Main Page Skratch's Skydiving Stuff DJan's Evolving Theatre Other Skratch Stuff
Date: Friday 2002-3-15
Subject: Profile - Skratch - Final
Name: Skratch Garrison
Nicknames: Ben Daniels
Age: 60
Height: 176 cm
Weight: 81 kilos
Birthplace: Santa Monica, California
Marital Status:
These days I'm married to one of the more active local jumpers
here in Colorado - DJan Stewart.
For about 15 years back in the 60's and 70's I was married to
Clarice Garrison (D-1135), who was one of the early pioneering
lady skydivers.
Children: no
Pets: No
Occupation: Far Fetching
Education: Math Major - BS, MS, PhD drop out (I started skydiving).
Transportation: These days I use a car.
Pet Peeves: Dogs and relentless background music
Hobbies:
After thinking about this and even looking it up in the
dictionary I realize that I don't have any, and that I'm
a compulsive, driven personality who should probably take
some steps to lighten up.
Actually I already knew that, but I never had to admit it
until I hit this questionnaire.
Favorite Food:
Rice - veggies - tofu.
There is probably a reason why I live in places like
San Francisco and Boulder.
Rock, Rap, or Country?
Rock (plus maybe certain gospel/chanting type stuff).
Life Philosophy: Learning to let go.
Hard opening or line twists? Not usually.
Pack a parachute or dump the garbage?
I'm a neat packer. There has always been a sub culture of fast
and sloppy packing, but long ago Bud Kiesow (D-55) told me that
he always packed neatly because you never know what situation
you will be in when you're pulling (for him, below 1,000 ft with
just a main and no reserve was not a new idea). I looked up to
him and listened to what he said about many things.
AFF, static line, or tandem?
I did 3 static lines. Jack Pryor, the guy who put me out, put
some people out directly on freefall. Others he took up higher
and went out harness to harness (holding on to their harness).
I must have looked like a flakey college kid to him because he
made me do 3 static lines before he let me go free.
My first jump cost $2.
That included the rig, some training and the ride up.
We went up to 2,500 ft over a farmer's field in a little
Piper Cub with Jack in the front and me in the back.
He told me to climb out and go, so I did.
Life has not been the same since.
Swoop or accuracy tuffet?
I was interested in demo type accuracy but never in pea gravel
and disk stuff.
I've never swooped a canopy. By the time swooping came along
I had already had my love affair with high speed dirt. I think
it looks pretty neat though and I certainly understand the
attraction.
People are going to do it (and after all, why not?). I think USPA
should encourage people to go learn how from the masters instead
of letting them learn from some dumbass in the parking lot.
Jump Philosophy:
We skydive in order to feel feelings and connect with ourselves
and others and life. Maneuvers are just something to do while
we are skydiving together.
Team Name:
I've never been into teams aimed at the competition context.
I was part of the 1975 USFET (United States Freefall Exhibition
Team) organized by BJ (Worth) to create, develop and spread
the idea of sequential relative work.
I started a team called the Skydance Resonance in 1978 in order
to bring the Skydance viewpoint (dance as the form, emotions
as the reason) into consensus reality.
I've thought about a team called the Loose Threads here in
Colorado for a similar purpose, but I believe I'm fading into
an alternate reality where that is not going to happen.
Sponsors:
Would be nice. I think what I do is too early in the historical
unfolding of things, and too esoteric, for hard core business
types to be interested in it.
Container:
Racer - since 1976. I keep waiting for someone to come up with
a better idea. DJan has a Mirage and I think they did a really
good job, but all the Vector spinoffs still strike me as basic
fireplugs with a harness attached.
Main Canopy:
Spectre 170. I've never been much of a leading edge gear type,
maybe I was a little bit in the 60's. DJan has a Sabre 2 which
looks pretty good. I understand and appreciate all the new
canopy development, but all I really want for myself is nice
openings, make it back to target, and good landings.
