped from a moving train crossing the Pecos River in Texas in the early 1980s, it was certainly considered a BASE jump, so the “fixed” part has already been a murky concept for years. You can’t say BASE has to do with low altitude, as there are many (relatively) high ones. When we tried to get the FAA to grant us a waiver to exit the Otter on a pass down the runway at 500-feet (for air shows) the only reason they even considered it, was we convinced them we weren’t skydiving, we were BASE jumping. But, that wouldn't square with (green) Jean Boenish's fondness for BASE, because it didn't involve carbon-spewing airplanes. In the end I like to think Carl would have left it this way - "A BASE jump is a BASE jump. A skydive is a skydive. And I think everyone here already knows the difference." Nick

Put it into perspective . . . The learn as you go method of yesteryear was free, very exciting, full of discovery, often painful, and too often deadly. I loved those days, but wouldn’t want to re-live them, nor see anyone else go through that plaster learning curve. I used to strut like John Travolta and now I waddle like Elmer Fudd. Also, think about why you want to BASE jump. If you didn’t have an involuntary instantaneous attraction to BASE the first time you saw it, didn’t say to yourself, “Man, that’s for me,” and don’t find BASE overwhelming your everyday thoughts, then think harder about it. I’m not sure even one BASE jump, just to see if it’s for you, is worth the risk. You asked, “So why does it cost $1200 to make 1 stinkin' jump.” Well, there are many answers to that question and 80 of them are here: http://www.basefatalities.info/ Now, the following advice may seem way overcautious, but here it is. Go to Bridge Day this October, but don’t jump. Just lurk it. Spend a few hours on the bridge and a few hours in the landing area. Attend the video fest and the after-party, maybe even help out here and there. You’ll enjoy yourself and learn much. Finding/deciding on a BASE mentor will be easier, as you can meet many of them at Bridge Day, maybe even work a bit of a deal with one. Lastly a mentor will be more willing to go out of the way to help you if, rather than the way you presented yourself in your post, you have the BASE fire shooting out of your eyeballs . . . Edited: Look me up at BD, if you do come. Nick

After all these years, I think the following has a much better chance than skydiving. “Olympic BASE jumping Style and Accuracy.” It's exciting, is easily understandable, and it’s spectator friendly. It can be done indoors or out. There’s no logistical a/c or wx problems. As an individual event, more countries could be represented. It would be comparatively inexpensive to run. On the elite level fatalities would be very rare, as the all around parachuting knowledge is greater than in skydiving. (Not knocking my mother sport, but you don't survive to get to the elite level if that's not the case.) There are connections to already established Olympic events like platform diving. It's a natural! Oh, what a minute, I forget about the drug testing, never mind . . . Nick

Tom, It's a bit funny, maybe even naive now, but when tandem first appeared on the scene, as an Instructor, I thought terrific, now people who couldn’t jump otherwise, due to infirmities, like blindness, paralysis, or very old age, could make a least one parachute jump. I never dreamed in my wildest imagination tandem would become what it has. I believe except business wise, it’s been a disaster for the sport. When I landed with a tandem student and they’d say to me, “Man, I could never have done that on my own,” I’m sad, because I know, with the proper training; they could have indeed made the jump, more or less, on their own. They are getting the wrong impression of the sport. Tandem students don’t spend the time on the DZ necessary to experience it all. The idea any student doesn’t hang around for the campfire and a beer, that they don’t get socialized to the sport is a great loss for us, and for them. On the other side of the coin we now have “skydivers” that should have been automatically weeded out by the fact, that before tandem, you had to be the type of person with the confidence to say, “Yes, I can learn, and I can do this.” This was an automatic by-product of a difficult to finish student status. It was difficult for a reason, that’s still very valid today, it’s a dangerous sport and not everyone is cut out to skydive. So we spoon-fed them the gift of flight, and now we have people who can’t pack or feel they need to know anything about their gear except how to put it on their backs. I guess, you and I, and the rest who’ve been around awhile, have no one to blame but ourselves. In the late 1980s we should have marched en masse on USPA headquarters, shook them by the shoulders, and asked, “What the hell are you doing?” Oh well . . . Hey Tom, will I see you at Bridge Day? Nick D

Nobody, now that, a stake out will be in place waiting for you . . . Nick BASE 194 Edited: Opps, I just looked at your bio, and realized you probably don't mean, "that" Valley. How myopic of me . . . nevermind.

