Have you accepted the risks posed by Skydiving/BASE? (Kinda long)

[Peej 0]

And have you truthfully explained them to your non-jumping loved ones?

I’m interested to know.

When I started jumping a year and a half ago I heard experienced jumpers say that if you spend enough time in this sport there’s a great possibility that you’ll injure yourself and even lose friends during the course of your jumping career.

Recently this statement started to ring true when I lost a friend to a BASE accident, bust my right fib/tib last weekend during a front riser landing and heard that a good girlfriend of mine had a cliff strike on a difficult BASE jump yesterday. She’s currently in the surgical ICU.

I had a restless night last night while I processed all of this information.

I remember calling my parents the week before I headed out to do my first AFF jump. I’d wanted to skydive since I was a little kid and this was a dream come true. They however, were less than happy and hoped that I’d jump once and then forget it.

A few weeks later I sat them down and explained my intentions to keep jumping and just how safe the sport really is. I told them about AAD’s, this wonderful system called a three ring release, how RAM air canopies are designed to open and how we have not one but two of them. I showed them Crosswind and finished by telling them about this amazing AFF-I who has over 4000 jumps who was guiding me through the process of learning to skydive. They were a little happier and over the last while have accepted that this is my chosen sport.

A couple of months ago while in the USA I mailed my folks and told them about my intention to go on a BASE first jump course. My mom flipped. So I mailed her a copy of Tom’s “Getting into BASE” article and pointed out how I was doing things the right way. She was a little more relieved (thanks Tom) and said that while she had come to terms with my skydiving she would never agree with my desire to BASE.

Then we lost Duane a few weeks ago, I broke myself and Lisa had her accident. I now realise that I sugar coated the skydiving safety chat. That the potential for injury during front riser dives and the other associated canopy manoeuvres that I’m now doing had, at that stage, never entered my head. As well as the super-current cockiness that contributed to my accident.

I remember telling myself that I’d never get cocky and firmly believed that it’s possible to go through your skydiving career without having a major injury. In some instances I still do. Of course you can do everything right and still get killed through someone else’s error.

I guess what I’m trying to say/ask/urge everyone to do is to re-assess your abilities. Ask yourself whether you have the skills to pull on that front riser and make it through the turn, to jump the cliff with the difficult Talus/sticky landing area and answer honestly. Furthermore, sit your loved ones down and tell them about the potential for injury in your chosen discipline. Tell them there’s a chance that it could happen and try to prepare them for it.

If you have done so, I’m interested to know what you told them and how you broached the subject. And what their reactions were.

Sorry if this has gotten kinda long and convoluted but I'm a little confused at this point. I love the sport far too much to consider leaving but i think we owe it to ourselves and our families to let them know that it could take our lives or at least hospitalise us.

Thoughts?

fly free
PJ

ps. i wrote this yesterday and was procrastinating about posting until i saw Base813's post of similar nature in the BASE forum.

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[piisfish 140]

very nice text Peej.
I never really sat down and talked to my family or friends about the related risks...
I know my dad isn't really hot about it and my mom wasn't till she came at the DZ to see me jump. And they both (specially my dad) get MAD when they see any BASE footage.
My friends think skydiving is awesome but not for them, but they told me the day I get into BASE, I could forget about their phone numbers.

In the opinion of people around me, I'm OK as long as I "just" skydive, even with the wingsuit cause they see the permagrin on my face.

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[metalslug 36]

I think I have.
I recently bought my own rig, a R22000 investment which will persuade me to stay in the sport a while now.

In light of this, I recently updated my last will and testament, upgraded my medical cover to include skydiving claims, and visited my next of kin (brother, parents) to deliver a heap of documents, contact numbers, spare keys to my home and car, instructions on what they need to do if I'm killed or injured anytime soon.

Of course, when I presented them with all of this they were a bit alarmed, initialy thinking I may be morbidly pessimistic or even suicidal. I think I'm just being realistic about what might happen and I want them to know where to pick up the pieces afterwards.


-

No 'mericans were harmed during the making of this post.

[tombuch 0]

Interesting point. Skydiving IS dangerous, and BASE is even more so.

We should all understand that even if we choose to remain in denial about the actual or relative risk or our sport, we should recognize that skydiving absolutely increases our risk of death or injury by at least a little bit.