Reserve Canopy: PD 160
AAD?:
Cypres for almost 2 years. A couple years ago Baat Enosh
and some other young friends were dis satisfied with the
fact that I was still jumping a normal, gadget free rig
so they bought me a Cypres.
I kind of like having it now. I think in themselves they
are a good idea. But they have a serious down side.
If you are low and fast they will fire your reserve,
but that's all they will do. They do nothing for all the
other weird situations you can find yourself in.
And the down side is the human tendency to want a magic
bullet that will protect you from everything. I want one
myself.
And the unintended consequence is people who never develop
the judgement and fore thought to keep themselves out of
situations where the Cypres is no help. People neglect
learning, *and* they do things they wouldn't otherwise do
"Because I've got a Cypres.".
So now, because we have the Cypres, we are raising up generations
of jumpers who *need* one.
<soapbox>I think USPA oughta fuckin' do something!</soapbox>
Actually I have several soapboxes. Maybe we'll run into
a couple others before this is over :-) :-)
Home Drop Zone: Calhan down by Colorado Springs.
Year of First Jump: 1962
Licenses/Ratings: B-3088, C-1990, D-981, Gold Wings #104, 12 hour
badge #8, SCR-16, Coach
Championships:
First 10 man meet - Taft - 1967.
First 10 man world meet - New Zealand - 1970.
That's it. I actually think competition is a harmful activity
that wastes energy and does nothing to further skydiving.
I can admire what Airspeed and others do - the level of skill,
the amount of effort and dedication. And I admire who the Airspeed
people are and what they teach in terms of skill and attitude.
But what has competition itself added to the world?
Nothing.
All the ideas, new activities, trends, psychology, the whole load,
came from grass roots recreational skydiving.
<soapbox>USPA (and American civilization) waste too much time
and energy on competition. There are about a zillion more important,
more interesting, more productive things to do.</soapbox>
Total Number of Jumps:
3,657 + about 50 that I made in the 80's but never logged.
est Freefly: RW:
In terms of freedom of attitude almost all of them.
In terms of body position, 3 head down, 30 sit and stand.
Actually I first stood up in freefall in 1963.
I didn't stay standing for very long though because the wind
blew the pant legs of my trusty white Sears carpenter coveralls
(complete with loops for hammers and other stuff you needed)
up around my legs and it startled me and I fell over.
The reason you needed a hammer wasn't to get the wooden chutes
in the box, although that could be kind of a bear, but in case
you had a nail over. Line overs were bad enough, but nail overs
were a serious malfunction unless you had a hammer.
est CRW:
During the Skydance period I tried to get a canopy dance
(fly close but no contact) idea going but it didn't catch on.
I never had any urge to make physical contact.
est. Camera: 5
est. Tandems: 1 - I wanted to see what it was like.
est. Accuracy: 20-30 pea gravel and disk type accuracy.
est. Demos: 40-50
est. BASE Jumps:
None yet. Well, actually as a kid I made a lot of jumps off
of the barn and out of trees trying various parachute ideas.
And one swimming pool had a 24 ft diving platform that I would
spend all day jumping off of. I probably accumulated 20 or
30 hours of freefall, one second at time, before I ever got
to jump out of a real airplane.
Base jumping seems like a good idea, but it came too late,
and I'm not interested enough now to make the effort.
est. Other:
2 wingsuit jumps. That seems like a great idea, but it too came
too late, and there are other things in life left to do besides
skydiving. (only makes sense if I include wingsuit malfunction
story ###)
Wingsuits in general and wingsuits off of tall cliffs would be great.
Actually I'd like to find a mountain ridge of just the right
steepness and spend a couple minutes skimming along about 100
ft off the ground. I think I'd like to have a valley off to one
side just in case a tall tree suddenly appeared though :-) :-)
Also did some TV commercials and movie stuff with Bob Sinclair
and Dave Burt in the 60's.
Total Number of Cutaways:
3 from malfunctions (one of them on a wingsuit which was a very
scary and hairy jump story).
20 or so screwing around trying stuff in the 60's.
Going back to student status - what was your canopy progression?
