Eule

OK. Thanks for the clarification on how it works. For the same reason, I know that on some airplanes (bizjets) that are normally pressurized but have oxygen, there's only one oxygen bottle, and the pilot can shut off the oxygen to the passengers if he has to. It means that flow is getting to the end of their hose, but whether it's actually going into their lungs is another question. _If_ everything works right it will, but the existence of this thread seems to indicate it doesn't always work right. At the 300 ways, at one point the pilot picked up the entire regulator assembly, tossed it at me and said "Fix this piece of shit!" He was busy with other things. I guess I was thinking of the "smaller" high-altitude jumps, like one Otter load, instead of the big-ways. I agree that on a big-way, the pilot is kind of busy trying to not run into N other aircraft and so on. Even when I jump out of a 182 at 11K, I know the pilot doesn't have gobs of time to screw around - he's flying the plane, looking for traffic, talking to center, talking to the locals, etc. What I was after was that if the oxygen alarm was in the middle of the cabin somewhere, and had a big knob labeled "Number of Jumpers", the first reaction of a lot of people when it started beeping and blinking would be to reach up and turn the knob to some lower number to satisfy the flow rate sensor, instead of debugging the actual problem with somebody's oxygen supply. If it was in the cockpit, that might be slightly less likely. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I thought it probably wasn't a new idea, but apparently it isn't done often on civilian jumps that use oxygen. Given all the problems you listed, do you think that the civilian systems at least fill the requirement of "better than nothing"? Not a very high standard, I know, but I'm curious. I agree with this idea, at least for the monitoring function. It seems like you could stuff the nasal cannula down inside your jumpsuit and it would still look like you were getting enough oxygen, at least if you were just measuring the flow rate to it. With a mask and a demand regulator, if you monitor the flow rate, you _know_ when somebody is not breathing the oxygen. I would guess that some of the objections to the masks in civilian jumping would be the cost and that they are probably hard to use with a helmet or with a beard or mustache. This might be practical in a huge-way (like WT) but I'm not sure that smaller jumps that need oxygen would be able to "afford" the extra non-jumping person. I guess you could have a jumper monitor the oxygen but it sounds like the military practice is to have a non-jumper do it. This is part of the reason why I was thinking of having a box on the wall - it doesn't take up a slot and might be easier to cost- justify. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Hooray LAMP! Any chance you'd share some of the details? I'm not talking about the data for your jumps, but instead the database schema, PHP code, etc. As you might guess, I think this is a way better idea than Excel, at least from the standpoint of features and good design. It probably kind of falls over on the "usable by non-geeks" score, but you can't have everything. If you'd rather not, that's cool, but asking is free. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

In my limited experience (I started in June 2005), it's very common. Most of the written stuff on the net or in books aimed at new jumpers makes it sound like everyone passes in 7 jumps, or whatever the program minimum is. I know a few people that have indeed done that. I know a lot more people who have repeated a level or three. Then there's me, but I'm a problem child. :) To be fair, the written newbie material is probably written that way ("you'll get right through it!") to help encourage people. There is also probably some element of not wanting to put it in somebody's mind that they might have to repeat a US$150 jump. Beans - yes, bank manager - maybe not. If you consistently end up with only £10 to your name a week from payday, you don't really need to keep a bank account. Welcome! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

IMHO: If you want your jump log to just be a quick summary of your jumps, doing it in Excel, one line per jump, is cheap, quick, and easy. Once you start asking questions like "how many jumps did I do on Tuesdays in 2005 that were on a Sabre2 and not in Deland", you need a relational database. The database will let you ask all kinds of goofy questions, and you can have it automatically count the totals, or give a list of the relevant jumps, or whatever. But it does take more work to set up, and to provide with a "pretty" interface that non-geeks can use. Also, I haven't used it, but Paralog might do what you want. It does seem to have some of the query and reporting facilities of a relational database. The things I would want to know about Paralog are what format it actually stores its data in (text files? database backend? undocumented binary soup?) and how quickly it runs - it's written in Java and in my past experience, this might be a problem if I want to log more than one jump a week. