President

Skydiving isn't for everyone I guess. In my opinion, it's mostly teasing you with that "touch the skies" feeling but never allows you to truely have it. Everyone likes to use words "fly", "wings" etc but in reality it is only several minutes of airtime, period. My suggestion for you - try paragliding. It is basically the same canopy, only bigger and with way better aerodynamics. And you don't need an airplane, you don't need to pay anyone for lift, you don't even need to drive to any airport - your county park will do. And you can launch off of a cliff or a hillside and soar for hours in thermic lift. That's a real FLIGHT. And each time you launch, the airtime you get out of every flight only depends on how good you are at finding and using lift. I think skydiving is fun, but only for one reason - step out the door. This feelng is priceless. Everything else is a bore and too expensive if you count per minute of airtime. Please don't kick me in the butt - these are only my 2 cents after all.

My $0.02: To answer that question it helps to answer these first: which race has expanded so enormously over the face of the planet ? Which race established colonies accross the world ? Which race is driving the modern civilization ? Which race practically owns the world today ? This is what we've got in our genes - this stuff drives us across the oceans and makes us do both good and evil on a much broader scale than all other races combined. We white people are willing to take the risks and we do take them. Extreme sports is a manifestation of the same genetic features that drove our nations in the past. Today we don't have a crusade to wage (or w/e - you get the idea) but our gene's still want what they need - great excitement that only comes with great risk. For those of you non-whites who feel bad about this post, some consoling info: our demographics looks really really bad. We don't make babies as much as other races do. So, just hang on for another couple hundred years and there will be very few of us.

got it, thanks

Whoa, JP, glad to hear you ! OK, now I know your dz.com name. I'm the pilot guy, you took me and my friend Maya on our first ground lesson, and then I jumped couple of times with you. greetings !

Huh ? Since when is it legal to jump before 18 ? Or is it a "bandit" DZ ? My 13 y.o. niece wants to make at least a tandem but they don't even take ppl on tandems before 18 y.o. So, is it possible ?

Hey, Flyangel, isn't pic2 the one of John's "JP" ? ..he's my AFF instructor at Byron DZ.

My primary point was that sticker on somebody's car does not necessarily mean it was put by that person. This was just a little story to illustrate this. The last sentence about "what if he drove it" should be read as "yeah and now imagine ppl approach the guy based on this sticker". The reason we didn't buy it was because we couldn't scratch it off - and another thing - dealership is supposed to run pre-sales checks etc. Not removed sticker means those guys are slackers - what else they haven't checked ? ..oh, it is not the first time a sticker can't be removed. My ex-wifes student parking permit just didn't let go, at all, had to cover it with "proud to be an american one" to sell - for some reason a buyer had a problem with that thing on the rear glass.

Yeah just remember there's a huge after market for used cars in this country. Recently I was assisting my buddy in buying a used SUV. All went great, we found one we really liked and he was ready to say I take it when we noticed a small 7-color rainbow sticker on the rear window. Needless to say the deal was cancelled, we exchanged angry lines with the dealership guy and left. Think about that some people might not recognize/notice/care about leftovers from previous owner. ...and what would happen if we got that one and he drove it for a while

Weather in Bay Area kinda sucky for the last couple of months, so I'm effectively grounded. But the urge to get airborne was rather strong so I came up trying paragliding. It's actually lots of fun too ! Check this out: www.ushga.org - these guys are to paragliders what USPA is to skydivers. Just curious - how many of the skydivers out there also paraglide ?

N/A

Actually this appears to be the only sport where extra wait helps - heavy pouch will make you more stable in freefall

Ah, so this is the right name for the shit I do 4 times a week :)

Dave, what's a PT ?

DOCOMO in Japan is already working on cell-phone based matching service. I myself was involved in a drafting for a never-born dot.com a while ago :)

Sounds like dot.com project to me