Double L to TU :-) :-)
900 jumps on rounds - cheapos and lopos
900 jumps on PC's - which I guess are also rounds
1,900 on squares
I had 1,200 jumps with front mounted reserves (where they belong)
before I got a state of the art Crossbow piggyback.
Most people don't know this about me:
Apparently I don't know it either.
Out of All of your skydives is there one particular jump that stands
out the most?
No, there are many that stand out, each for a different reason.
How long do you plan on skydiving?
Until I'm done.
What do you like most about the sport?
Flying around in freefall and the connection with people
from all walks of life from all over the world.
The added perspective of another viewpoint on life.
It's like traveling to other countries or taking acid.
What do you like least about the sport?
The corporate, Disneyland, commodity trend.
Whuffos having a say in what we do in purely skydiving circumstances.
Who, if anybody, has been your skydiving mentor?
Bud Kiesow (D-55), Bob Sinclair, Richard Economy (D-115)
taught me a lot about skydiving.
Jim Heydorn and Terry Ward taught me a lot about other things.
What are your future skydiving goals?
To pass on what I can to new jumpers before I fade away.
I have a very distinct feeling now of moving on from most
of the stuff I have done previously in life.
What safety item do you think is most important and/or most often
neglected?
Training and attitude.
How did you become interested in skydiving?
I was born that way, I just finally got the chance.
I skydive because........
I like the way I feel when I do it.
I started when I was too young to know any better,
and now I can't stop.
Any suggestions for new students?
Pay attention.
Learn from others.
Get the fundamentals down before pushing envelopes.
Don't be bound by the past (or the present)
(or the future for that matter).
What's the most bad-ass thing you can do in the air?
I don't know, but the best thing is flying around with my friends
feeling the awe and wonder and connection of it all.
What is your favorite jump plane and why?
Super Otters and C-130's.
Climb fast, big door, comfortable, and the C-130 has a tail gate.
If you could do a "fantasy 2-way" with anybody (living or deceased),
whom would it be with and where would it take place?
I think I would jump with Jim Heydorn and Terry Ward.
Any place would do.
I don't know any more whether skydiving is really a very safe thing
to be doing. I remember once in 1980, when I was living at Z'hills,
watching about 30 people bring a formation down right over target.
It was very impressive, and noisy, too. Half the load was under a
grand. Nobody was above two.
Hooper was furious.
He got on the mike and ordered the whole load out to the pea gravel.
I walked out with him to hear what he was going to say. He couldn't
very well ground them since most of his staff was on the load.
He ripped into them. Any Marine Corp Drill Instructor would have
been proud.
As we were walking back he said only one thing to me:
"I've known 88 people who have gotten killed.
And not one of them was crossing the street."
I thought about that the next few days. And started counting.
And found that I knew a similar number.
Losing friends is one of the hard things in this activity.
Even if it's only 4, 5, 6 people a year, that starts to
add up as the decades go by.
Were you a hard child to raise?
No! Of course not! :-) :-)
Most embarrassing moment while in freefall or at a drop zone: ###
Someday I am going to own.........: ###
The toughest thing to do in the sport of skydiving is:
Pay attention.
Tell the truth.
Accept the truth.
Lose friends.
Not to start any rivalries, but is there more skydiving talent on
the East Coast or on the West Coast?
No, ignorance and talent are pretty much 50-50 all over the world.
What kind of skydiving student were you?
Really good.
I was kind of scared until I got stable, which took 11 jumps,
and I had trouble finding the drop zone, which was just a
farmer's field that looked like all the others around it.
But I was out jumping on my own at 20 jumps and started teaching
first jump students (on my own) about then. Times were different
back then. Here are some high lights from my first few jumps:
#4 Freefall
#6 First tree landing
#8 Water landing (inadvertent) 1 1/2 inches of ice
#16 Demo jump - Kelly's Hamburgers - Downtown Winston Salem
#18 Demo jump - Tanglewood Park
#27 20 sec night jump - dead centered a huge oak tree
#30 Sit on the air like a rocking chair
#33 Stand up in freefall
#40 Demo jump - Orphanage
#45 First contact (we were self taught)
Those were 1962 - 1963.