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Something I don't know about the oxygen systems typically used on jump planes: does each jumper have a hose that just flows a little oxygen all the time, or is there some kind of regulator that only flows oxygen when you inhale, sort of like a SCUBA regulator? If it's the former, I don't think this would work, but if the latter, I wonder if some kind of flow rate alarm at the oxygen bottle could be useful. The idea would be that there would be a box in the oxygen line right off the bottle. The pilot or other responsible person would set a control on the box for the number of jumpers. The box watches the flow rate and if it doesn't see enough flow (possibly averaged over a short time) for that many people, a light flashes or a horn goes off or whatever. This might be trying to solve a wetware problem with hardware. It's also kind of a measure-by-proxy; if you really wanted to check you'd give everyone an individual pulse oximeter. But having one device instead of N devices would be less expensive, and it could be bolted to the wall so you wouldn't have to keep track of it. There might be ways to "fool" the box; people might be able to stick their thumb in the mouthpiece or something to make the oxygen flow. Also, if you set the box for 2 jumpers but there were really 8, 6 people could be off the oxygen and the box would think everything is fine. (This is part of the reason I suggest putting the box under pilot control instead of jumper control.) There may be too much variability in people's lung capacity (5' 120 lb lady vs. 6'4" 200 lb guy) to make this practical, too. Just curious if there are major reasons this won't work, or if it has been tried before and not worked. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The regular NWS forecast includes ground winds, but many forecast offices only give these two days out - in other words, you have to wait until Friday morning to get the Sunday winds. Some go a little further; right now (Friday night) Dallas has wind forecasts through Tuesday night. Here's the NWS Santa Barbara forecast. Assuming you get hooked and start working on your license, you'll learn a lot more about winds. Whatever your instructors say takes precedence over anything you read here, elsewhere on the net, or in a book. Having said that, there are some other sources of wind forecasts and data. There is a "winds aloft" forecast produced for pilots. Here's the one for your area; look at the line marked "SBA". By default, you get the forecast that is good right now and for a few hours into the future. You can get forecasts further out - on that page, there is a little yellow bar at the upper right, with one red segment. This is a timeline, and clicking on the different segments gives you a different forecast. Unfortunately the format for these was invented when each letter cost eighteen million dollars to send, so they are kind of cryptic. Here is a good post on how to read them. There is also a thing called a "wind profiler" which is basically a radar that sits on the ground and points straight up. It can measure the wind speed and direction at different altitudes for quite a way up. You can't get a forecast from this, but you can see what the winds have been doing in the recent past. There are several of them in California; the one closest to you is probably in LA. This link may or may not give you the current report from LA; if it doesn't work, you'll have to go to the previous link and fill in the form to get it. If you click on "advanced display options", you can make it display in reasonable units (feet and knots) instead of those weird ones furriners use. :) I hope you have fun! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Wow! Even using a fully burdened cost of something like $60-$100 an hour, that's something like 4 to 8 man-years of work. I don't doubt it would be expensive, but $750K is a lot of money... If they won't tell you the price, that means it's so shocking that they want to have a salesman lube you up first. On the other hand, their target market seems to mainly be the military, so you can take whatever figure they give you and halve or quarter it to get what they'd probably sell it at retail for. Maybe somebody with a GSA login can tell us what one of these costs, if that isn't against the rules. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Unless the simulator is only going to be used for basic student flight on big canopies, it's a lot more complicated than that. Two toggles, two front risers, two rear risers, and harness positioning. OK, so you have to buy a few more pairs of strain gauges and hydraulic cylinders. I still think that's less expense and work than setting up two complete sets of instruments, a full radio stack, the warning light panel, the circuit breaker panels, etc. Balanced against this is the knowledge that it always takes longer and costs more... Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Punching "lebanon plane" into news.google.com gave a lot of hits mentioning the country and this local TV story that I think is about this accident. That story says there was a flight instructor and student pilot onboard. There is a blurry video capture; the plane _looks_ like a 182 and the tail number _looks_ like N3675U, but I wouldn't swear to it. Punching the name given in that story back into the FAA's aircraft registration data doesn't come up with any likely matches. Lebanon is about 20 miles northwest of Indianapolis; various searches at the Indianapolis newspaper haven't turned up a story on this crash. There are a couple of stories there on the ultralight plane crash that the TV story also mentions. One Lebanon/Boone County paper has nothing, but another paper has an article. It has a slightly better picture, but you can't read the tail number from that angle, or determine if it has a jump door. That article also gives another name, which doesn't come up in the registration search. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