>>but I like to think our tandem instructors are among the best of the best

Skydiving, any kind of skydiving, will serve the most important aspect of getting ready for BASE, and that’s raising your awareness level from “walkingbeing” to “flyingbeing”. And it's why we (usually) don't hear first time BASE jumpers exclaim, "Man, that was all a big blur, and I had trouble breathing." Freak flying can be as beneficial as RW as you are learning to fire the synapses in your brain that control your body in the air. I had over 700 skydives when I launched my first BASE jump, and I found it a brand new skill, but at least that first BASE jump wasn’t a blur, and I breathed just fine . . . By the way, your chosen skydiving discipline already had a cool name, why’d you change it? Nick

Are We There Yet . . . ? To get to a doctor I took a 75 mile ride in the back of a small car with both my legs broken and I would have killed for morphine. Instead, I just chewed my way through the car's headrests . . . Nick

First off, I must say when I hear someone say, “they didn’t know any better, but they do now” and they started BASE jumping within the last fifteen years, it sounds hollow to me. BASE ethics, as an issue, is older than that. The first BASE ethics articles, i.e., how to protect sites, how, and who, should teach, started appearing in the mid-to-late 1980s. However, there's a bigger issue lurking here . . . With a perspective that comes from simply being born sooner (not saying a better perspective, just a different one) I see these wars have been raging since almost the beginning of the sport. I say, almost the beginning, because the only “pure” era of BASE is the beginning years when no one knew anything and the playing field was level. This is a time when if you discovered some great truth about BASE jumping, you only had to make three phone calls, and by the next day, the whole BASE community would know it too. Then it started to change, and, it began to get ugly. I remember (numerous times) X severely berating some hapless newbie for turning others on to BASE in a time when X had just fifty BASE jumps (and more than anyone else at the time) while the newbie had just ten. X is the first person I ever hear refer to an object as, “locals only.” I knew, right then, we had a problem that would never go away unless we threw the baby out with bath water. Now when protecting legal sites is an issue (a thing we never needed to worry about back then) it’s going to get worse. The baby, in the above, is the freedom. The balancing act nowadays is letting the newbie experience that freedom, that feeling that fired our imaginations, that thing at the very core of the sport itself, without putting in place all the rules and regulations that drove us out of skydiving and away from the drop zone in the first place. And come on, the transition from yahoo skydiver to cool BASE jumper is as old as the sport itself. We all went through that transition (except for Ritchie, who did it the other way) and we all made some of the mistakes we’re getting on this guy in the thread for. You can all make up your minds on an individual basis, because that’s part of it too. But, be really really careful. If your major concern is protecting your local site (legal, or not) I’m not entirely sure you have it right. Look at it this way. All one needs to BASE jump is the desire, a rig, and an object. Those three things will always be available. No, local, state, or federal agency can ever shut down BASE jumping. No one person could do it either. If you say it’s for the good of the sport, it doesn’t wash. You are really saying it’s about your convenience. No one can own, rent or parcel out BASE jumping. And that, right there, is the beauty of it, it’s the freedom. We are starting to monkey with that to the point, that well, you know . . . Nick

I first met Ron S. at an early Bridge Day when I noticed him standing on one end of the bridge selling a little pamphlet to the wuffos that gave a short, but accurate, explanation of the sport in terms they could understand. He sold them for a quarter apiece and he sold a ton of them. I remember there are several of us, shaking our heads, and wondering why the hell we didn’t think of that . . . Anyway, years later Ron started skydiving with a small Dachshund. The dog’s name is Brutus and, I believe, they made over a hundred skydives together. Brutus even had a neat little frap hat and his own goggles. Ron started to get some publicity and, as I recall, the reaction from the wuffos, and many jumpers too, is mostly negative. Something to consider is if you kill yourself while BASE jumping you may get some sympathy. Kill the dog, while you lived through it, and you’d get roasted. If could be something you’d never live down. You’d always be the jumper who killed that cute little dog. I’d forgive you, but don’t underestimate the power of people who feel for and treat their pets better than other humans. I know you’re in GB, but, if it happened over here the next thing we’d have is something called the Reddevil Law, the no parachuting pets rule. Nick

>>(Missed ya this trip Nick, but I'll be back out in 10 days)

Yes, of course I understand how you feel, but it might not have been Mike's actions as much as the Baseball commish's overreaction that "screwed" you. Besides, think of the many inept demos performed since that time, demos that hurt people (both jumpers & spectators)? That's the real problem. We also were "screwed" out of several paying stadium jumps in the old days by GK & Leap Frogs, who in those days, didn't have near the demo experience we did, but they swooped in and did the demos for free . . . Oh well, life's not always fair. Nick