Out of all your thousands of skydives, is there one jump you would
like to do over again? Please explain for your fellow jumpers:
No, because in order to do it over again I'd have to go back
and be that guy again and I'd rather be who I am now.
What do you consider your most significant life achievement?
In skydiving it would be seeing the Skydance insights.
Skydance was both a form of activity and an intentional
effort to organize for the production of feelings and emotions
instead of just maneuvers.
This came up in 1976 and went on for a couple years before
the Pope Valley / Gulch scene dissolved into history.
The form part came from the thought that if you took what
people were doing in the sky and translated it to the dance
floor it would look like either a whole bunch of people
going to great effort to get into some configuration and then
standing there holding it, or else a small number of people
racing through a bunch of moves as fast as they could.
If you take what people do on the dance floor, waltzes,
polkas, square dances, freeform spontaneity and translate
it up into the sky you have Skydance.
*And* we had the additional freedom from gravity - swing
your partner round and round and over and under and up
and down and so on.
Sounds like fun, doesn't it? :-) :-)
----
The emotional part came from a realization I had when I
spent the summer of 1976 in Norway, Sweden, Denmark playing
the part of "the long haired guru from California".
Eilif Ness set this up and I went over there prepared to
turn the world on to this new sequential format we had
developed.
What I realized while I was there was that maneuvers as
such are absolutely meaningless. The hottest dive in the
world is worthless if the people can't do it or don't
like it, while the sunset star, one maneuver with all
your friends, can be the best dive of the whole weekend.
The reason we jump is to feel feelings.
That's it. That's the whole story.
So if you get a thesaurus and look up all the feelings
people can have and then use skydiving as a tool to produce
feelings, you have the idea of organizing for the emotional
content of the dive.
So that was Skydance.
Turning on new jumpers would be a close second, but I see
that as one manifestation of the Skydance approach.
While in freefall, what has been your strangest thought?
Actually I get way more strange thoughts on the ground
than I do in freefall. In freefall I'm pretty focused
on the amazing fact and feeling of being in freefall.
Although I did once roll over on my back and close my
eyes and think about the square root of 2 for a while
because someone in the small hours of the night before
had said you couldn't do it.
That seems kind of strange looking back on it.
Suggestions for the USPA: ###
Time for me to ask the impossible - explain "Skratch Garrison" in
five words or less:
Learning to let go.
(specialty question) How did you obtain the name "Skratch"?
Somewhere around 10th grade English we read a story
called "The Devil and Daniels Webster", wherein Daniel
Webster makes a deal with the devil and then manages
to wiggle out of it.
"Old Scratch" was a New England nickname for the devil.
I can't imagine why people thought that would apply to
me, but I liked it better than the name my parents gave
me, so I kept it. I thought it looked better with a "k"
so that's how I spelled it - Skratch with a "k".
Fast forward a couple decades to 1980. I'm living in
my van from dropzone to dropzone, and the feeling is
growing to jump the tracks and try to enter normal
Earth society (get a job, a zip code, stuff like that).
So I drove north from Z'hills for a day to about
Tennessee, did a 90 left, and drove west for a day
to Colorado.
The thought of job hunting with a name like Skratch
and a background like mine was too much, so I did
the paper work and changed my name to Ben Daniels.
Well, in hindsight, the thought of me trying to pass
for normal is pretty comical and I have basically
given up on that, but that's why my passport and 1040
and USPA card and stuff all have Ben Daniels on them.
(specialty question) What is your "Oreo Cookie Framework" and how
does it pertain to skydiving?