My interpretation of what he wants is the automagic mapping for countries other than the US and the UK. There are lists of DZs in every country, but the feature where it draws the map with your location and the DZs on it only works for the US and UK. I have encountered the same thing. I have family in Germany and I was dreaming about one day visiting them and maybe getting some jumps in. I can go to Europe -> Germany and get a list of 54 DZs. If I want to know which one is closest to Frankfurt, I get to click on each one and put the address or city name into a third-party mapping service. There is a FAQ entry on this topic that blames it on the available geocoding information. That entry is dated November 2004, and so probably predates the availablility of Google Maps. As a temporary workaround, one can emigrate to the US. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I was mostly thinking of solving the substring or "emoticon" problem. I agree that trying to look at the context and trying to figure out if a pilot is a canopy or a guy that can fly a plane is a more difficult proposition. You could probably develop some heuristics that would get you halfway there, but you could spend the rest of your life (and your CPU cycles) trying to get it 100%. What I'm thinking of is a rule like: post contains "pilot" AND ("cessna" or "182" or "otter" or "pac") --> no link; post contains "pilot" AND ("riser" OR "steering" OR "canopy") --> link. Or, perhaps some kind of scoring system could be done, with links only being inserted when the score rises above a certain threshold. I don't know what your MRTG graphs look like, so this may be a bold suggestion. It seems to me, though, that the link insertion happens after the user clicks "post message" and before the post gets committed to the database and indexed in the forum. Given that, and that "view post" is probably a much more common occurence than "submit post", you can afford to spend a moderate amount of CPU analyzing the post and deciding whether to link a certain word or not. Alll of the above refers to the technical details of making the link insertion work in an acceptable way, and doesn't answer the question of whether the link insertion is a good idea or not. My opinon on the link insertion follows. I've sat on both sides of this table. I've been a volunteer admin for an enthusiast Web site. Somebody posted a video clip to our photo gallery which then got slashdotted. It took us a while to catch it and it turned out our connection was not throttled like our ISP said it was. Result: Our normal ~US$100 phone bill turned into over US$2000, which we had to come up with. So I'm a bit acquainted with the idea of having to fund a Web site. On the other hand, I do have somewhat of an objection to a post that I write (and retain the copyright on) getting turned into advertising for a third party. As has been discussed, there are technical ways around this. Also, the terms and conditions seem to be written to allow for the link insertion: Emphasis mine. It could be argued that adding the links is "editing" and is therefore covered under the existing agreement. On the other hand, the next sentence is and it could be argued that adding advertising links is "selling" content. I am aware that one sure-fire way to not have my posts edited is to not make them, also known as the "if you don't like it here, then leave" option. As sort of a meta-observation, I would bet that many of the people who object to the link insertion are people that have had Internet access since before the Web became popular. When we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to use a VT100 at 1200 baud, there was a mild anti-commercial bias on the net - it was for sharing information and ideas, not for selling things. On the other hand, people that grew up with Netscape and think that all computers have mice are used to the idea of ads being everywhere, and are probably less likely to object to this. This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny] Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Uh, this problem has been solved since at least 3rd November 1971. Page 8 of http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/man12.pdf suggests that matching on patterns like '[Aa][Ee][Rr][Oo][Dd][Yy][Nn][Ee]' '[Ii][Cc][Oo][Nn]' would probably solve this problem. Going even further and matching on ' [Ii][Cc][Oo][Nn] ' (note leading and trailing space) would solve the problem of parts of words getting turned into links. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I thought about this a bit and decided that a canopy simulator might be interesting. We have wind tunnels for the freefall part, but we don't really have a way to simulate flying the canopy. I think the US military has one or two, but I don't think there are any available to sport jumpers. I don't think it would be a problem to buy enough computing horsepower or mechanical actuators to make it work; the main expense would be the display. A couple of strategically placed flat-screen TVs would be better than nothing, but it's not that realistic to only be able to look in one or two directions. Perhaps as the LCD and DLP projectors get more popular and cheaper, they would be a good option. I used to work for a place that made aircraft simulators. There were three projectors (like an old-school projection TV with three big lenses) on top of the cockpit. Out in front of the cockpit, there was a sheet of plastic that wrapped around 180 degrees from left to right, about 30 degrees below level, and about 50 or 60 degrees above level. The plastic was mounted in a frame and to make it