Talking to our loved ones about the risk and how we would like to have an accident handled is important, but few of us do that.

In the event of a serious accident things get crazy for the survivors. There are a few basic documents that everybody should have prepared that will make things easier for your family. This is true for everybody, not just skydivers. If you have a hard time talking about these issues with your family in terms of skydiving, let them know you want to be protected in the event of an auto accident, and suggest that your loved ones will also benefit if they prepare critical documents in advance. This is especially important if you or your family members have children.

Consider the following:

Durable Power of Attorney, a document that appoints somebody else, usually a family member, to act in your interest in legal matters (all, or selected specific matters) in the event that you are unable to do so.

Living Will/Appointment of Health Care Agent, a document that defines your wishes regarding advanced life support and what levels of care you want to receive if there is little or no chance of recovery. This document may be split into two documents.

Conventional Will, a document that defines how your property will be distributed in the event of your death. This document may not seem important to young single people with little property, but your family will need to deal with whatever you do own (even just your car, or savings account, or whatever), and a formal will makes it easier to probate, thus reducing the burden on your survivors.

Organ Donor Card, a simple document that defines what organs (if any) you would like to donate to others. Many states incorporate this into a drivers license.

All the above are basic documents. Most require the help of an attorney, although in some states they can be prepared without legal help and then simply notarized. Check with an attorney in your home state for the specifics…in fact, there is probably an attorney jumping at your drop zone who can help answer these questions. If you work for a large company, check with your Human Resources department… Many big companies offer their staff a legal services plan that includes free help with basic documents such as a will.

It’s a good idea to chat with your loved ones about the preparation of these documents so you can appoint the best possible agents to act on your behalf, and so that those you are asking to help out will agree in advance. Once the documents have been prepared keep them in a safe place, and make sure your survivors know where to find them in a hurry.

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[Peej 0]

That's great advice, thanks Tom.

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[Dom-Rivers 0]

My brother was really worried about me skydiving. I looked up some statistics about fatalities in all sorts of sports. I found this web site:

http://www.afn.org/skydive/sta/

With loads of info. The link at the top of the page leads to:

http://www.afn.org/skydive/sta/stats.html

At the bottom of that page it has lots of nice statistics. The data is old, but can be used as a guide. It says that per 100,000 participants in 1988-89, skydiving had 25 fatalities. Scuba diving had 47.. nearly twice as much, so did mountaineering and boxing.

People just perceive skydiving as being particularly dangerous because the risks are so obviously there.

These stats put my bro at ease, but I have to ask myself. "Does this show that skydiving is safer than we thought, or does it show that scuba / mountaineering etc. are more dangerous?"

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

[Peej 0]

That's my biggest problem with stats...they can be used to tell you what you want to hear. Skydivers have a habit of dismissing questions about the dangers of skydiving with answers like: "Stats show that more people die in car accidents every year than they do skydiving".

That's true, but the number of people who drive cars every day is far more than the number of people who skydive.

Thinking about it now i guess my initial post was an appeal to jumpers to be honest with their families and tell them that there's a real risk. Then use Tom's advice and prepare for it. So if you ever have to call your dad from an ambulance like i did a week ago it doesn't come as such a shock.

PJ

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[tombuch 0]

Quote

My brother was really worried about me skydiving. I looked up some statistics about fatalities in all sorts of sports. I found this web site:

http://www.afn.org/skydive/sta/

With loads of info. The link at the top of the page leads to:

http://www.afn.org/skydive/sta/stats.html

At the bottom of that page it has lots of nice statistics. The data is old, but can be used as a guide. It says that per 100,000 participants in 1988-89, skydiving had 25 fatalities. Scuba diving had 47.. nearly twice as much, so did mountaineering and boxing.

CAUTION! The source you are using is rec.skydiving, a newsgroup of very little repute.

In fact, here in the United States we had 44 fatalities in 1998, and 27 in 1999. The best source of "participants" is USPA membership numbers. In 1998 we had 33,526 members, in 1999 we had 33,458. If we divide the average membership by the number of fatalities it is 1 fatality for every 943 participants (members). Some of those fatalities are students (generally about 12-16 percent) so we could filter and generate a fatality rate of roughly 1 fatality for every 1,098 experienced participants. That's a far cry from 1:100,000 participants reported by your source. I should also mention that the numbers your source used were from 1998...that was the worst year on record, according to USPA statistics.

