Bessie

Damn. Sorry to hear that. Thanks for letting me know. I had seen condolences on Facebook also, but no one there actually said what happened either.

Quote: "has a load capacity of 220 pounds" Heck, that won't even get me and my groceries home.

Correct. The executive branch can't do much all by itself. We have all those balance of powers that contain anyone from running unchecked. That includes Obama, and also Trump if he's elected.

Bingo! It's political. They start out acting tough, and then in exchange from some concession later on, they'll pretend to be generous and let him go. It's all about getting that concession. Same thing with all their threats to nuke the world. It's worked before for them. Because we're suckers and we let it.

Not really. The thing I've found is that skydivers are more open with each other about everything. So people who wouldn't talk about this sort of stuff with their neighbors, co-workers, the people in line at the grocery, ect are willing to talk about it at the bonfire after jumping, sitting around during a weather hold, or any other down time at the DZ. Bingo!

What happened to Ty?

I don't see a flower shirt.

There are still plenty of ways to feel stress in freefall. Self-induced. For example, if you get into belly flying and doing big ways. A lot of team mates will be depending upon you to be in the right place at the right time, and if you screw it up, you ruin the dive for everyone. So that's a lot of performance anxiety you put on yourself to do well in the sky. Enjoy the simple pleasures while you can. And come back to them every now and then.

"Death Hunt" with Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Hunt

Yes, this is what I was trying, but not very articulately to say. That it would be viewed and used as a crutch, and used more often than absolutely necessary, instead of proper procedures, especially for those who have substandard training, or personalities which "pull silver" at the first hint of problems. Not much different than the argument about how AAD's might make jumper's less diligent about monitoring their altitude. Or depending upon audible altitude alerts instead of using a visual altimeter. Why bother will all that altimeter-looking which makes your video jerky? We've got gizmos that will let us know when it's time to pull, and even pull for us!

Geez, it makes me cringe to see her dragging that nice white parachute across the grass like an old rag. Not to mention Mr. Joe Cool bailing out with one side of the cut-away hardware not connected properly. That DC-3 sure is sweet though.

On a fattie!