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To: JME_FAN

I went on a day bus tour decades ago with mostly young people on a work + vacation year in New Zealand. They had all skydived, hang glided and bungee jumped. A few said that they would do two or three of them again, but all of them wanted to parachute again.

I was much older than they were and had never nor will ever do any of the three.


5 posted on 07/03/2025 12:04:14 PM PDT by Freee-dame
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To: Freee-dame

I put in about 120 hours of hang gliding before I quit because I was just getting too old for it. Half the time it scared the hell out of me, and the other half it was most incredible thing I ever did and that includes flying airplanes, sail planes, ultra lights, and about 250,000 Mi on motorcycles . I have never done skydiving Though, But it looks like fun.


6 posted on 07/03/2025 12:09:42 PM PDT by HerrBlucher
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To: Freee-dame

When I was 15 or 16, back in the 1970s, I went on a camping trip to Orange MA. with my uncle and cousins. There was a skydiving school there at Orange Airport. The parachutists would have regular daily displays of their skills. My cousin and I would go there to watch (it was free).

About the third day, there was to be a dozen or so skydivers doing a multiple linkup from about 22,000 feet. When the moment came for the group to separate and deploy their shoots, one guy’s chute came out but did not open, and apparently his reserve got tangled in the non-functional main. Some of the other divers, who had not yet deployed their chutes, attempted to catch him but failed.

We watched him plummet all the way down to where he impacted the ground several yards from the sand filled target area. Two large gray vans were immediately sent out to block the view of the scene from the crowd.

There was one woman watching through binoculars. She was screaming all the while watching his death plummet, but would not look away - which I thought really strange.

That experience sort of ended my desire to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.


28 posted on 07/03/2025 2:21:57 PM PDT by JME_FAN ("It's just the normal noises in here.")
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