We can also look at fatality rates per jump using estimated jump numbers provided by USPA. A quick snapshot in the year 2000 showed one fatality for every 70,130 jumps made, and that includes all skydivers (students and experienced).

In 2003 our single-year numbers improved to one fatality for every 83,468 jumps made, and one fatality for every 1,305 USPA members. That's better, but still not great.

Another poster here made the point that statistics can be used to tell a variety of stories and should always be taken with a grain of salt. That is especially true when comparing different sports with very different statistical collection methods.

I did a large amount of original research on the safety of skydiving when I wrote my book JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy, including a look at the specific numbers mentioned by your source on rec.skydiving, so this argument isn't a new one. You can read a short feature about safety statistics that I wrote on The Ranch web site at http://ranchskydive.com/safety/index.htm. That feature is derived from the "Risk" chapter in my book.

Statistics can help us to understand the general risks of skydiving, but we should always be careful not to let isolated and messaged numbers lull us into complacency.

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[xavenger 0]

I tell my friends and folks that skydiving is not as dangerous as they probably imagine it to be, that there are other far more dangerous sports - but that at the end of the day it is still high speed, there are risks and people do hurt themselves and get killed.

I have told my girlfriend who I talk very openly with about pretty much everything that she has to understand I could serious injure myself or be killed skydiving even if I do everything right. I have had the conversation with her a dozen times.

She doesn't like it, but accepts that sometimes people have to take risks to fulfill the things inside them, that life without a passion is no life at all.

I also broke my tib and fib recently, also my foot in several places, my knee cap .. whilst skydiving .. and I was long way from home when I did it. My girlfriend has handled it pretty well and fully accepts that the moment I can I'll be jumping again I will be.

Skydiving is definately not "safe". The amount of injuries I have seen in the sport in the 18 months I've been in it .. have been staggering. A lot go unrecorded.

Incidentally: The week I did my AFF I wrote a will and sorted out what would happen in the event of my death. It's bad enough leaving your loved ones under normal circumstances .. in my mind it seemed even worse to leave them in the shit as a result of doing something relatively selfish and hedonistic like skydiving. Didn't seem responsible not to sort it.

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

At the bottom of that page it has lots of nice statistics. The data is old, but can be used as a guide. It says that per 100,000 participants in 1988-89, skydiving had 25 fatalities. Scuba diving had 47.. nearly twice as much, so did mountaineering and boxing.
..
These stats put my bro at ease, but I have to ask myself. "Does this show that skydiving is safer than we thought, or does it show that scuba / mountaineering etc. are more dangerous?"

Dom - it really just proves what the others suggests, you can find bad statistics to reassure yourself if that's what you want.

Skydiving is far more dangerous than scuba. On a per jump basis, figure on a doubling. However, heart disease is a factor with the older diving population, so for a healthy person figure it's closer to a tripling. And the injury rate is far lower.

The basis for their rates was 300,000 scuba participants, and 140 deaths. That 1989 year was 50% above norm for deaths and well low for participation rates today. For skydiving they listed 110,000 participants - do one timers really count?

We have 35k that are members of the USPA and a couple hundred thousand that do a tandem or an AFF1 jump and leave. Counting them was the primary reason that it came off as "safer" than all the others.

It may in fact be safer than glacier mountaineering. But that's not saying much.

[Judit 0]

Very nice post PJ.

It certainly made me think about a lot of things. I have to agree and disagree with certain things.
With racing cars since I was 13 thinking about the dangers of life never really been something I considered seriously. It was a normal part of my everyday life. My dad fully backed me throughout though my mum hated it. Then when I stopped racing my mum was very happy. Soon after that I started jumping, my mum did a tandem she absolutely loved it, now she wants to jump herself and having my dad behind me in a not much less dangerous discipline it never really crossed my mind to explain the dangers of skydiving. I do realize I’m probably selfish but on the other hand I’m an absolute fatalist and believe when it’s our time - regardless what we do – it’s our time. I wanted to do stunts – my parents went ape shit. I didn’t want to poison their lives worrying about me all the time so gave up on it.

