pBASEtobe

Yeah, I'll have to look up her name on my medical records and track her down. Not quite sure. I'll ask the doc later today when I see him. Yeah, you guys are horrible!

I kind of feel that my wheelchair already is my exoskeleton. I mean hell I crash into things (walls, cars, people...etc) on a consistent basis and my chair takes the hit not me. That either sounds like I'm really not coordinated or consistently drunk. Take your pick.

Ok, so it's pretty sissy but I like my get-well-carrot.

Tom's right. I have osteoporosis. So be careful all you over 70 yr. old BASE jumpers. No slider off/down jumps for you either.

That one is on my spine from my motorcycle accident 5 years ago that left me as a paraplegic. They just took that x-ray this time around to make sure nothing had moved I suppose. And yes, all that will stay. They don't plan on removing any of the hardware.

I was doing my first night jump from the Potato Bridge on the evening of the 15th. I was packed slider down and decided I would take a 1 sec. delay. I accidentally took 2 sec. and also ended up a little head low. At least I felt like I was but no one is really sure because it was at night and there was no video. I had a hard opening and was whipped around enough that my legs swung up and my knees just lightly touched my nose. I instantly got a pounding headache and could also tell all my muscles (the ones I can feel) had been pulled. I had just given myself an insane case of whiplash. I landed in the water where the boat picked me up. I got on the boat and knew right away I had injured myself because of the pounding headache I had due to dysreflexia. I went to the emergency room where I was given a CT scan of my head because that's what the doctor thought was causing the headache. They also gave me some morphine as well. The CT scan came out negative and the dysreflexia went away because of the morphine. I went back to my hotel and woke up the next morning to see my right knee very swollen and my headache was back. I said to myself, "So that's what is causing the dysreflexia!" I went back to the ER and they drained some blood from the knee, took an x-ray of it (nothing wrong), gave me more pain meds, and told me to see my doctor about it when I got home. The following morning, the 17th, before driving back to So. Cal. I went back to the ER to get more blood drained from the knee. When I got home I saw a few more doctors trying to find out exactly what I had done to my knee. I eventually saw an Orthopedist on Thursday the 21st. The right knee that was swollen in Idaho was actually much better but now the other knee was swollen. The doctor took an x-ray of my left knee and that's when he noticed the break (non-displaced) in my femur just above the knee. More x-rays were taken and that’s how the other break was found. The ball at the top of the femur that goes into your hip had broken off and was displaced. We also found my right ankle was broken as well. It had started to swell a few days previous. It had been 6 days since the hard opening and a few of those days I had gone to work! The Orthopedist was very shocked and said I should go to the emergency room right away. I went to Cedars-Sinai Hospital where they said they'd have to do surgery. I had surgery on the 25th. Because the lower break in the femur wasn't displaced they said they would just pin and plate it to keep it from moving but the ball that had broken off of the femur couldn't be pinned so they needed to replace it. I ended up getting half a hip replacement. (ball part only, no new socket) and they pinned and plated the entire length of the femur. The doctor said he wanted to run the plate the entire length of the femur to help prevent further breaks. The surgery was about 2.5 hours long and went well. I’ve attached pictures of the femur in question, both before and after. I’ve also attached a picture of the other bits of hardware I have in me from a previous surgery. X-rays are cool! I’m slowly becoming Wolverine! The three springs in the x-rays are not in my leg, although the other lops are. The springs are from an external drain I had at the time. I just happened to be lying on it when they took the x-rays. For some reason I think the 37 staples look kind of cool in the x-rays as well. It’s been two weeks since surgery and my leg is still pretty swollen. I get my staples taken out in two days. I’m guessing it’ll be a few months before I’m back to normal. I can look on the bright side and say I guess I did get two weeks off of work! Thanks again to everyone for all the support, and thanks to Jaap for my get-well-carrot! Cya, Russel P.S. Damn, all that from a hard opening!

Hee, hee... Let ME tell you about that! I'm waiting for the x-rays then I'll show ya what that did to me.

hi all from the hospital. just wanted to say thanks for all the support and the get wells. I think i'm going home tomorrow. i'll write more when I get home and stop typing on a tiny hand held thingy[email]

I guess I won't be finding a girlfriend any time soon! Clicky

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Say it ain't so!

