Kelly

jeezus. the pentagon is on fire now too! lets all pray for all our inocent citizens going thru this,

IF YOU"RE AT PERRIS THIS WEEKEND......... For all of you guys who will be jumping this weekend, I want you guys to make sure you tell my friend jonny that I said hi! you cant miss him. He's tall, Has a gootee, his hair is sorta blonde, he's in the process of opening a recording studio, and has tatoos on his arms. You cant miss him. He started jumping out here at Xkeys but just recently moved to California. Michele, you gotta give him a HUGE hug for me! thanks doll! have fun out there guys! take care of Kevin and jonny for me. kel

ha. you think that i was lazy on sunday! you should have seen me on monday. After Sunday nights big shabang I wasnt really in the mood to do much more than lounge by the pool, jump in, lounge more, jump in again.. .repeat until nice and sun burnt. lol. somehow i ended up back in my pajamas for a bit sunday night, when the fire engine was out there and the pumper shooting the water. It was cold! but no worries, the weather was a lot warmer tonight than its been the past few nights. I wasnt feeling the froggie anymore.,,, no biggie. kel

hey dan, glad to see that you had a good time out at cross keys. Didnt realize that you were aware of who those guys were. It was funny, the first day that Bridget was at xkeys i knew that i had seen her somewhere.... realized that it was in Parachutist. Damo leaves on saturday :( But im glad that he's finally going home to his life. Mikey is great too. He's become my personal skydiving consultant (as you learned last night on the picnic benches). I cant even begin to explain all the information that hes shared, all the things that hes taught me. Im glad that you got to come out here and jump. And hey, I owe you a pillow still. lol. NO worries about the landing, we all have um *ungraceful* landings once in a while. have fun at school! kel CONGRATS ON THE A!!!!

beer was brought by EVERYONE who was on the first load out of the skyvan. Manifest made sure of that by calling everyone on their 'first' over the loud speaker. and I think we may have even gotten the DZO to buy beer since its his first time owning a skyvan. haha kel

wingis wearing a white tank top. on the left hand side of the pic. i see ya dave! how are you man? kel

chris. this is absolutely hilarious. Mikey spent the better half of 2 hours trying to find a link to your website. i finally got it thru to him to check the dropzone.com directory. it worked. after he went to countless other web sites and tried to find links to yours. and now i come home to find a very easily accesible link via these threads. thats funny. kel

hey guys. thanks! this is great, and exactly what i was hoping for. I'm not setting my self up on a definate schedual. I just plan on getting somewhere (preferably a skydivers place or a dz ) and then heading out when i feel like it. no worries, nobodys going to have a 6 month house guest :) lol. Im writing all this stuff down so that i can plan some more. thanks guys! i definitally want to meet as many of you as possible. Kel

okay. heres the scoop. I settled the lawsuit (as some of you already know) and this allows me to NOT have to work this winter!!!! WHOO HEEE! so i have decided that its time that i get the hell out of this time zone and take a little road trip all by myself. Ill be starting off here in NJ, stopping by Delmarva (gotta visit the neighbors) and then heading down the east coast with plans to stop at Carolina Sky Sports for a couple of days. After CSS i plan on making my way to Florida, where i want to spend a couple of weeks. After Florida I want to make my way to Texas and from texas head to California and Eloy, Arizona. I know that this all sounds absolutely crazy, ive never traveled anywhere by myself before (except to boston!) but its something that i've definitally got my sights set on. So what else is on the way? Im using an internet map to sort out my travels, and would love to be able to make a "from xkeys to delmarva, from delmarva to..." collection of directions. Im starting to plan this trip now because its going to take a lot to get it all sorted. Man, i hope this really does happen. I really do. PS- need towns/cities/ addresses of dropzones if at all possible. and hey, a link to their site wouldnt be so shabby either. thanks guys! hope to see a lot of you guys this winter! kel

MONKEY CLAW LABOR DAY JAM!!! WHOO HEEE!! Friday morning.. leave the ambulance hall at 6 am when im off duty. wander home. eat & sleep. Get up at 9, make it to the dz by 9:05 :) Get gear, assemble it, pack it. manifest (those who know me know that theres a LOT of steps in between that!). If weather is good, Doing another H&P from 13'5 with Damo. have a 2 way belly jump planned with a friend, a coach jump w/ Georgie Gelardi, and im hoping to end the day with a 3 way tracking dive. oh yeah, did i forget to mention that the rumor mill is saying that were getting a skyvan and a casa this weekend?!?! along with the Caravan and the Frankenotter.... its Turbine heaven! ah, weather gods be with us! its a monkey claw weekend.. no rain please! kel

get a couple of skydivers together, head to the local mall and sit in the food court making fun of the unbelievalbly fat people that walk by. when this gets old go to the toy store and play with all the toys. its almost holloween, make sure you guys go to the holloween store and put on all the masks, play with the fake goo, and touch everything! it really does kill a few hours. kel Can you figure out what we did today?

basiaaa, This is a sad loss to our community and to all those who jumped with Lisa. I only knew lisa a brief time, and the times we had ment could be counted on two hands, but she was a wonderful person. I remember the second time we ever ment, she was dishing out hugs and gave me one like we were old friends.... That night at dinner the whole gang of us had such a good evening. Lisa's death has brought a painfull silence to Xkeys... She will not be forgotten. from what some folks have said that witnessed it it appeared that Lisa caught a weird thermal off of the tree tops and it caused the left side of her canopy to make that horrible snapping noise and collapse. im a details type person, and having delt with trauma for a couple of years now (EMS) I wanted to know the details... from what ive been told (which i will not share on a public forum) i have gathered that lisa was not counscous, she did not realize what had happened to her. Her syptoms were ones that ive seen too many times, coming from too many people. I can honestly say that i do not believe she was aware of what was going on. thats enough from me.

