Canopyflyer

You’ll have to pry my Wolf duel fuel range from my cold dead fingers…

With that said, if I had it to do over again I would definitely go with an induction stove. I have a high quality hood with a very strong fan and make sure it is running any time I use the cook top.

There is also a Mustard Museum.

I didn’t know about him teaching his daughter that… Must have missed that video or had already unsubscribed.

Definitely an immediately unsubscribe reason.

Bourbon Moth

Loved to watch his videos as he made woodworking accessible. He also does really good work.

Then one day he built an epoxy river table then promptly blew it up… Literally blew it up… Which spread all that epoxy all over the place in a forested area. I still watched, but next he did a video on rags catching fire and it was all obviously staged. That was it for me, I unsubscribed then told Youtube to never suggest his videos again.

AVE

Funny enough it was AVE that exposed Bourbon Moth on his BS regarding the towels combusting. However, shortly after that whole thing AVE just really went downhill. Instead of being informative and amusing, his videos just turned into the narcissist’s playbook for look at me! Haven’t watched one of his videos since. Which is a shame, because his earlier videos were really interesting.

It was “Mom” and “Dad”.

The one time I called my Mom by her first name was when we worked at a nursery/garden center together. A customer asked me a question and my Mom was close by working on something and I didn’t want to call her “Mom” in front of the customer.

It was one of the most awkward things I’ve ever done. My Mom ended up not caring, she understood.

I’ll just say it… She was nuts. The sex was OK, but not good enough to deal with crazy. Fortunately, she was not the smartest and the games she attempted to play were all things I had seen before and she had the subtly of a brick. So it was pretty easy to avoid her traps. That probably lead to what happened that night. I wasn’t fulfilling her supply needs and wanted to find an easier target. At least it has made for a good story 22 years later.

Also, It all worked out in the end. About 6 months after the above happened I met the future Mrs. CanopyFlyer. We’ve been married 20 years now and have two kids.

Just for kicks, after posting above I looked up Pool girl on Facebook, she has a fairly unique name. She lives in Boston now, the event above took place in Cincinnati and she is apparently still single 22 years later. At least her profile does not show anyone but her. She is 4 years younger than me so that puts her at 51 single and no family.

I get people not wanting kids. I didn’t until I met Mrs. Canopyflyer so no shade on Pool girl on that, but I cannot imagine still being alone at my age. With that said, I do have a friend that is my age that lost her husband to a heart attack this year. That’s been pretty devastating and I feel so badly for her.

I have two kids.

Oldest is a figure/ synchronized figure skater

Youngest is a hockey player.

Believe me, hockey is a LOT more civilized than figure skating and especially Synchro.

Had actually been dating this girl for about a month. It was 4th or 5th date and she wanted to go play pool. Which was fine with me as at the time I loved to play pool and had my own cue. So I took her to one of my favorite pool places where we could rent a table by the hour.

We had been there about an hour and stopped to get some food. The place had a bar with food and TV’s all over the place.

We sat down and started eating and talking. Nothing serious, just chatting between bites.

Then she drops this: “You’re one of the weirdest guys I’ve ever met.”

Somewhat shocked I asked why… Her response was that I wasn’t watching the football game playing on all the TV’s.

I took a moment and looked around and sure enough most, if not all the guys in the room were glued to the TV… I looked at the game playing, saw a football game, shrugged and stated that I’ve never been much of a sports fan.

That ended the relationship. We talked a couple more times after that, but we never went on another date. She called me about a month later complaining that some guy she met in a bar won’t return her phone calls. That was the last time I ever spoke to her.

I still don’t watch football, baseball, soccer or basketball. I’m a skydiver, why would I care about some game that only requires one ball?

If you like Star Trek:

DC Fontana

I love puns and word play.

Puns are one of the few forms of humor that doesn’t have a target. No one is ever the butt of a pun and that is what I like about them.

"People say you forgive for yourself in order to move on. Personally it has never really clicked for me, how to forgive someone who hasn’t asked it or changed. "

This is a good point.

In this case the term “forgive” is almost, but not quite a misnomer. View it more as moving past the trauma and not letting it affect you in the future, irrespective of understanding the perpetrator’s behavior. This usually involves leaving them behind and ending all contact with them. Most people that behave in such a way to cause others trauma will never change. The only thing you can do is move past them and go on with your life.

I hope that makes sense.

DB Cooper has been the topic of Drop Zone conversations for years. The jump he made is perfectly doable by anyone trained in the practical application of aerodynamic decelerators. Albeit it was an extremely risky jump as I’ll detail below.

As a matter of fact I’ve gone out the air stairs of a 727. It was at the 1999 at the World Freefall Convention in Quincy, IL. It was fun, but a 727 on jump run is doing about 180kias when normal skydiving operations are around 90kias. It won’t injure you, but it feels like you’re getting hit by a ton of bricks. So not the funnest jump and I only did one, to say I did it. Going out the bomb bay of a B-17 (Nine-O-Nines RIP) was a lot more fun.

