truckerbase

As equally amazing as it is that the fine for merely parachuting is 2000 dollars, loss of equipment, and jail time, is the fact that jumping a yosemite big wall is actually WORTH 2000 dollars, loss of equipment, and jail time. Since Im changing manufacturers, Ill be liquidating my equipment in Yosemite real soon... cya in jail *******************************************

Got some carolina snuggling going on, eh? ....er....smuggling...that is....I meant. Never mind. **************************************

Thank you for this. Finally some east coast level cooperation from the west. We'd conquer the world if we had more of this out here... appreciate. ps. Id appreciate details if possible. PM? Thanks ******************************************** sig x

Yep. Im coming . Truck will have to stay at home, though, for you top of the trailer fans ****************************************

"Snuggler"? No. No. Its a goddamn typo. I said "smuggler". Nicks in recovery, he doesnt need to be around you hemp heads. He needs to be around someone who can hook him up with chicks. Not Dicks. As soon as I figure out how to get a girl for me, Ill apply the formula to nick. Damn. This is a whole new side to the Charlotte crew I never knew. I heard TJ and Blair talking about how much they really liked Mike's "Big Gun" but damn. I never knew... Tj is awfully cute, though... I can see why Blair wants him. ********************************************* xsig x

Hey, Nick. As it turns out, the room I ended up with has two beds and a pull out sleeper couch. So, if you dont want to sleep with mike (who is a snuggler ) and you want your own bed, let me know ;you are very welcome. ********************************** xsig x

Welcome back, Jack. Missed ya. Just opened a new object tonite, was gonna call it "firestick" but maybe ill just call it Jaapsback. Burned the hell out of me, though.... ***************************** sigx

Douglas Adams already revealed how mice control all. see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Its true. And youll notice how well hidden are all the studies where the mice do a gangsta lean, pull a gun out, and cap the researcher to keep from being repeatedly shocked, and then chopped up into itsy bitsy pieces so they can be studied under the microscope. Such an absence shows such a bias on the part of research fellows, I think... **************************************

Every jump Ive walked down from, Ive felt really really bad about myself because of it. But in terms of knowing yourself, and defining your identity as unique from others, in realizing and overcoming your imperfections you become a better, deeper person. You always go back. And the achievement is always the sweeter and more reaffirming because of THAT fact. If BASE were easy, probably we wouldnt be doing it. We need a real challenge with real consequences. If youre not scared, its not a base jump.If you didnt walk down, you werent challenged enough. And anyway, regular people feel bad about themselves because they had a pepsi for lunch rather than a carton of milk. So start feeling better, already. **************************************

500 kW is a baby. A hatchling. Most base jumpers would strip naked and dance the macarena with so nasty a needle...1 megawatts, 5 megawatts, and apparently 10 megawatts are regularly jumped. I was unaware 10 megs was in use till one city took me off one. People have jumped off next to the stinger, touched and burned themselves on the stingers, and sat around singing Barry Manilow songs 10 feet below stinger pads half the night and none of these people will do the decent thing and drop dead. All appear fairly normal, (except for the Barry Manilow guy ). However, none of this stuff is good for you, it is an accepted risk, but if there are any true consequences, they seem unsupported currently by any hard data. Youve already read it--get up, get off, get away. Dont hang out next to pods, dishes, or arrays. Stay below the stinger by 50 or a hundred feet. However, in practice I find most people get used to being around this stuff, and, when they dont grow extra arms, or turn green, they adapt to the proximity of the risk, cease to be worried about it, and focus on more tangible deaths: like impact. On FM Ive never heard of anyone actually having a problem. Most Base careers are short, meteoric if you will, as people accomplish and realize this most esoteric of achievements, retiring content and happy to a life free of long term, close range exposure to FM antenna radiation. This limited exposure to this ambiguous threat may be why there are no reports of people waking up dead after a particularly intimate antenna binge. But regardless, people are jumping off near the stingers, off ice shields right over pods and dishes. And often use arrays as handholds. That being said, most engineers and tower rats ive talked to say the minimum safe distance to energized radiative systems...is the north pole on a dark night. Got Wool?