Here's an excerpt from something I wrote in 1995 trying to answer
that very question for someone else:
The dive framework, the context for all this flying around, would be:
Physical Emotional The Oreo Cookie
--- --- 13,500
Exit | |
--- | Opening Maneuver Oh
| |
| |
| ---
| |
Fly | | Filling Dance 8,000
Around | |
| ---
| |
| | Closing Maneuver Re Oh 5,500
--- |
Breakup | |
--- ---
This was another idea from those times. Sometimes I think it is the best
one I ever had. It combines
-The on going practice of knowing altitude (distance from the ground) by
using altitude as an active ingredient in the dive design (change the
flight pattern, the nature of the activity, at specific altitudes).
-Making the breakup a full fledged maneuver in its own right by stopping
at 5,500 and starting a "collect together and then spread apart" type
pattern that is completely independent of what was going on above 5,500.
-Designing around the emotional content of the different layers of the
skydive.
-Why do we skydive?
In order to feel certain feelings.
-What can we feel while skydiving?
The human stuff - inclusion, self esteem, learning, growing, friendship.
The skydiving stuff - air, sky, clouds, awe, excitement, wonder, fear.
Exit - changing from earthling to skydiver - rebirth.
Middle - flying as we always thought we should be able to.
Bottom - ground, competence, safety, life, death.
-How can we organize our dirt / sky dives to feel these things?
Be more explicit/creative/honest about what we can and want to feel.
Realize that dirt/sky dives are tools to produce feelings.
I've tried many times in the last 20 years to write about organizing to
produce moods - the sunset loose load feeling, the hot dive feeling, the
confidence feeling ...
It has always been curiously resistant to verbal formulation, but the
Oreo Cookie was one effort to do that. Skydance was not only the moves,
but the attitude and mood with which we were doing them.
The Oreo Cookie name came from oreo cookies having different feeling
layers just like skydives, and also that we started trying this by doing
an Oh on top for the opening maneuver and a Re Oh on the bottom for the
collecting together part of the closing maneuver. So it all fit together.
(specialty question) What concepts do you coach your students?
Many people coach for performance. So do I, but when I get
receptive students we delve into the more interesting question
of "performance of what? and why?".
I am more of an anthropologist than a technician.
It's funny, I slowed way down in the 80's to do some other
life and when I ran into DJan about 10 years ago and got
active again I felt kind of lost at first.
A lot of old habits and outlooks and self images reawakened,
but it was really clear that they weren't appropriate for
today, and anyway I didn't even want to be any of them even
though the grooves of habit were really deep.
So I was kind of lost for a while. I have always liked jumping
with new jumpers and after while I realized that that was
really all I wanted to do.
Trying to plunge in and become a leading edge head down
canopy swooping tie dyed tongue pierced something or other
was not only ridiculous but I didn't even want to do it.
My time for that phase was several decades ago.
Then one day my current metaphor came to me.
I'm like a grand parent over here playing with the kids
while the adults are out there taking care of serious business.
So that's pretty much who I am these days.
(specialty question) Is it true that in 1969 you made up the 4 way
event? Please clarify......
Yes. I thought the different form of activity would break us out
of the rut of assembly line skydiving that I had seen in style
and accuracy and saw developing in the relative work world.
At first relative work meant freedom and art and exploration,
there was no particular form to it. Then Bob Buquor started
taking pictures of stars and motivating people to make bigger
and better ones.
That's how stars as a form of activity entered consensus reality.
Then several things happened. The Arvin guys made the first
8 man, Bill Newell started the SCR, the Hinkley guys made the
first 8 man outside of California, Arvin closed and the Arvin
guys moved to Taft and made the first 10 man, followed shortly
by a 10 man at Elsinore.
There followed the famous conversation between Garth Taggart
and Bob Allen at the Rumbleseat bar where Bob said something
like "Yeah, but yours was a fluke, we could do ours again
any time." and Tag said something like "Oh yeah? Let's step
outside and have a meet.".
Carl Boenish, Jerry Bird and I wrote some rules
(Rules!?? For relative work!?? Gaack!!)
(The situation was rapidly going down hill!)
and we held a meet at Taft in 1967 with 3 teams - the Arvin
guys, the Elsinore guys, and the Old River guys.
