Hello. I guess I should start with a little introduction. My name is "Sendy" and I live in Colorado. As of this introduction, I'm 31 years old and have 125 or so skydives. Several years ago, I was on an eight-day climbing trip up the SE face of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, CA, USA. On at least three of those seven nights, BASE jumpers flew overheard. The first time, it scared me quite a bit; large falling rocks and bodies sound very similar. Regardless, I knew that that was my next step; I had to climb that SOB and then jump off.
So that's what brought me to skydiving. I honestly thought initially that skydiving would be nothing more than a means to an end. I was wrong. Now, when there's a beautiful day here in CO, I generally want to jump outta planes instead of climb rocks. That's very significant to me because I'd been climbing for 18 years and had yet to find anything that compared to the joy that climbing brought me--until I did my first solo jump (my tandem was fun and brought me out of my comfort zone, but it wasn't "it" for sure). And I haven't even done my first object-jump yet.
So I did my tandem in the Spring of '08. After some traveling that summer, I finally started my IAD training in August of the same year. I jumped as much as possible for a couple months and then bought my own rig (Reflex container; Saffire2 149 main; Micro-raven 150 reserve--I'm currently loaded at about 1.1:1, FWIW).
I jump at a pretty small DZ, so it took me a while to get my first 50 or so jumps in. But I love the crew there so it was completely worth it to me. I've only been to one boogie: Couch Freaks '09; I had so much fun I vowed to return every year for the rest of my life.
So the first thing I want to say to the community is Thank You! to those that participate in the "Incidents Forum." I've been reading those reports pretty regularly over the past year and half to supplement my training at the DZ. And now I might have something to contribute.
A couple days ago I had (what we think to be) a pilot chute-in-tow that I definitely did not handle properly. [I originally had a lengthy written analysis here but decided to remove it and save it for an incident post and/or to go-along with the video, wherever I may post that in the future. Suffice it to say, it was wild two-out situation]. I have this all on first-person video because I recently starting jumping with a cut-away Cookie helmet and a Sony CX-100 video-camera. My question is: Where can I post this video so that a) a rookie or two might be able to learn something from it (I know I did!); and b) some experienced jumpers can laugh at what an idiot I am. Hence, the anonymity.
When I first started looking online for info on skydiving and found this site, I also found a site (called skydivingmovies.com or skydivingvideos.com, I think) that I don't seem to be able to find anymore. It seemed like a great resource for skydivers. Does it still exist? Or is there another site now? I'd really rather avoid posting my video on such a public site such as YouTube for every moron with a keyboard to post comments on.