Huh? There are more than one bridge in TF to jump? You don't need permission slips? I'm either confused, gullible (might be) or misinformed. Which is it? What does IB stand for? edited for my horrible spelling

In paragliding (yes that again) we call the first person to launch... wind dummy!

SCHWEEEEEEETT!!!!!!! Same here!

I've said it a few times...you have a very distorted idea of warm. I looked at weather.com this morning at 10am and it said, "Temp. 43F, feels like 37F." Is that right!?! I'll concede on the bright and sunny though.

I've been meaning to post and ask this for a while now so this would be a good thread to do it. What exactly is a mal in BASE? In skydiving I was always taught there were mals and there were problems. Mals you cut away, problems you could fix under canopy and land. This is a generalization because line twists were considered a problem. But it's possible to have severe lines twists and need to cutaway. So in BASE is anything wrong considered a mal? A blown and lost brake on a slider down opening, severe line twists (even if you kick out before landing)...?

Someone has graciously said I could borrow a Sabre 170 and someone else said I could borrow their Sabre 150. Thanks guys!

I'm posting this here instead of in Bonfire just because people know me here. I’m trying to find out if any of you have or know someone that has a canopy I could borrow (or rent per jump if necessary). I’ve been doing some jumps from a paraglider and am trying to work my way down in canopy sizes with the hope of jumping my Sabre 107 again. So far I’ve jumped my Fox 225 and recently a PD-190 (thanks to Karen and Zarky for letting borrow it). I’m looking for a canopy around the 170 size range next but I don’t own one or know anyone that has one I could borrow. I would only put one or two jumps on it but I might need to actually have it for a few weeks. This is due to the fact that these jumps are very weather dependent because I’d be jumping from a paraglider and we never really know how the weather will be for flying until that morning. If you know someone that has a canopy in this size but lives far away and wouldn’t mind me using it I’d be more than willing to pay shipping costs and everything. If you don’t have a 170 but you have a 150 that I could borrow please let me know because that would be the next size I’m looking for. Thanks, Russel P.S. I’ve called PD and asked about demo'ing a canopy but they all have several week wait times and I can’t hang onto the canopy for a few weeks either. If anyone has any other ideas I’d love to hear them.

Did anyone else see the picture in this month's Skydiving Magazine taken at the potato bridge with Jason Fitzherbert in it? His blue hair stands out well. I'm pretty sure that picture was taken Labor Day Weekend '04.

CRAP!!! More junk to download!?! That's why I like WMV!

How the hell do you play a Dvix file? I've tried it on RealOne, Windows Media Player (version 9) and QuickTime (version 6)?

WMV sucks so bad that I've given up on watching video in that format. I vote for DIVX. Is that because you're on a Mac? I guess that means I should stop sending you videos in that format huh? I think WMV gives the best quality for file size. At least in my experience. I love WMV. edit to add: Oops, several people already said this. I was a little quick to reply without reading the rest of the posts first.

I tried downloading this. It says it's 60MB but I only got 1.9MB and about 1.5 seconds of video then it stopped and produced an error. Is it me or did it just not get uploaded properly?

Wouldn't having a split below the grommets actually force the slider down faster? As the canopy inflates the lines would be able to spread out more than if there was only one rear riser. I would think that this wider spread would force it down faster. edit to add: Thought about what I wrote some more. I change my mind. I don't think the lines would spread out any more above the slider with or without split rear risers. Therefore what I wrote above it crap but I'll leave the post anyway.

Why couldn't you separate the rear risers into two risers (total of 3 risers) but still have the rear two risers go through the same slider grommet so you'd still have 4 grommets? Has anyone ever tried doing something like this? Quick flash over to paragliding...we have four risers A,B,C,D. Also when we hit the speed bar (equivalent to front riserin' it) the A riser is pulled down and then the B. They aren't pulled down at the same rate therefore you don't distort the shape of the wing as much. You actually change the trim better than pulling down both A's and B's the same amount.