As a brief commentary on Amanduh's offering and Rhonda's response; just as my saying "Im just a truck driver" is a cop out, so is saying "but Im just a girl". In terms of Nature/Nurture consider the fact that men's dads haul them out at heinously young ages to overenthusiastically begin hurling 90 mph fastballs at them, training them from a very impressionable age to be physical, spatial, and non verbal. Between age 0 and 5 sets the program for much of who you will be; Experience during this time "wires" the brain-the brain adapts and changes to meet its environment. If boys are out climbing trees, and wrist rocketing birds out of trees while girls are knitting and shopping and cooking thanksgiving dinner, their relative experiences and time spent doing these activities will determine their later adult skills and aptitudes. The abilities of the comparitively slow and unadaptable adult is based on the brilliance and energy and fluidity of the child. If one sculptor spends 1 year in his/her art, and another 30 years, which would YOU expect to be better at it. What you are overcoming is not biology but the minds ignorance of the novel challenge. Just how goofy and backwards are men at sewing, or cooking, or washing clothes, or picking out furniture? Theyre complete retards mostly...Just as when a girl gets up to bat for the co-ed team. Its probably her 100 time at bat, not her 100,000th time. Also just because physical differences have been observed in the brains of Men and Women doesnt mean those differences relate directly to a given behavior difference or aptitude difference. And it is equally possible that the differences exist not because of genetics, but because the brain has adapted physically to its environment, the similarities in women's brains reflecting the homogeneity of their upbringing and experience. Not their double x. Dont be a cop-out. You want to BASE hard enough, youll rock at it... Base 758 **************************************************** x sigx

"Dennis, are we talking about the 70s or are we talking about now? It seems a little blurry to me. " Um. We're talking about basejumping, dear. Focus! "As to teachers, I was talking about the payscales where I went to school in the 60s and 70s (I graduated highschool in '76). The men made more than the women, and most of the women had been teaching longer. " Then this situation was heinously inequitous, wrong, and likely illegal unless gender discrimination laws were not in effect yet. I believe the logic behind such inequities were that men had families to support and women were working "for fun". At the time, Im sure this was logical to the old culture which had existed for years...but its time had ended. Sadly, you are also revisionist in your perspective of history. You side-step the "comparable work" issue completely as though I made it up, likely because this reality (as a political methodology) is an embarrassment to the women's movement in its outrageous scholarship and aggressive stance. Yes there were real pay inequities, but yes the comparable work tactic was used, and was in play. You give personal examples. Not accredited national studies. Nationally, feminists may have been overeager in pressing their agenda NOW (pun intended) rather than waiting for more respectable studies. The study that I mentioned was an "official" "proof". The lie that tells the truth. I saw it with my own eyes. You offer no clever clicky with an alternative respectable study to demonstrate that no such "comparable work" study existed or was in play during my time or in my experience. Or that your version of respectability existed instead. Also you err, by arguing against positions that I neither support nor defend, and havent offered here; why would you expect me to defend myself from or make comment upon some of your paragraphs? If you need a lectern on the subject, dont use me. I assume youre testing my ability to pick out a variety of fallacies and illogicities. Boring... "I also worked in a lawfirm where I was paid about the same as the "paralegal" with the 9th grade education (barely) who was hired straight from a strip club because my boss had lost his mind. " Ok. This is just funny. What part of "men" havent you learned in 48 years? We discussed this. Men want sex. Women want money. Its too bad, but woulda shoulda coulda is no match for the way things really are. Your boss' wife divorced him and took his money, his house...the girl from the strip club today is 300 lbs, toothless, and is a crack addict. Youre better than "bitterness", dear. Actually, reading through much of your response and the remaining paragraphs, you continue to weave in and out of refuting different actual and theoretical arguments, several not advanced by me, and then you fade off into semi confused and ambiguous thoughts, apparently directed at me as well. You appear to be assuming or second guessing my motivation in making comments. No point in addressing them individually, they are weirdly unfocused for you. They are uncharacteristic of your level. I assume youre having a bad day. Im sorry. Do you want to talk about it? Rather than waste time, I wont address whatever is meant by "old resentments" because I dont have any. Not with you. Not with women. Not with the womens movement when it didnt play the sort of game I mention. There is also an inside joke here, if you mean anything else by "resentments", but I realize you have no idea who I am or the course of my life or history. Youve disappointed me with your response; Im merely a truck driver. Lucidity, consistency, intelligence; you cant expect these from me. We've all come to expect more from you. At least a clever clicky, breaking the suspense, providing the answer. But i do disagree, a solution to this question will come neither easily, nor soon. Let alone here. Perhaps men are raised to be more self-reliant, a requirement of base. Perhaps women are not raised to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. Also a requirement of base given the harsh reality of "youre going to die, now...(no pun intended). Or perhaps men are raised to be more competitive than women, not satisfied with mere skydiving to establish simian dominance to impress mates, but rather "upping the stakes" in order to narrow the field, to limit competitors, or to eliminate a stagnant competitive arena. Perhaps a limited field increases the male's reproductive chances when the female's eye is cast upon a smaller group. For the same reason perhaps men have biologically been selected to pursue smaller social groups, which by definintion would be radiative, nomadically dispersing a population, which might lend to the survival of a greater number of selective individuals. Also, a group of smaller spheres have a larger surface area than a single large sphere with the same (internal) area; that would increase interaction with the environment, accelerating evolutionary pressures. Perhaps women are genetically selected to pursue larger social groups for protection (herd like) for themselves and their children, providing the inertia to stabilize such a system. Or maybe Im completely full of shit. Shall I continue? Without you, Rhonda. We'll never know.... I just drive a truck. Base 758 ******************************************************* x sigx

