riggerrob

If you look at a map, you will see that Canada is larger and on top, so in prison, the USA would be our bitch! Hah! Hah!

In tried ChatGPT once! I asked it a question about acid mesh ... a problem that grumpy old grey-bearded Master Riggers learned about back during the 1980s. ChatGPT replied that acid mesh was good for parachute fabric. I will never trust ChatGPT again.

And for a more serious answer ..... I got un-current over COVID. Since I used to hold a long list of instructor ratings (S/L, IAD, PFF, tandem instructor examiner and rigger examiner) I did my own refresher training. That started with reviewing a bunch of malfunction videos posted by the Australian Parachute Federation. Then I did a bunch of mental simulations that concluded with pulling all my own handles in the correct order/sequence. After I quit teaching skydiving full-time, I did up-size from a Stiletto 136 to a Pilot 169. In retrospect I should have borrowed a student main, since at age 67 I do not run as fast as I used to. These days my preferred aerobic exercise is walking up and down steep hills. Fast forward to July 2024 and my Pilot 169 knotted up and started to spin. My first reaction was to look at my cutaway handle. My second reaction was to look at my reserve ripcord. My third reaction was peeling and pulling my cutaway handle and my fourth reaction was peeling and pulling my reserve ripcord. I was hanging under my open reserve above 2,000 feet. If you don't or didn't hold as many instructor ratings as I, may I suggest that you should pay an instructor for an hour or three or his/her/their time and a full review.

Hey! Be careful how you use that term "trailer trash." I was proud to become "trailer trash" when I moved out of my Volkswagen van and into a 30-year-old trailer in the Perris Valley "Ghetto" trailer park. A drug-dealer lived across the dirt street from me and another drug dealer lived behind me. It was the quietest and safest neighborhood I ever lived in. If you want to know more about how the USA oppresses poor white folks, read the book "White Trash, the 400 untold story about class in America" written by Nancy Isenberg. In short, the book tells us that American elite enjoy oppressing and exploiting the poorest and care little about the colour of their skin. The most perverse part of that is the thousands of poor whites who died defending the Confederacy only to find them competing economically with recently released black slaves after the American Civil War.

Engineers need to be able to write enough English to communicate with other engineers, upwards to executives and down to the mechanics who bend the wrenches. Just before Christmas I was joking with some of the engineers at work and one mentioned another engineer who is borderline autistic. He is very good at his software job, but prefers to work alone. They do not assign any apprentices/co-op students to work with him. He does have a sense of humour, but it is mostly in German. He jokes about the region where he grew up and where I served almost 40 years ago. The technical writers and maintenance instructors are far more cheerful and open to chat. Back when I wrote parachute packing manuals, I felt like I was translating from the designer (Manley Butler and Sandy Reid) down to simplified lingo that semi-literate riggers could understand. I tried to make my manuals a series of photographs illustrating the the key points in the packing process. Text was more to keep the lawyers at bay. Forget about writing instructions to riggers or technicians in legal "boilerplate" as none of them can read that obscure dialect. Hah! Hah! Thank you for reading my rant about the minimum level of communication skills required by engineers.

Was that Skydive Long Island at Spadero's air strip, Est Moriches, Long Island, New York? I spent the summer of 1990 teaching static-line and tandem there.

How did you celebrate Christmas 2024? I went over to my aunt's house and we celebrated with as a family. What with he three children, assorted spouses and seven grand-children we had a total of 14 relatives sitting around the dinner table. We shared a bit of teasing and plenty of laughter during gift-giving. The "stealing" of gifts was even more fun! Then we sat around a huge table to enjoy a turkey feast. I was great to catch up on all of the progress in my cousin's lives and even more interesting to hear about which universities the grandchildren were attending, their sports, etc.

Increased freedom - or profit - of one segment of the population often results in less freedom and greater cost for another segment of the population.

Paul Rafferty had recently retired from the Golden Knights. He led the team to great heights and many medals at World Meets. He visited us at Pitt Meadows a year or two before his death. A humble and generous leader. One rumor had it that after his retirement, he contracted with D.O.D. to deliver tandem bundles to SF guys laying high in the mountains of Afghanistan. Then he would run for two or three days back to base.

No. I draw the line at political violence. (See Alfred Pinisch 1928- 964). Alfred was a family friend who died in a botched robbery by the FLQ. The difference between Russians and North Americans is that Russians just toss unpopular oligarchs out a high window, whereas North American lawyers make them miserable in court for many years. IOW in North America, the punishment is a long-winded, expensive and exhausting civil lawsuit. By the end of the lawsuit, no one cares who won, but the defendant is exhausted and his/her/their reputation has been ruined by the mass media.

That sounds like the Green Belt surrounding Ottawa or the Agricultural Land Reserve surrounding Vancouver (Fraser River Delta). The Green Belt is a kilometer-wide strip of farmland separating the city core from mid-outer suburbs. Sure the carrots and bicycle paths are nice, but it adds a kilometer to everyone's commute. The city tries to encourage people to commute by bus. Sadly, some group of religious fanatics or a filthy rich guy always manages to get a building permit to erect a huge church or a McMansion on flood plain land that is better used to grow carrots. Twenty years down the road, those ^%$#@! are going to try and sue the municipality when their huge building floods in May. &^%$#@! I suspect that those people have not read "The Hundred Mile Diet."

6-grommet sliders were (2000?) also factory-standard on a few tandem canopies (PD?). They helped reduce the numbers of tension knots on the bulky Dacron suspension lines of first and second generation tandem canopies.

Back when I lived in Nova Scotia (early 1980s) one of our junior jumpers formed a garage band called "RISER." They played covers to top-40 rock songs. I heard them play a couple of times in Halifax bars.

The latest moves in Syria reveal how fragile Russia is. Russia/Wagner Group have been backing the Asad regime for the last decade or so in return for leasing warm-water naval bases in the Med'. Now that the Asad regime has collapsed, it has left a huge power vacuum in Syria. Any strong neighbor could seize a chunk of Syrian territory. A strong Russian Army could seize the Med' coast of Syria. Now they are so weak that they can only evacuate.

If Trump forces a cease-fire in 2025, Ukraine will probably have to concede two or three or its eastern oblasts/provinces. Crimea was lost more than a century ago.