We, the Arvin guys, made 2 10 mans in a row and won the meet.
For me that was jump numbers 1019 and 1020.
Meanwhile Hinkley made a 10 man and then Z'hills made one.
Some Hinkley guys, Pat Works, John Sherman and others went
to one of the Board meetings back east to lobby for adding
a relative work event to the nationals. Also a bunch of us
went to the nationals and board meeting in Marana.
I wasn't lobbying for it myself, I didn't like competition
and what I saw it doing to the mental atmosphere and sense
of creativity in the relative work world. I guess I was at
all those meetings because I didn't know what I know now,
and also I think I didn't want to get left out.
I was still doing a lot of non speed star stuff, no contact,
flying around, other shaped hookups, you know, regular
relative work. I actually had an Elsinore speed star guy
in 1968 say to me "You can't do that! That's not skydiving!"
In 1968 Jeff Searles, the Z'hills DZO, had the vision to
hold the first 10 man meet outside of California. "Outside
of California" was how things were measured in the relative
work world during that period.
The Hinkley guys and a bunch of us California types showed
up for the first gathering (outside of California :-).
Actually Bill Newell, Tag and I were the judges for that
meet.
Meanwhile I think PCA (which had just become USPA) was
worried about this grass roots groundswell of relative
workers and also perhaps by the ever present talk of us
seceding from the union and starting an organization of
our own. They wanted to bring the relative workers "back
into the fold".
I wasn't interested in this official organization aspect
of things, but I think it was a much more real possibility
back then than it is now.
Meanwhile Jim West who was on the board at the time had
some vision of his own and he was the actual board member
who proposed adding a relative work event to the Nationals.
Jim proposed a 3 way star and 3 way baton pass format,
which actually made sense at the time since most drop
zones had C-182's or less. The speed star people wanted
to do 10 man speed stars.
I thought Jim's idea made more sense, but his suggestion
was too simple, he had not thought ahead to how good people
would get if they actually practiced.
I could see that official relative work was inevitable,
and I had seen how recreational weekend skydiving tended
to imitate competition, so I made up a 4 way event that
I hoped would foster variety of activity.
There were 4 different types of jumps:
- A how many times could something be done in a given
time interval jump
- A how fast could you go from one hookup to a backloop
to a second hookup jump
- A sort of baton pass alternating three way with a
different guy out each time jump
- And a no contact, who could hold the best position type jump.
Norm Heaton printed my proposal in the December, 1969
Parachutist. The screams of agony and discontent rose
from all sides :-) :-)
"It's too big, it's too small, it's too complicated,
it's not relative work, ... we all hate it."
I, however, was a very stubborn guy in those days, and
Mike Schultz, who was the head of the competition
committee thought it was a good idea and so, an endless
thrash later, we did it at the 1970 nationals in Plattsburgh
New York. (Plattsburgh by the way was my 8th and last tree landing.)
The winner of the first 4 way nationals was Tony Fugit's
group from Wahoo, Nebraska.
By this time I was sick of the competition scene and
left it (almost) forever. As soon as I left, the competitors
simplified it down to maneuver, backloop, maneuver which
was how it stayed until 1976 when BJ talked the world
meet guys into doing a 4 way 8 way format just like
the way it is today.
Somewhere along the way people noticed that there were
actually girls doing this too and we should say "way"
instead of "man".
It would be interesting to hear how Jim West and Norm
Heaton and Mike Schultz all remember this.
OK, just a bit more and I'll let this go. Competition
for me was a really miserable experience but I did
have two good times.
In 1976 the Golden Knights decided they wanted to
do 8 way and I ended up going back to Ft Bragg for
3 weeks to help them get started. They were good
jumpers but I think they were intimidated by the
rules, which probably looked more like an organic
chemistry test than a skydiving meet.
Of course once they found out what the words meant
they took it and ran with it.
This was interesting to me because I had always
respected their demo teams and what they do and
it was fun to be part of their scene for 3 weeks.