smooth, a pump pulled a light vacuum behind the plastic. I flew a sim with just the video operating - the motion was turned off - and with that wraparound video, when you bank the airplane, it felt exactly like it does in the air, even though my seat wasn't moving an inch. A canopy simulator could potentially be much less expensive than an aircraft simulator, since the "user interface" of a canopy is a lot simpler. For an aircraft sim, you've got to duplicate the controls and the entire instrument panel; for a canopy sim you have to duplicate a couple of toggles. You could also have a sim-driven "altimeter" to wear if you wanted. The screen would be expensive, and so would the initial software development. But once you've done that, it's not very hard to add more canopy types, landing areas, etc. You can push a button and have 160 acres or 1.6 acres to land in. You can have a Student 280 or a Teatowel 73. You can have light and variable or 20 gusting to 40. To be clear, I think this would be a training aid for skydiving, not something people would just do for fun - like the way some people who don't jump like to play in the tunnel. Probably it would be aimed mostly at students and somewhat at people who are considering a downsize or a canopy type change. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I've had this problem as well. As long as I don't go in to a forum while logged in, all of the unread posts/ threads will stay marked as unread. If I go in there while logged in, I then have to either read all of the new posts, or resign myself to losing all of the new-post markers when I log out. What I have been doing to get around this is to log in, check PMs and email, and maybe catch all the way up on a forum that's only got a few new posts. I then log out and visit the forums again while not logged in. That way I can look at the forums that have a lot of new posts and read the few that catch my eye. Later, when I have time, I log in again and get completely caught up on the forums with lots of new posts. I end up reading some things twice this way, but to me that's preferable to losing all of the new-post markers. The root problem, I think, is that the forum software is keeping some state on the server instead of on the client. (One of the requirements for writing Web forum software is to ignore all the lessons learned from 20 years of USENET.) I haven't experimented with this much, but the software _might_ be storing this data on the client in the form of cookies. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the cookie format isn't documented anywhere, so trial and error is the only way to find out how it works. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The day that happens i'll put the rig on and get comfotable in he aise. That, and god knows what other corners they're cutting...fuel? This summer, a pilot for one of the US-based airlines was going through AFF at the DZ I go to. One day we got to talking about the financial conditions of the various airlines. I said that even though the one she worked for had done some layoffs and things, I thought they'd probably make it through OK; she agreed. Then I said, "I've got to tell you, though, I am a little worried about their maintenance practices." She got this horrified look and asked "Why? Have you seen or heard something, or...?" "Well, the pilots are coming to parachute school - you tell me!" She laughed and assured me that if she ever felt she needed to take a rig to work, that would be a sign to look for work elsewhere. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. I had about the same thing, last week. On mine, apparently, it was a clean break and there wasn't much of the "fish out the small bits" part. They cut me open down by the ankle and slid the plate up into place; my doctor said this was a slightly newer procedure (it's been done for the last 4-5 years) than the traditional way where they cut open the whole side of your leg and lay the plate directly over the bone. He said that the newer way avoids some of the cutting and can help the healing go faster. When we were discussing how to fix it, he asked me what I did, and I told him some of the things I do besides jumping (ride bicycle, fix old cars, etc.) He said that since it sounded like I was fairly active, he would recommend getting the plate out once everything was healed up. He said that if I injured that leg again with the plate in there, the plate could actually make things worse. He said that for older or less active people, the hardware is often left in. I think this is because the risk of the surgery (infections, etc) is greater than the risk of the plate causing further damage. I have talked to a local jumper who also had a tib/fib, and they told me that after working with one orthopedic surgeon for a few months, they decided to see a sports medicine orthopedic specialist. Apparently the sports-medicine guy was more used to dealing with younger and more active people, and was able to help a bit more than the general orthopedic guy. I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Hey, we've got perfectly good airplanes here in Oklahoma, too! :) Eule (in Tulsa) PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

