skydancing, Pat Works, Skratch... today?

[ScratchTX 0]

Just went re-reading some of Pat Works' stuff online, and found myself wondering where the whole "skydiving as a dance, as a journey; RW as art in the sky with friends" thing went... I don't get out much as I should, I know. And as much as I love skydiving and the people in it, I've encountered few that really seem to come to it from this perspective.

What happened to all this? Did it fizzle, or get overwhelmed by the growth of competition RW or the birth of Extreme Sports? Or is it really just a state of mind and if I make it, it will be there; if I dance it, it will come; if I get my butt out of my comfortable home dz i will expand my horizons and find it? I know Skratch is still jumping and I have an open date to get up to Colorado and jump; where does Pat Works jump these days?

--Scratch in TX

[ltdiver 3]

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where does Pat Works jump these days?

Haven't seen Pat for a few weeks, but he frequents Perris quite often. But yes, he still travels around and might turn up in some out of the way place unannounced and for your pleasure. :^)

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[steve1 5]

I jumped with Pat Works at Skydive Oregon a few years ago. He was putting on a freefly clinic, and anyone who wanted to jump with him could. I think he lives in L.A. and jumps at Perris and Elsinore a lot.....Steve1

[riggerrob 643]

Yes Pat Works and Skratch Garrison still jump on a regular basis.
I suspect that the "fun" went of belly-flying formations sometime during the 1980s when 4-way and 8-way competition got serious.
Pity.
Nowadays, if you want to "skydance" or goof off with your friends in the sky, you have to freefly. Today, freeflying is where belly flying freefall formations were in the late 1970s when Pat Works published his first books. I just hope that freeflying never gets that serious because we still need a "fun" type of skydiving for recreational, er. "fun jumpers."

[Slickbrick 0]

It's still there, you just have to find the right people to jump with.

Some people take the fun out of it. for me, the journey *is* the destination.

Skip

[ScratchTX 0]

Well, just about everyone I jump with is definitely in it for the fun, not for some grim competitive achievement or anything like that. It's just that some of these writings are definitely more out there, on a fringy edge... and I like that kind of fringe.

[patworks 5]

Skratch Garrison (and Pat Works) still inhabit the physical plane of the planet and skydive from it when they can. SKR invented the notion of doing square dances in the sky and the awesome magic of free flight (versus 'points'). Pat and friends danced to images played on a 12-string and sung amidst spherical up down dances sequenced in a medley of movement.

Both are more than a tad strange.

Pat Works nee Madden Travis Works, Jr .B1575, C1798, D1813, Star Crest Solo#1, USPA#189,

[tazz 0]

check out funkflys
peace

[ScratchTX 0]

Good. :>)

[riggerrob 643]

Skratch Garrison visited Pitt Meadows, last summer and he brought along his charming wife (?) DJan.

Sadly, I was too busy with tandems to sneak in a fun jump with either one of them.

Skratch's still has his sense of humor, albeit subtle.

[tdog 0]

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Skratch Garrison visited Pitt Meadows, last summer and he brought along his charming wife (?) DJan.

Sadly, I was too busy with tandems to sneak in a fun jump with either one of them.

Skratch's still has his sense of humor, albeit subtle.

I guess I should be happy that I have jumped with both and DJan has been a great mentor!

Sometimes I am so serious about turning points I don't understand this contactless skydive that SKR has discussed with me a few times. he he he he

If anyone wants their contact info, send me a PM and I will forward it on. I see DJan almost weekly at the DZ as we trade off teaching the FJC and we jump together often.

Heck, I bet they both post here soon...

[feuergnom 28]

i stumbled over skratch's homepage a few years ago - ever since he's one of the people i'd really like to meet and jump with (that doesn't meen theres not a bunch of others i'd like to meet in person).
even if it means travelling to the states

so you're a lucky man to know them

The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle

dudeist skydiver # 666

[LordRatner 0]

I had the pleasure of jumping with Pat a week ago in Perris. We got him to hang off the bar under the SkyVan.

It was funny, because he was explaining skydancing without specifically using the term, and all I could think was "Gee, that sure sounds alot like what Skratch was talking about" and sure enough, on the ride up, Pat asks, "Do you know Skratch Garrison"

Pat's carefree nature was a welcome change. I knew it would be a fun jump when he said "to hell with the exit:

Thanks Pat.

[popsjumper 2]

Funny you should mention some of that.

Just recently I caught myself taking every jump as some great learning experience for those on the jump and since then I have backed off a bit to put some FUN back into it.

Oh....belly-flyin' is STILL fun.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[NickDG 23]

>>"skydiving as a dance, as a journey; RW as art in the sky with friends" thing went... <<

I don't want to say it's all this simple, but in a way it is. Jumpers (and most people) were just more spiritual in those days. One difference is certainly we were "the just say yes, generation" while we now have a "just say no, generation." I won't debate drug use in a positive way, but there's no doubt past cultures, like the natives of both North and South America, used them to gain perspective on the things around them.

The problem with drugs is most people can't handle them, or in the parlance of old, they "freak out." They freak out because an altered consciousness takes you out of your comfort zone by making you see things from multiple angles. It makes you question the things and ideas you always took for granted. And that's a good thing regardless of how you got there. It's a good thing because it makes your mind harder to control. And I don't think the human spirit was meant to be controlled.

Regime change in Iraq could have been accomplished much easier if we'd dropped bales of "Chronic" instead of racks of bombs. Within six months it would have been, "Hey Mohammed, I just realized how really beautiful my wife is, so why cover her with that ugly Burqa, and who ate all the freaking Humas?"