Actually, Rhonda, at the time of my research the data was very specific. Jobs were comparable, not exact. While feminists have had the time to hunt down the harder to find example to exactly illustrate their point, at the time they preferred to shotgun the issue with more massive amounts of data through the very false comparison of "similar" jobs, using the "advanced" tactic of "the lie that tells the truth" a sociopolitical pseudo scientific tool which is an extension of "the end justifies the means". A wrongful philosophy in my opinion. I have no doubt that the rabid feminists have since been forced to clean up their statistics, and find more factual examples, but I imagine there are still statistical problems with the data. For example, it is fallacious to compare male teachers in a private school in New York City with female public teachers in Littleton, Iowa. Different market, different school district, different demand, different state...but I have no doubt that if challenged on comparable jobs, feminist leaders would minimally modify their comparisons to continue to produce figures favorable to their cause. They would be willing to overlook the subtleties of truth in pursuit of their ends: quick and dirty data overly inflated and exaggerated to draw emotive and viceral responses. Thats not to say that inequities dont and didnt exist, it is to say that the data that I personally saw and researched, specifically advanced by feminist proponents at the time of my work, was falsely comparing "similar" jobs, female nurse with male construction worker. I may not, perhaps, be as young as you suppose... Base is equally accessible to the sexes in the present day, which is what is being discussed. Money doesnt keep them out. Discrimination doesnt keep them out. I dont keep them out. They choose not to base in greater numbers than men because they either have less interest in it, or have more to lose than men. Either way, the issue is choice, women need only take responsibility for their own lives and their own happiness without blaming others for choices which are now theirs. Base 758 **************************************************** xsig x

This statement is false. It is a part of mid 70's feminist rhetoric which stilted numbers to falsely represent income/job statistics. Compiled by Feminist think tanks, the misrepresentation is this: On the surface the statistics appear to say that "men and women working the same job are not paid the same" but what the research actually says is "that men and women working COMPARABLE jobs are not paid the same. The emotive power of the first version overwhelmed any correction after the fact, because this was a political tactic when this issue was very hot. Im old enough to remember this time, and did some research on it in college for graduate school. Feminists semi arbitrarily determined that two different jobs were the "same" and should be paid the same, so they would compare female teacher with male cook, male business manager with daycare supervisor and the like odd comparisons, and then scream about the inequity. There was a Stanford-developed social strategy loosely grouped under the title "the lie that tells the truth". When applied to politics this kind of media political manipulation was the result. At the time, it worked because women were fed-up with problems and men hadnt adapted to the social change yet. Political concerns developed just the right data to really accelerate reform. But it is still not true; the real problem was that women were encountering great resistance to becoming more than just wives and mothers and knew it was unfair, and needed radical sociopolitical strategies to force legal measures and social reform. In a nut shell, it has been illegal to pay men and women different pay in the same exact job for some time, so women today working as engineers with the same job and seniority and rank must be and are paid the same as the male workers at that same company. Admittedly, my original post is un-organized and overly inclusive, and does show a social bias; but science has proven physical differences in the nervous system and behaviors of men and women. Additionally, the question of why more men are in base is unanswerable in this forum, but this, I think, is NOT due to any kind of discrimination. BASE 758 ******************************************************* xsig x