Skydiving certainly increases the possibility of injury and death but would we still get hurt/killed if we were just walking on the street or driving a car at the time? We’ll never know because as it happens during skydiving/BASE jumping so we assume it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t jumping.

My husband lived his life on 180 mph racing for 15 years, never had an injury then died on the road at 67 mph. My view on death changed completely at that point. I wanted to jump since I was about 4. First I was too young, then I started racing and I couldn’t afford an injury during the season, then I got married and had too much to lose. After the accident I personally had nothing to lose anymore only to gain so I started skydiving. With my husband’s death it became clear to everybody in my family that it does not matter what you do.

This is more to death than injury but isn’t it possible that it’s the other way around? That we get the chance to enjoy something immensely, meet the most awesome people and die doing what we love doing instead of falling off the staircase at home? Obviously it doesn’t comfort our loved ones at the time but at least it makes more sense this way and other people learn from it. Now my mum - knowing all the dangers of life - urges me to go jumping because she knows how much it means to me. She also knows if I have to get hurt/killed it doesn’t matter whether I skydive or walk across the street to get some milk from the shop.

I had a friend who slipped on the 3rd step of the staircase in her house. She fell, her brother helped her up and she died instantly. She broke her neck. What did we learn from it? Not to live in a house with stairs??? And she never considered telling her loved ones how dangerous it was to live in a house with stairs…

My dad lives his life on 15000 RPM. He’s played tennis regularly since he was young. 2 years ago he broke his ankle playing tennis then in January he was picking up a ball when his partner served by mistake and hit him full power straight in the eyeball. Now my dad can barely see to his right eye. He never told me how dangerous tennis was!

I think one of the things skydiving can do is prepare our loved ones much more to the possibility of loss/injury. We actually do consider life insurances, wills and medical covers much more than people not doing anything special. In our 20s we don’t think about dying unless we do something that involves high risk but even with racing I never had insurance.
Only last year I signed up for about 5 different insurances when I realized after the death of my husband just how vulnerable we are in everyday life.

Though I haven’t explained at home the dangers of this specific sport but I have got an envelope prepared in case of an accident. Any kind of accident. If I do explain any further than I have to they’ll worry all the time when I’m away for weeks for example in the States. If anything happens to me they cannot do anything from here anyway. I do ring them every single day letting them know I’m ok. But I did that even when I weren’t racing or jumping. I do agree 100 % that we need to sort out our paperwork if anything happens to us there’s a hell of a lot to deal with anyway. But we shouldn’t be skydivers to do that, it should be done anyway.

This is my view.

Blue Skies,

Take risks not to escape life but to prevent life from escaping

[Dom-Rivers 0]

Hi Peej, Tom and Kelpdiver.
You all have very good points. This proves something that someone once said to me.

"There are three types of lie: Lies, damn lies and statistics!"

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

[JRock 0]

I have been wrestling with this myself. After seeing someone die in front of my face and losing a friend this summer, I was scared shitless. I quit. I think about jumping everyday, but torn with the decision.
Money however is helping with my decision to not jump.... unfortunately..

It is nice to know a lot more people think about this stuff than just me.


The reason I see myself maybe coming back to the sport is the causes of the deaths I see in the incident reports. Most of these people should not be dying. It is not like equipment is failing every other jump and people are falling from the sky.
Just something to maybe calm your nerves.
(maybe I should listen to my own advice.)

[RogerRamjet 0]

Quote

I should also mention that the numbers your source used were from 1998...that was the worst year on record, according to USPA statistics.

Until this year...

-----------------------
Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

[tdog 0]

- - > This is kind of a long essay… Read on optionally…

Today a police officer missed a rioter and shot someone with a beanbag killing her for no reason.

Yesterday two Japanese climbers were removed from a rock face dead after weather trapped them.

This week two people from Colorado died while doing a crew demo – something I had to explain to my family.

The day before my AFF1 - our office manager flew to New York to bury her sister-in-law, her sister-in-law's husband, and their 3-year-old son - taken out by a drunk driver with 5 prior accidents.

Two months ago I tried to convince an employee flying commercial airlines was safer than showing up to work. I promised him I would pay for the airfare if he found some place he wanted to go. He has not purchased the ticket yet.