It costs about US$200 to get started and then half of your salary for the rest of your life. :) Most places will tell you what the various jumps cost (tandem, static line, AFF with 2 instructors, AFF with 1 instructor) but in my limited experience they won't add up the whole cost as the number is big and scary to people. (I just started jumping in June 2005.) I don't know what it's like in Europe but many US DZs have a bunk room or bunk house where you can stay for free or for cheap (like US$10/night, compare to an inexpensive hotel at US$40/night.) If there is one at the DZ you will be at, it might save you some money. I have talked to some people that went through AFF with no rejumps, but I have talked to many more that have rejumped at least one level. So plan on a couple of AFF rejumps; if you don't need them then you have extra money for other things. Why do you need a USPA license? Do enough European dropzones accept it that it is worth having, or do you plan to visit the USA? Going from what prices are like _in the US_, that figure sounds reasonable. I figure it like this, for just the jumps: 3 AFF jumps with two instructors @ $200-$250: $600-$750 6 AFF jumps with one instructor @ $150-$200: $900-$1200 5 coach jumps @ $75-$100: $375-$500 15 solo jumps @ $20-$25: $300-$375 Total $2175-$2825 Note that this does NOT include any gear rental, food, travel, hotel, etc. You probably don't want to buy the "big" gear before your very first jump - at least in the US, the gear rental is included in the price of AFF jumps. The advice I have been given is that the right time to buy one's own container and canopies is somewhere around 50 jumps, but this number can vary a lot. I am told that if you are careful when you pick out a container, you can usually go through two sizes of main canopy before you need another container. You definitely should check with your instructors before buying a container or a canopy - their advice is better than anything you read in a book or on the Internet. Skymama mentioned some "small" gear that would be good to buy, like goggles, gloves, helmet, and altimeter. This stuff is relatively cheap and you can use it for a long time. I bought some goggles when I wanted to use one of the DZ's pair of goggles one day but they were all sweaty and nasty. On the altimeter, you may want to check with your instructors. Some of them don't allow students to use audible or even digital altimeters at first - they want you to learn on an analog (clock face) altimeter. VERY IMPORTANT! Your plan must include money for buying beer! It'll be hard to get your license without buying at least a couple of cases of beer. :) Suggestion: if you speak German or French, you might visit the Stammtisch or En Français forums; you will probably be able to find some European jumpers who can give you better numbers for the costs in Europe. I hope this helps! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Please be careful when planning the floor layout of your shop. There is a bar about three miles from my house that I sometimes pass by on my way to work, and I have made a study of these "choppers" in their natural habitat. During the spring and summer, on sunny days, large flocks of them can be seen parked outside the bar. These flocks remain large until the late fall, when it starts getting seriously cold. Then, they all disappear for a couple of weeks. I haven't yet been able to find out where they go, but I think they are pupating during this period. The reason why is that after a couple of weeks, they all come back - but as Lincoln Navigators and Chevy Suburbans and such. These stay all winter, and must mate in the early spring... when it warms up, the SUVs give birth to a new flock of choppers, and then migrate away. SO, if you get a cold snap, you could come in one morning and find your shop full of SUVs - if it was completely packed with bikes before, the expansion in volume might damage the building. I hope this helps! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Look up there at the top of the page. Click on "Search Posts". Set the fields as follows: Search: General Skydiving Discussions Search string: traveling travelling travel tsa airport security -Re: Type of search: Any words Fields to search: Subject Show posts from the last: Show all posts Leave the "Only show posts made by" field blank Sort posts by: Post date Results per page: 25 Click the "search" button. When I did the above, I got 9 threads on the first page of results that seem relevant. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The attached is based on talking to someone I know who jumps one in the Netherlands and what piisfish said. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Dude, she's NOT kidding! A couple of weeks ago, a certain Canadian ISP had a temporary misconfiguration on their border gateway loopback router firewall. For a couple of hours, all kinds of "secret stuff" on dropzone.com was available to the public. I got in right before they closed the hole and managed to grab a couple of pages of the moderator training manual. They get special keyboards and everything! Look at the attached. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Caution: low jump number here. Talk to your instructor; his word overrides anything here. In my experience, it's a lot of smiles, thumbs up, and funny handshakes. Maybe a few "All right!" or similar. It will be a little bit different depending on how big of an aircraft you are in; less people = less noise. In a little airplane like a Cessna 182, the first jumper will usually be sitting up next to the pilot looking for the spot, and will shout "DOOR" when he wants to open the door. The pilot will nod yes if he's ready and then the door comes open. If the door is still open, the next jumper won't shout "DOOR", but sometimes a couple of jumpers go, then the pilot shuts the door and circles around; the first guy that wants to open it again will shout "DOOR". In a bigger airplane like a Twin Otter, there