Why do you think the most totalitarian regimes have such strict drug laws? It keeps the people in line that's why. Let's look at the art world. Where do you think the world's great literature, like Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, and so many others comes from? Without smoking weed Louis Armstrong would have been just another guy blowing a horn. These things come from within us, and not from without. Looking inward is where we find truth and beauty and certain drugs have that amazing quality of making you look at things you thought were cool, and usually because someone else wants you to think they're cool, as something less than meets the eye.

It would be nice if we could look at ourselves honestly without any help, but it doesn't seem most people have that capacity. Look at how vain we've become. It's no coincidence Nancy Reagan's "just say no campaign" coincided with the start of the "me" generation. I can't understand how even my generation, the one that coined, "make love, not war," now lives in a world where every other show on cable TV is called "Fire Power," and "Future Weapons," or the rest of how much war is so glorified. Smoke a few fat ones and even the village idiot comes to the conclusion that sure there are bad people in the world, but killing isn’t the answer. And I'll wager most of those shows are funded by defense contractors so what's worse? The guy on the corner selling weed, or the behind the scenes manipulator of thought? The guy on the corner just wants your money. The guy behind the scenes wants your mind.

So it's easy to see why the current generation doesn't get Pat Works. Pat is offering enlightenment to a generation that only craves vanity and personal gain. But like all good things his time will come again . . .

NickD BASE 194

[skr 1]

> It was funny, because he was explaining skydancing
> without specifically using the term

I was a math major once and I saw many instances where
people were independently mulling the same or related
questions and came up with the same or similar or related
insights.

Of course I still speak Skratchese and he still speaks
PatWorksian, so I painted my pictures with a Skratch like
brush, and he used a Pat Works style brush.


But this didn't happen in a vacuum, lots of people had
ideas, and there was a lot of mutual inspiration and
sparking off of other people's wild tangents, although
I must say that some people's relation to consensus
reality was a little, ahhh, *looser* than others :-) :-)


> Pat's carefree nature was a welcome change.

Ha! I think both of us were a bit more intense and driven
back in those mythical old days, but, yeah, when I watch
some people jump I think they could go up to the International
Space Station and be so caught up in the instruments and
experiments that they wouldn't even look out the window.

Pat looks out the window - and then like any good aging
hippie he hangs out there in mid air going "Wow!" and
"Cool!" and "Far out!" :-) :-)

Skr

[mustard 0]

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Skratch Garrison visited Pitt Meadows, last summer and he brought along his charming wife (?) DJan.

I think of you, Rob, every time somebody snaps the connector you put on my Mirage legstraps.

Yep, I'm definitely married to Skratch. We will celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary on May 5th. We got married on 5/5 at 5,500 feet over Loveland, Colorado. It was 1994. Left the airplane single and landed married.

Clarice, Skratch's first wife, still writes occasionally (she never forgets his birthday). She's retired from her job and probably doesn't read dropzone.com. I look forward to having been married to Skratch longer than she was. Two years to go!

***
DJan

[ltdiver 3]

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when I watch some people jump I think they could go up to the International Space Station and be so caught up in the instruments and experiments that they wouldn't even look out the window.

I love it. May I quote you?

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[BIGUN 1,328]

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I love it. May I quote you?

Lori,

I was thinking the same thing. Not for use in just skydiving, either.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[ltdiver 3]

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Quote

I love it. May I quote you?

Lori,

I was thinking the same thing. Not for use in just skydiving, either.

Ditto.
ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[tdog 0]

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yeah, when I watch some people jump I think they could go up to the International Space Station and be so caught up in the instruments and experiments that they wouldn't even look out the window.

Skr,

Does it have windows? And come to think of it, I don't think the otter has windows either?

Just kidding...


I was at dinner with LordRatner last night talking about his jumps with Pat. LordRatner apparently asked, "so how are we going to exit?" The response was something like, "F&*$ the exit. We will jump." I think they ended up hanging from the bar under the skyvan to launch what otherwise would be a pretty traditional 4 way, except the 2nd point of the dive was a backflip.... I looked in the rule books and I found no reference to a formation block with a backflip, and to make the exit legit, for a "Q", two of the people would have to hang from the feet of the other two hanging from the bar. So we will have to bust that point too...

Come on guys, get serious about the skydives. Jumps have rules to follow, formations to build, time to score....


(On a side note, perhaps it is because I have not been doing that much 4way lately, but I have drifted away from points and gone more abstract myself in the jumps.)

[jumpwally 0]

C'mon now,,,belly is still fun, its what you make of it. geez

smile, be nice, enjoy life
FB # - 1083

[steve1 5]

I remember a RW jump, a while back, that a young feller was organizing. Most everyone seemed way too serious while dirt-diving this load. You'd have thought it was a world record attempt or something.

Another old fart and I made a little joke just for fun. We were in the process of snickering over this when this young guy gave us the look of death. I thought for a minute there, he was considering kicking us off the load because we just weren't serious enough.

Tell me more about this skydancing stuff. It might be just the discipline I'm looking for....Steve1

[Zing 2]

Skydancing is not a "stuff," its a state of mind.

Zing Lurks

[steve1 5]

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Of course I still speak Skratchese and he still speaks
PatWorksian, so I painted my pictures with a Skratch like brush, and he used a Pat Works style brush.

........................................................................

Skratch,
I think I'd like to learn Skratchese or PatWorksian!

Hod Sanders was saying that you and B.J. and he also learned how to speak Vodkaese after a hard day of jumping with the Russians, way back when noone could speak the same language.

I wish I was bi-lingual like that....Steve1