SabineWithWings

$15 (to 10,500ft) at Sky's The Limit in Beeville... Blue skies, Sabine _________________________________ Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long to return. Leonardo da Vinci

Thank you for your advice. I'm definately a "safety gal", and I won't even think of high performance canopies for a long time. I want to immerse myself into this sport, but safely and carefully. I'm not in a hurry to get into advanced manuevers at all. Eventually (after a few hundred jumps), I'd really like to try sky surfing, but I'm not going to do anything that my instructors/mentors don't think I am ready to do (and that I am not personally comfortable with.) Being a scientist with a strong interest in physics, I am very intresested in learning as much as possible about the physics of flight (besides what I have can relate from the semesters of physics that I've taken) as they relate to skydiving, both in freefall and under canopy. Very interesting to me that even as a pilot there was so much for you to learn about canopy control, tells me I'll have a looooong way to go, even with my physics background. I'm almost as excited about learning the physics of skydiving as I am in skydiving itself. Tells you what a geek I am. :) I really appreciate what you said about "coming to grips with my mortality". That's really what started this for me. A few years back I was a lone eye witness in a head on car crash on a desolate road. I won't get too into the details, but I held someone's hand and comforted them while they died, and I was the only person that walked away alive. For years I lived with a cloud of fear, fear of dying, fear of losing the ones that I loved. I was simply afraid of life. Jumping out of an airplane was my way of looking mortality in the face again and saying, "I'm not going to let you run my life". And it worked. I lost the cloud. And in the meantime, I became positively addicted. Since the day I jumped (a month ago), it's all I can think about. I'm super stoked. Thanks for the reply, and the welcome. Aside from falling in love with the sport itself, I've also been so so blessed to find a lifestyle which hosts so many kindred spirits, so many beautiful souls. Blue Skies in My Head, Sabine _________________________________ Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long to return. Leonardo da Vinci

Well I don't know anything, seeings how I've only done my tandem and start AFF training next month. (And I am so excited I can hardly stand it!) What I found striking is that a lot of these fatalities were people who had a lot of experience (500 or more jumps). Now that scares the jebus right out of a newbie like me. The only thing that I can think of for explaination (and I'd love to hear contrasting opinions) is that maybe what my instructor said is true, that sometimes people get complacent, and that complaceny kills in skydiving. Is this true? Logically I would have thought that the more you jump, the safer you are.. But that's coming from complete ignorance, I admit. I'm very curious about it though. Not that the knowledge will stop me from jumping, because I am completely hooked (read: obsessed!).. _________________________________ Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long to return. Leonardo da Vinci