Three months ago, I had to report to a customer’s office building to organize the clean up the bodily fluids of a call-center employee who got up to goto the bathroom and died walking to the restroom. He died instantly when all his blood came out of his ears in front of hundreds of co-workers. The ice in his big gulp was still cold when I threw it away.

A year before I watched my grandmother take her final breath at age 90 - suffering a painful natural cause death. I had never seen someone die before seeing each system shut down slowly.

Sometime the previous summer I saved my dog's life while walking to a birthday party when he ran out in front of a SUV on leash. He was milliseconds from guaranteed death without my input, and my reflexes saved his life.

A year before I became real good friends with someone who performs heart surgery. I can't believe he has been the final goodbye ("you will be going to sleep now") for many people who never make it and still wakes up in the morning to go to work.

A year before, a gentleman I learned to paraglide with died paragliding. He was the ideal student, conservative and well trained, a retired individual with a family and flying experience. This convinced me that even the “safe” flyers can meet the ground suddenly.

A year before, a good friend was hit by a drunk driver while riding his bike. I see his blue “in memory of” street sign daily while driving to work.

A year before, my best friend saved my life, as I turned upside down in a kayak and was stuck under water due to a clothing mishap locking me halfway in the kayak. I looked at the sand at the bottom of the lake inches away and thought, this is how I am going to die. I saw death and knew what the final moment might be like. Just then, he grabbed be and turned me over.

I am only a few weeks into skydiving - and the risks scare the shit out of me. I wonder if the Automobile Association of America (AAA) had a documentation of every car fatality on their website – how many people would never get in a car?

If someone asks me - would I rather die young experiencing life or die old wishing I did more - I try real hard to tell the truth, but the fact is I don't know what the truth is. I think this is a lose-lose proposition.

I try to reassure myself that I know when to walk away, and thus I am less likely to kill myself skydiving or riding my motorcycle… But then there was that time I saw a car hydroplane in the rain 2 feet in front of my motorcycle and slide 200’ off the highway. Why in the *&^% was I riding in the rain? I did not know I should have walked away, and consider myself lucky to be here. Oh, by the way, I was riding home from a bungee jump and had the adrenaline pumping – which proved that adrenaline clouds judgment.

When learning to paraglide - my instructor would not give a student a passing grade to P2 unless he saw the student make the decision to walk down instead of fly the mountain when other people were still flying. I walked down a few times…

I am 29 years old now, and beside for coming to terms with the risk of skydiving, I am having to come to terms with the risk of life. Death is something that takes a lifetime to understand. (Yes, that previous sentence is a cheap play on words.)

So, my question back to you all, have you accepted the risks in life, not just skydiving? If the answer is yes, I don't believe you. I don't know anyone comfortable with the fact accidental death could occur one second from now. Boom, you are now dead. Are you ok with that? Whatever you are doing right now, someone has died doing it. Whatever you are doing in 8762 seconds from now, someone has died doing it.

But, I am already realizing the power of skydiving. Not taking into consideration the automatic activation devices, every time you leave a plane your life expectancy is turned into seconds. You have to save your life every time. This is experience millions of people will never understand or comprehend. It is an amazing power.

I think a lot of adventurous people are more prepared for death than the average population. Or are they in denial?


On a final note - the shark keeper at the London Aquarium told our group last year - more people were killed by beverage vending machines in 2003 than by shark attacks, but my heart rate never rises around a Coke machine, but I am scared shitless of sharks.

[NWFlyer 2]

tdog, I think that was very well-put. It really does make you think.

Like you, I'm new to skydiving. I truly enjoy it on its own merits, but I also enjoy it because it challenges me and forces me to think about risk and life differently. Most of the people in my life are supportive; my parents are very reluctantly accepting, but not supportive. We've agreed to disagree. My father has said to me, point blank "At some point you have to decide that you want to live a long life with all of your limbs intact."

But really, how much control do I have over that? Like you said, I could lose my life or suffer a significant diminishment in the quality of my life by doing any number of small, everyday things. By living a very conservative, low-risk lifestyle, I could die tomorrow.

In fact, that almost happened to me last year. I was hit by a car while crossing the street. I was in the crosswalk, crossing with the light (conservative behavior!) and the asshole ran a red light, hit another car, spun, and hit me still at a fairly high rate of speed.