... And please, please please tell us how the Swoop meet went yesterday!!!! a few friends were competing and i left before they got home tonight. was wondering how it went. BTW whats the ranch's web site addy? kel

Anne, screw that very experienced jumper who chastised you. lemme tell you this story... on thursday i rented gear. I set my risers down, put a weight on them and start running my lines.. i get back to my break lines and i realize that theres a knot in one. i didnt like it, square 3 didnt like it, so we got the rigging loft to remove it. i got it back from the loft and packed it.. never got to jump it. the next day i get the SAME canopy and start to assemble it. I run my four line and then just for shits and giggles i do a very vigerous line check. i mean checking every line. I see something doesnt look right... the outside line on my right front riser runs clear for the most part but then it loops over the other lines and then back under. i cant clear it. i get three other people over and we discover that it was a RIGGING error and that this canopy has been jumped many times like that. the line was just routed back to the inside then back to the outside. Perfectly jumpable. Perfectly safe. but i wasnt jumping it. so for the second day in a row i had to send the same canopy to the loft. I missed it the first time, i found something else wrong. i found it the second time and got that fixed too. Ive gotta thank fruce for not pretending that he knew how to solve it. instead he called somebody else over, who called somebody else over, who said "send it to the loft". The problem wasnt noticable with a regular line check. I may be explaining it wrong, maybe fruce can explain it better. the whole point being, with only 28 jumps i found two things that had been overlooked many times. why? because im a freak about safety. I limit myself in many ways, and sometimes Im a bit ridiculous about it (not jumping when AFF students are, but hell, their on radio, they have instructors. i have me. if winds are funky im not jumping) Ive gone back on radio 2 times since being cleared on jump number 14. the last 2 jumps i used zero raidio assistance, first time was because i landed off). we all have limits, but we all have some really developed parts to us. do what you feel comfortable with. its YOUR life! NOBODY ELSES!!!!!!!!! kel

not my story but well worth it.... yesterday fruce hit the big 1,500 and organized a sweet hybrid dive. the spot was so bad people were landing in the next town over, near the hospital. about 5 or so people landed first, then my friend came in on final with his camera on.. he swoops past the other jumpers and lands in front of a bunch of kids. being a nice guy he lets one of the kids try on his goggles... the video ends with him chasing the kid down, trying to get his goggles back :)

Anne, congrats! great skydives and blue skies! Let us know how it goes. kel

hey guys. nice thread about the thrill seekers you guys have got going there... good to see things a bit more 'normal'. anywhoo, fruce insisted that i post the story about our day of jumping. (like i wouldnt anyway?!?) Im jumping a Spectre 170 now. before today i only had one jump on it and i flared WAY to high. When i realized this i honestly thought i was going to break a bone or two dozen. so today i get to the dz and after some minor rigging (thanks Krusey!) to my main im ready to jump. I do a solo from 13'5, a belly jump. I had a radio on me cause i was determined to learn how to safely and painlessly land this canopy. The pattern was good. not a perfect right hand pattern but i adjusted nicely. I started to freak at like 2,200 feet cause the winds shifted and i couldnt figure out what my pattern should be. So i started yelling at myself. "kelly, calm down. you know the winds shifted. stop freaking out and figure out where your holding area is." so i listened to myself and figured it out. landed a little crosswind but i made sure that I A) stayed in full flight B) landed in the determined pattern set by lower jumpers and C) finished my flare. The radio really helped me do a good standup landing. TIme for the second jump. this one is the 4 Way belly dive that I did with fruce, Georgie and our friend Dave. It was soo sweet of fruce to get back to his belly for me. The jump was memorable and I will be buying a tighter suit and buying fruce a much baggier RW suit :) our average speed was 109 MPH. What a riot. We ended up turning 3 points and fruce was able to make it back up into the formation. Oh yeah, thanks fruce for the big ass bruise and cut from your nails on my left ankle. Last time i let you dock on me! LOL. But in all seriousness, this was the NOT SECOND time i jumped with three other people and did a linked exit. If it wasnt for all their high levels of experience i wouldnt have been comfortable doing the jump. But i was. I trusted them and in doing so i trusted myself to be able to handle the situation. I owe a big part of that to frucey. And lemme just say, this wasnt what i would refer to as a 'planned' skydive. We funneled the exit and ended up on our backs twice. Once we all lost grips but then we were able to make it back and turn 2 more points. The wave off and track away, along with the deployment all went smoothly. Good tracks, nice seperation. I was on radio for that jump too. Winds died down a lot and I did the same landing as before. Full flight, followed pattern, finished flare. but this time i had to run it out. damned, i forgot that in my younger days i was a track star :) .... it's all coming back to me. lol. Time for the third jump. we got up to 10,000 FT before we had to go back down due to a big ass cloud. Planned on doing a sit fly jump but ended up getting out at 7 grand and just flying on my belly. Nice wave off and deployment. winds shifted again. adjusted pattern again. This time I WAS NOT on radio! I had felt comfortable enough and felt that i could safely land this canopy myself. And that i did. beautiful stand up landing. just slightly too high. but just slightly. Lots of lessons learned. I feel like i conquered a big problem today. The whole landing issue.... So that was my day of jumping .how was yours? kel

i saw that show! one of my friends was on that. did you catch the very end? the jumper that hit the trees with the side of his canopy and was thrown around? It's rob stanley. I was watching the program at like 3 am and almost asleep.... all of a sudden their showing this footage that ive seen soo many times. Totally hilarious. i thought the program was good. didnt show any skydiving deaths. for once... kel