Can you stand a "why did I?" post from a dinosaur who cut his teeth on round canopies, had the first square reserve in his metro area yet hasn't seen a DZ in years... BTW, what's the time period before Gold Wing & 12 Hour F/F status wears off and you become a WUFFO again?

Anyway, my brother had been bugging me for months to come check out his new piece of heaven, the DZ he'd been frequenting since the middle of the summer. "No," I told him, "I'm out on the boat skiing every weekend and I've got no time for jumping out of airplanes." He waited. October came and went. The boat was tucked away 'til Spring.

And, as brothers will talk to one another, the conversation returned. "OK, pussy..." (Yes, boys in their late teens are so open & genuine with their expressions of affection for one another) "...you got no more excuses-- the boat's gone and I'm tired of driving an hour out of town by myself." Then, the real sales job started, but it was never really needed. Anything little bro can do, big bro ought to be able to do better, I thought. At any rate, I couldn't let the little shit show me up.

FJC was a breeze. Problem was, the breeze was holding the wind sock straight out. What kind of an idiot takes up skydiving the first weekend of November in the Midwest? I did make a static line jump late Sunday, but I really didn't remember anything until I had a good canopy (sensory overload and all that) so I figured I had to make another one to really check it out.

Little did I know, I was in the sport deep. After two years of paying storage on a boat I never saw anymore, I sold it. Every weekend revolved around the DZ. I rarely saw my wuffo friends, but it didn't matter. My god, freefall turned out to be one seductive mistress!

Now, guess who ended up driving out to the drop zone alone every weekend? It turns out that my brother is just kind of casual about the sport (although he is the most amazing natural flyer most of us recall seeing) and only logs a couple hundred leaps by the time I'm getting pied in Quincy for turning a grand.

I don't want to get on a soapbox, but take it from a 4-way and 8-way conference champ, A/B/C/D/SCR/SCS/DEA/DFA/FB/CCR/PRO/GW/12HR/etc who's been there... More than likely you won't know when your last jump is, so do the things NOW that you want to do in this sport. I am still kicking myself in the ass for not making the balloon jump, never getting that picture of me hangin' by my toes from the leading edge of the club's C182, not hiking El Cap, never getting a team together for the nationals, never trying for that CCS swoop... AAAAAAAHHHH! DO IT so you won't be wishing you hadn't!

Bob D2112