Dom-Rivers

Woa! Can't wait for the weekend! Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

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)

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)

I've only recently joined this forum and have only been on the skydiving scene for a couple of weeks. This is the second post I've seen about tipping people at the drop zone in this short time (the first was about tipping your instructors). It all seems rather silly to me. I know that there are people there to make a living, but isn't the main idea to have fun? A tip is a financial reward. It's tangible, measurable, it says "What you did is worth this much." Surely a returned favour or a friendly smile, a pat on the back and a beer says much more than just giving someone money. Does everything have to revolve around money? Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

Hi everyone! Thanks for all the support, I'm glad to hear that it's not just me being weird! bigway... I'm definitely going to try your music idea. the a-team sounds good, but i think i'll probably go with van halen's "jump"! nwflyer... well done for keeping at it, even after your reserve rides. i went to to the dz again on saturday, but it was too windy to jump. but i spoke to my instructors and one of them suggested going with a bunch of them to some bash in america (?) sometime next year. so i guess he didn't think i did that badly after all. i'll let you know how i get on when i manage to jump again. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

President, I know exactly what you mean about the army... been there, done that. I thought shooting guns was meant to be cool and fun. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

Wow, 200 jumps! That's a big step! (no joke intended) 40 seconds felt like no time at all. I felt relaxed on the ride up... just not on the ride down! The weird thing is that that evening I started to feel really excited that I'd done it, and I wanted to go again. I wouldn't go again if I didn't think I'd enjoy it. I'm going on Saturday and I can't wait. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

Why? Now that I know what to expect, I think I'll do better. I'm pretty sure that I'll enjoy it once I'm confident that I can do it safely. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)

Hi everyone. I was just wondering what other people's experiences are of AFF1. I went for my first jump last Saturday. I felt confident and relatively calm. Got to the door, jumped out and then it all went horribly wrong! I rushed all my drills and couldn't find the toggle to pull. One of the instructors pulled it for me. The ride down to the DZ was full of bad language from me. I was just so annoyed at not having done a perfect jump. Even worse, I hadn't pulled the cord... someone else had to do it for me. I spent the rest of the day (the jump was at 0930) feeling really grumpy. The fact that I didn't enjoy it (because I didn't do a perfect jump) annoyed me even more, and I got more grumpy. It was only about 8 hrs later that I started to be glad that I'd done the jump at all (that's after I'd said I'd never do it again) I can't tell you how angry I was with myself... not a shred of enjoyment I'm going again this weekend. How many other people don't enjoy their first jump? Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up! (Winston Churchill)