robr

So, uh, Darius, gonna hit 100 this weekend?

I think he means the relocated Boston-Providence, now New England Sky Sports. Looks like they're setup in Marstons Mills now.

http://www.trendyblog.com/ has been listing some of the IP addresses as the court documents get filed. So far it's only listing RPI, UMass-Amherst, and Ohio State.

Of course it'll be nice and warm and sunny when I'm in a different state... damnit.

http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/skydive-banter

i'm a college jumper going to MIT, there's a few other students with licenses that i know of and a bunch more like me who are still trying to get licensed

Wasn't bad at all last weekend, didn't even lose a single toe edit: (oh yea, i'm a student in cambridge at the moment, so yea, I'm just a bridge away from Boston)

Boston's Museum of Science looks like it will be showing it until October 30th http://store.mos.org/?action=showevent;event_id=273

Does right now count? 4 months shy, and no, that's really root beer in my paper bag.

I haven't seen it posted yet, so I just thought I'd link to http://www.jumptown.com/events/speedskydiving.shtml back to lurking

I'm using a dual boot system right now, Win2k and Debian. The important thing is installing Win2k first and then installing Linux afterwards. Just make sure to setup Lilo or Grub to have an option to boot the Win2k partition.

This is my first post here. I wanted to wait before posting until I had actually gone out of an airplane of my own free will. Ok, so maybe it wasn't a real jump. But I jumped a tandem today and I'm hoping to start AFF either this week or sometime very soon. Man, what a rush. Anyways, to set the story: I had heard last year that it might be possible to jump under 18 with parental permission, so I e-mailed the not-so-local DZ CPI to see if I could jump last summer. They said no, which caused me to wait until now. And lemme tell you, that wait was hell. So I've been waiting for this spring since then, especially waiting for this week, since it's spring break for me. I e-mailed CPI again a couple weeks ago to ask what a good plan of action was, and they suggested that I do a tandem first, just to make sure I'm not a complete anti-skydiver. So I got one scheduled for today. Skip ahead to last night. Woke up twice in the middle of the night thinking about it, then managed to almost oversleep this morning (stupid alarm clock). Looked out my window and there were clouds in the air and raindrops on my window. As nervous as I was, that was such a disappointing sight, until I got to walking out to my car to drive up (ugh, hour and a half drive) it turned out to be nice and sunny and warm and beautiful. I finally got up there, and my car stalls as I park -- not a good sign. There are already three people there who are going to do tandems; they actually came yesterday but couldn't go (too windy, I think). Their first jumps too. They went first, and let me say again, waiting is hell. They all went and came one by one, with a bit of a wait in between, so I had plenty of time to talk to them and get thinking about it. I filled out all the waivers (I swear, every other word on the waiver was 'death' or 'die' or something morbid like that), signed away my soul, and paid up. Gets to be about one-ish, I think, and I've been sitting there for a couple hours, watching people jump, refusing to eat for fear of throwing up, and waiting. At that point, Jim walks over and gets me in a harness and starts pointing out stuff to me. He tells me all the stuff I should make sure to do up there, and what he'll do if I don't. We go through exiting the plane, and how I can avoid him whacking me on the head ;-). After that, quick bladder break, and then we board the Cessna. FOr some reason, I thought it would be bigger, but with four people jumping (me and Jim, then Frankie and Tony (Tom? sorry, can't remember) went up too), it was pretty cramped. Looking out the windows, Jim pointed out UConn, Hartford, Long Island sound, and all the local sights to me. Up about 9,000 feet I started thinking "Why am I doing this? What's the point? Can I still duck out?" and getting all nervous and tunnel-visiony and stuff. Jim just told me to breath and relax. Amazingly enough, I did. As we got up to 10,500 and first Tony (Tom?) then Frankie went out the door, all I could think was "Please Lord, don't let me screw up or puke or anything." I couldn't believe afterwards; I wasn't so concerned about the fact that I was jumping out of an airplane, just that I didn't want to completely mess it up. Got my feet out on the step, which was a lot easier than I thought, crouched down as much as I could and then away we went. Wow. Wow wow wow wow. Wow! Whoo. Wow. Simply amazing. Very awesome. So much fun. And that wasn't even a for-real-on-my-own jump. And in case you missed it, let me just say Wow. Freefall is just amazing and awesome and wondrous and I can't even describe how I felt. I had my feet tucked back, and Jim spun us around a couple of times, checked the altimeter, damn already down to 7900. Looked all around me, looked down at the drop zone, felt the wind on my face, on my hands, on my legs, would have shouted for joy but my mouth was too dry. Checked the altimeter again, drop on 6000, and Frankie came over and linked up with Jim for a second. After that, Jim pulled my head back and opened up the chute. It was so quiet without the wind going by so fast and he let me steer the chute for a bit. It's so awesome to be just floating up there. At the time, I didn't even really feel him strapped on behind me. Oh, let me just say again Wow. We circled around, and he showed me how to steer, how to be upwind, and all that, and then he took control to land us. Sitting there coming in, the last couple hundred feet just melted away and then we were on the ground. Holy crap that was awesome. It seemed like we were up there forever, but on the ground, it seemed to go by so quickly. I wanted to do it again, and still do. I hope I didn't look like too much of an idiot wannabe, and I hope I can get certified soon. Unfortunately, time and money (and parents who think my priorities are messed up) means I will have to wait a bit before I can start AFF. I have to say, that skydiving is addictive. I can't wait to actually jump on my own and feel the wind going by my face again. Thanks Jim for taking me down, Scott, Nancy, and Nick for going first, and everyone at CPI. Still full of adrenalin, Rob