are red and green lights over the door; a typical sequence is that they will both be off as you climb to altitude, then the pilot will turn on the red one when you're close, then when you're over the spot he'll turn on the green one. A lot of people will shout "DOOR" when the green one comes on, even though they don't have to. I've seen a few jumpers fidgeting (drumming fingers on seat, helmet, etc) in anticipation right before the red light comes on. Also, right before you and your instructor go, he will probably ask you if you're ready. I've usually done a steady "Yes I am" as opposed to whooping and hollering. Your instructor will tell you what he will say to you and when. I find that somewhere along in here, taking a couple of deep breaths is helpful. Caution: low jump number here. Talk to your instructor; his word overrides anything here. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

All dressed in satin, and waiting by the door. Oooh, what a lucky man, he was. So, anyway, last weekend I won the Titanium Lottery on my L7 AFF jump. I have posted a report and analysis to three decimal places over in the Incidents forum. This post is for more philosophical musings, and for all my fans to post get-well messages and offer sexual favors. :) Maybe this goes in Bonfire, but my guesstimate is that it's at least marginally jumping-related. If not, I'll soon find out. (The Readers Digest version is that I broke my left tib/fib and have a plate and about four screws.) Whuffos say the darndest things. I visited another jumper at the hospital last fall, and happened to catch him just as he was being transferred to his room. A couple of orderlies that didn't know why he was in the hospital came to wheel his bed around, and when he told them he got hurt jumping, the next was the familiar "Did your parachute not open?" We both thought it was kind of funny. Last weekend, while I was getting wheeled into the ER entrance, one of the nurses asked the same damn thing. I told her that if that had happened, they'd need a scraper and a baggie, not a gurney, IV, etc. I lucked out in that the surgeon (who visits several area hospitals/clinics) was in that afternoon. He asked me how I did it and I told him and he asked when I was jumping and I told him that. He said, "I was probably about eight miles out at that point and I heard the "jumpers away" on the radio." Turns out he flies himself around to the various small towns. So I think I lucked out again... this guy isn't going to give me a lot of grief about wanting to jump again, I don't think. Everything up to the surgery was pretty businesslike. I recall the anaesthesia guy telling me he was going to get started, and watching him put a needle in an IV tube. That was about 18:00. About 21:30, I groggily woke up in my room, and my left ankle pointed the same way as my knee again. Yay! I stayed overnight and until about 16:00 the next day. The DZO stopped by on Monday morning to see how I was doing. I told him that since I had to take out an instructor to get L4 (instructor and I deployed according to plan, instructor had a hard opening and got hurt) and take out myself to get L7, I'm gonna set my sights even higher for my A - maybe I can take an airplane out on my check dive! For whatever reason, he didn't think that was a very good idea. In between all that, I had a lot of time to lie there and think. At first I was mostly pissed at myself for breaking myself up, when my progression was going so well. (Short version; it took me June->Dec 2005 to clear L4; went to tunnel mid-Jan 2006; Jan->Feb 2006 cleared L5-6-nearly 7.) I was trying to work out about how long I'd be out (based on what I knew of other jumpers) and thinking, "well, I won't get my license before *that* boogie, but maybe I can have it by that other one later in the summer", and so on. Later on I got a little more philosophical. I figured that while one doctor installed the hardware, it took ten thousand people to fix my leg. It took Hippocrates and Fleming (penicillin) and DaVinci cutting up dead bodies and Watt and Bessemer and Edison and Otto and the brothers Wright and, and, and. A hundred years ago, my treatment would have been a lot different, and two hundred years ago, they probably would have given me a bottle of whisky and sawed off my leg. There are lots of people in the world today that can't get health care like I can. Hell, there's lots of people in the world today that want, but don't have, a house or a car. I am a rich man and I am the luckiest man in the world. Ten thousand people fixed my leg. People handle things like this differently - I heard from several people at the DZ on Monday, and haven't heard from some others at all. When it was time to go home, I got a little more insight into who my friends are - promised rides home and such didn't happen, so I had to rework all that. On the up side, I did get a nice Lortab script out of the bargain. I took a few earlier in the week but haven't needed them since then. I may be able to cover some of my medical costs - I was talking to a co-worker and she said they were worth about $50 each over at the local high school. Er, hang on a minute, the phone's ringing... who the hell is "D E A" and where the hell is area code 202? I'll let the machine take it. I think I am also going to get some flame stickers (like the paint job on the front of a hot rod) and put them on my crutches so I can walk faster. So, anyway, that's my story... just in time for Safety Day, too, w00t! I knew I would prove useful... now people can use me as a bad example. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.