SE> I started snorkeling & diving before the age of 12,
 SE> and I've been hooked ever sinced.  Now if I could
 SE> just convince myself to someday jump out of a perfectly
 SE> good airplane........
Go on out to a jump center and take a look at the aircraft that training 
jumps are made out of -- jumping out of them rarely contradicts your 
statement.
I did a tandem jump out of a Cessna 172 that resembled my grandfathers beat 
up 63 Rambler.  The seats had been ripped out and plywood floors.  It had 
patches all over the place.  We had to push the plane out to the end of the 
grass strip.  Our ceiling had been reduced due to a storm routing traffic 
from DFW into our zone.  The radio was out so the ground crew was supposed to 
show us that windspped at the ground was too high by parking a white car at 
the end of the strip.  Perfectly good aircraft?  It was an easy decision to 
step out of that sucker and avoid landing on the grass strip.
Free fall was amazing, but hanging under the canopy for the last segement was 
one of the most serene things I've ever done.  Sort of like a drift dive on 
Santa Rosa wall... (he says in a desperate attempt to bring this note back on 
topic)
-bry
--- Msg V4.5
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