Possibly an insight as to why there are so few female jumpers would be to ask currently jumping females why there are so few females making pure solos. If this is a male dominated sport, we may presume (obviously) that more men are attracted to the sport then women, as I dont believe "discrimination" to be a contributing factor (unfortunately men are eager to teach women base, to show off, to get laid, to feel important, to establish male hierarchies of reproductive prowess) If more men are attracted to the sport because it interests them, then base is fundamentally "male", however you would define that. The elements of Base appeals more to the male mind. Base incorporates physical and mental challenge contained almost entirely internally,Loner Nomad; it is a very visual sport and its reward has strong visual components. Men supposedly are more "visual" and "spacial" then women. They are less gregarious and are noted wanderers.They think as individuals where women are noted as thinking in groups. Whether true or not, whether innate or only cultural, women are noted as "verbal", "social", and are far more rooted far earlier. Base is not a "talky" sport, although admittedly at the exit point, the social world (even with strangers) becomes curiously intimate and singular. As interesting would be the question, are the women who base jump attracted to it because they are more "male" than their "motherly" counterparts? Higher testosterone levels? Base filters the general population, why would it not also filter sub elements within the larger social system. Pure solos are a masculine accentuation of a masculine sport. It is easier to ask real base females this "solo" question and get an informed insider answer, than it would be to ask none jumping females why they dont base jump. The rarefaction or filtering should produce an homogeneity or consensus sufficient for an insight or an answer. Base 758 ********************************************** xsig x

Lets Russell up some fun. A ship of true adventure sailed by a true adventurer. Congratulations man.....

Sure. I can play. To my knowledge there are NO current, active, in town New Orleans jumpers. Many visit. None stay. And all the residents were given great advance knowledge to leave the area...any who stayed took their own risk, as was their right. Good and bad happen in the world in equal measure, because those who perceive it are interpreting it so, simply because they themselves are a mixture of good and bad, to define it with bias. Were people never going to die? Never going to get hurt? If they hadnt met the hurricane of their choice would they then never die? Roll with it... Base 758 ****************************** x sig x

When I was on the road, I periodically ran into people who didnt have a base number, and people who were not remotely online. Strangely enough, I learned more from these offline base communities than anywhere else, because they had re-invented the wheel in their own image. So I, a suburban soft internet pathetic, am like, you guys are doing WHAT tonight??????? Off a WHAT???? You mean...NOW??? I think the number of BASE jumpers and Fatalities is much higher than thought... Base 758 ********************************** xSig x

Well, Robbie, lets just say Hurricane base numbers are going fast... Base 758 ********************************** xsig x

I just moved back myself, Neil, but anything I can do, man. A beer in Norcal isnt exactly a beer at the horner pub, but it is still on me. Base 758 *************************** xsig X

I "base" my life on NickDG's teachings. I worship him like a god. Nick and Rhonda are like my mom and dad... If one tells me I cant do something, I can always run go ask the other, and they usually say I can. Base 758 *********************************** sig x

Pass on the jiminee cricket videos. No thanks. Base 758 x ********************************

Technically speaking, Im not a living creature. Does that still count? Base 758 ********************************* x

Huge congratulations, Shannon. Its always a happy father who gets to give his daughter away to such a great guy. I am so proud of you two!!!

Stop calling me Shirley... Base 758 *****************