I had some injuries and spent a few days in the local trauma center and several months in rehab, but ultimately, I'm fine, and had no meaningful permanent damage. It was the first major injury I've ever suffered, and I realized I had been very, very lucky up until that point in my life. Heck, I was incredibly lucky that day - I dodged a bullet; I knew it, the surgeons at the trauma center knew it - they said right away "with your mechanism of injury, we're frankly surprised you're not more hurt."

For my father, the message of that accident was "you were lucky, enjoy this second chance at a long life." To me, the message of that accident was "I was lucky, and I now know that my life could end tomorrow. If my life ends tomorrow, I want to know that I experienced it fully." And part of that, to me, is facing new challenges, growing as a person, and experiencing new freedoms. Skydiving is all of that and more to me. It frustrates me, it frightens me, it excites me, and it makes me want to do it again and again and again.

Have I accepted the risk? I guess so, because I keep doing it. Do I wonder if I'm in denial? Maybe a little bit, but I have accepted the risk of life, so to take on the additional risk of skydiving doesn't seem such a big deal. And yet it's a huge deal. Hell of a paradox, eh?

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[MWGemini 0]

My answer to your question is yes. I have accepted the risks of everything I do. I make every effort to live my life without regrets, as if each day could be my last. I've lost several friends to combat and military training accidents, and witnessed a good friend of mine burn in about 200 yards from where I was standing (main/reserve entanglement on military static line jump, caused by premature reserve deployment). I've had several experiences in my life where I knew, without a doubt, that I was going to die. At first, I was so shaken up that I was barely able to walk or talk coherently afterwards. Now, after experiencing that feeling several times, I'm able to control it, and thrive off of it. It is because we can all die doing anything that I choose to push my limits and do dangerous things, like rock climbing, military rappelling, skydiving, etc. I believe that the only way to find your limits is to exceed them. That belief has caused me almost 30 broken bones, ruptured tendons, and has nearly cost me my life on several occasions, but I do these things willingly, knowing full well the risks to myself and those who are close to me. Read my signature line. It's not just a quote for me, I truly believe that. I have never felt so completely alive as the times when I have walked away from something that just seconds before I knew was going to kill me. Skydiving has not yet done that to me, but given time, I'm sure it will. I live to take risks. I take risks to LIVE.

Mike

[debonair 0]

Quote

In the event of a serious accident things get crazy for the survivors. There are a few basic documents that everybody should have prepared that will make things easier for your family.

Conventional Will, a document that defines how your property will be distributed in the event of your death. This document may not seem important to young single people with little property, but your family will need to deal with whatever you do own (even just your car, or savings account, or whatever), and a formal will makes it easier to probate, thus reducing the burden on your survivors.

I added a clause to my will that states that if I die in any manner related to skydiving that my family and representatives are not to sue or hold any skydiving facility or representative responsible.

.

AZChallenger JFTC99/02 GOFAST300 STILLUV4WAY
"It's nothing 1000 jumps won't cure..."
- Jeff Gorlick, Seattle Sky Divers

[bmoore21184 0]

I remember seeing this post when it came up last month. I remember thinking about it a bit but now I realize I didn't take these thoughts as seriously as I should have. After my incident, which left me with a broken femur (which could have very well have been my death), I have really looked at this. I remember reading the incidents here at dropzone.com and recognizing that most (arguable) of the injuries/deaths came from the jumper or another making a mistake which resulting in injury/death. This motivated me to practice so that I didn't make a mistake.

However, I don't think I was fully prepare for the random, out of your control shit that can just happen. That you can do everything right and still be injured or killed. I feel, and so do the experienced people on the ground that witnessed it, that my incident was unavoidable / unrecoverable (still debatable). I have been thinking about giving up the sport but have come to grips with the shit-happens factor of our sport. I will continue with the sport but this has definitely made me step back and re-evaluate why i jump out of seemingly good airplanes.

As the original poster mentioned, take a step back before the shit hits the fan and evaluate your reasons for being in the sport. See ya'll in 3-4 months. Blue Skies.

Edited because i can't proof-read right the first time.

B Moore

'Turbulence is a bitch'