It was also my first chance to try all this sports
psychology stuff in a competition setting. I was
learning and using the ideas quite a bit in my weekend
to weekend organizing but a competition setting is
more concrete and measurable.
I don't know where all those guys are now but Bill
Wenger was on that team and he is part owner of Calhan
where I jump (in case you want any background or other
viewpoints).
The second good time was right after that when the
Australian Army 4 way team paid my way over there
to coach them.
Besides old friends and the general Australian boogie
of it all this was interesting to me for number one,
the sports psychology aspect and number two, the 3D
transitions idea and the canopy formation idea.
In 4 way the name of the game was to optimize the
transitions between hookups - get from here to there
in the smoothest, fastest way possible. We had been
going over and under for a while in my regular weekend
organizing so of course we tried it here too.
It worked well. They loved it, and all the other competitors
at their nationals thought it was a great idea. Unfortunately
the judges thought it was illegal so they came in 5th.
Screw competition.
The canopy formation idea came about because their
commanding officer wasn't sure what they were doing
out there with this wild haired hippy from America,
and I thought it would look nice and military and
organized if, after we opened, we worked our way into
kind of an accuracy stack and did a follow the leader
sort of pattern into the landing area.
This turned out to be really fun and educational and
I have used it many times since then.
I don't know where any of those guys are either but I
believe Gene Bermingham is still active around Australia
plus or minus a few thousand miles.
So that's kind of how 4 way came about.
There were many more people, opinions and events woven
into it but that was the main thread as I saw it unfold.
(specialty question) How can skydiving be better recognized by the
non-jumper?
Why do we want them to recognize it?
What part do we want them to recognize?
What do we hope to accomplish by this?
Are we, one person to another, turning people on to the possibility?
The totally cool possibility of flying around with your friends
just like you always thought you should be able to?
Are we attracting more people so it becomes more mainstream
and recognized as some kind of normal activity like golf so
we have a larger base to lobby from?
Are we attracting more people so our drop zones and gear
companies and the skydiving industry can make more money?
In that case we should team up with Victoria's Secret and
have some models running around naked during prime time
wearing parachutes instead of underwear.
Are you asking how to get the general public to see it and
relate to it somehow?
In that case going from the familiar to the unfamiliar
might work. They could relate to someone on a board over
the Alps because they seem to be standing on something.
On a board over the Alps with a Victoria's Secret model
drinking Mountain Dew would work even better.
Getting high schools and colleges to offer a one semester
phys ed course in a wind tunnel would probably do something too.
A one semester course in a wind tunnel with a Victoria's Secret
model would do even more.
You may be noticing a common thread here :-) :-)
And of course the skydiving world would be greatly improved
if it were 50% male/female instead of whatever it is now,
so maybe we should team up with the male models in the
Calvin Klein blue jean commercials and try to entice more
women in.
Did this help?? Are you now going to make a special
presentation at the next board meeting? :-) :-)
(specialty question) Best thing about having jumped in five different
decades (60's, 70's, 80's, 90's 00's)?
Perspective.
Please disclose five people worthy of a "Profile" that have not
been previously "Profiled":
Clarice Garrison
DJan Stewart
Bob Sinclair
Mike Michigan
Bill Newell
Off the record - do you read "Profiles" each month or is it just
a monthly piece of crap?
I scan it. I think it's a good idea.
People are interested in people.
The stuff I'm interested in doesn't fit in a sound bite format,
and often what the people are doing is not new or interesting,
but I scan it.
I scan the rest of the magazine even faster.
Scan the table of contents, the editorial, the little news bites
in the first few pages, another balloon jump, someone got pied,
another Nationals, another Quincy, yawn, wow! the license numbers
are getting astronomical, welp, there's another Parachutist.
When I first started jumping I read it from cover to cover,
now, every once in a while there's a news bit or an article,
but mostly I flip through the pages and look at a few pictures.
Any closing comments?
Thanks for doing this. I think Parachutist could expand on
this individual jumper idea. More pages per profile or more
profiles per magazine or even some other format than profiles.
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