The general consensus in the skydiving community is that Cooper lived, but was probably injured. He jumped a round parachute, at night, in poor weather conditions. Even with modern gear that kind jump is extremely risky. Round parachutes go down where the wind blows them after exit. There is a little bit of control with a round, but nothing like a ram air chute.

He probably had a vehicle stashed close to the drop zone and was able to get to it with most of the money. If I recall correctly some of the money was discovered on a creek or riverbank some time later. He probably lived the rest of his life in secure obscurity… Or he might even still be alive.

Only he knows for sure.

Zestos and Polly’s Freeze and that’s about it.

I miss their malts, they were always the best.

AHEM!

AC/DC music is nothing more than 4 chords and a beat.

And you know, sometimes that’s all you need.

Awesome! Blue Skies!

Yeah, sports shoes, hiking SHOES (not boots) are appropriate. The swoopers would wear shoes with little tread so that they didn’t catch anything on the ground. I’ve seen a few broken ankles like that and a boot would not have helped.

I’m a former jumper now. My last jump was in 2006. Main reason is I got bored and took my life in another direction. I did some CRW and was actually in the 100 record attempt in Lake Wales many years ago, although I have to admit I’m not the best CReWdog and got cut. So I’m not officially a part of the record, but I was there. I was on the record setting team for big ways in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky (65-ways). I think that was 1999 and not sure if those records still stand. It was all the same team, we just flew from our base at Skydive Greene County in Xenia OH over to Skydive Greensburg, IN and someplace in KY… Can’t remember what airport it was in Kentucky.

Also had a 4 and 8 way competition team. We traveled a bit to compete and went to nationals every year up until about 2003, until internal conflicts on the team broke it apart.

I took jumpers just off student status and trained them on canopy skills, hence my moniker. Never taught swooping, at least not with toggles. I consider toggle turns close to the ground too dangerous and have known people that were killed that way. I get it and I’ve never tried to argue people out of doing hook turns, but it’s not something I would ever teach or recommend. If you want to swoop use your front risers. Not as exciting, but you’ll have a much better chance at becoming an old skydiver. There are a couple of my former students who are professional skydivers today and you’ve seen them jump in movies. They have far out stripped this old dog, that is for sure and I’m quite proud of them.

Other than that, I did attain a USPA PRO license and did a lot of demo jumps. Stadiums, golf courses, a couple of NASCAR races and a few airshows. I hated doing airshows the most as it was typical for the director of the air show to know nothing about skydiving and I’d have to deal with weird restrictions. Just about got into a fist fight with one idiot telling me NO TURNS under 1500ft… Not even S turns. I told him to go fuck himself and I pulled my team out of the show. God damn whuffos.

My token is me under my PD Spectre 150 in 1997. I also had a Spectre 135 and a Sharp Chuter. Actually, I had several Sharp Chuters as jumping smoke destroyed them after a while. My container of choice was the Sunpath Javelin. I had a J-2 Javelin, which is what I was jumping in my token photo. My 135 was in one of the first Javelin Odysseys off the production line. I want to say it was a TNJ, but don’t remember and I sold it when I retired. I did demo jumps using a Dolphin. Back in those days you could buy one of those for $500 so if it got torn up due to smoke or some other demo jump thing it was not big deal. I think I did replace it once.

All in all I’m somewhere in the 4500’s for jump numbers. My log books have fallen to multiple moves over the last 20 years, so I don’t know the exact number. I know people with tens of thousands of jumps. The DZO of Skydive Greene County, Jim West, passed away last week and he was north of 20,000 jumps 25 years ago and I’m sure he added a lot more. He had more time in free fall that a lot of people have riding in planes.

Also, don’t take skydiving advice off the internet if it’s anything other than… “ASK YOUR JUMP MASTER or S&TA”.

BSBD

Yikes!

Hope you’re in a better place now.

This item sounds like it might be for a hobby.

An inviolate rule for gifts is you NEVER give a gift for someone’s hobby, unless they have specifically mentioned it. Then you buy EXACTLY what they tell you.

Case in point… I’m a former skydiver. It’s a sport full of extremely counterintuitive aspects. One of my brothers was in the army and did airborne training under round parachutes. He gifted me a set of paratrooper boots to use while skydiving…

It was a nice thought, but most of the time I’m running out a landing, not doing a PLF (Parachute Landing Fall). The boots were extremely tight around the ankles for support on landing under a round parachute. They were less than useless for jumping a ram air chute. They were in my closet for almost 20 years, before I decided it was time to make some space. Zero jumps and probably less than a few hours of wear, because they were just not comfortable, since they were designed to save your ankles landing under a T-10.

Yes, I informed my brother emphatically that I could not use that type of boot in sport skydiving, but typical of my family someone else knew better of what I was doing than I did.

Oh crap…

Dungeon Crawler Carl “The Inevitable Ruin” Book 7

“Fellowship of the Ring” Lord of the Rings Book 1

Frodo and Donut are fighting their way through Moria to throw Cascadia into Mt Doom… Oh and Frodo is wearing boxers with a heart print.

God Dammit Donut!

Vancouver

That what watching Stargate SG-1 multiple times has done to me.