Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
|
|
I'm pretty sure I'd be back to space dust by now.
Base jumpers may believe there is more than the dirt nap.
Next time around!
See, a potential prox flyer.
|
|
Flip Flop
climber
Earth Planet, Universe
|
|
It only took a month for my prediction:
And he understands all of this better that the cheerleading a-holes here at the Taco. You leg--humpers are total socipaths. He especially learned the punch line.
I've avoided sharing too much here, the ST forum can be quite abrasive and downright ignorant when it comes to wingsuit BASE. Yet I lurk and use the site without contributing much in return. So here's my adventure from last weekend. If you enjoy, let me know and I'll make an effort to do so more often, and if you don't let me know too but try to maintain some humanity in your comments. We're all climbers after all.
BASE kills Climbers.
Quit your irresponsible leg humping and go do what you love.
Call me downright ignorant again! Oh right, you can't because you're dead.
|
|
dirhk
Trad climber
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 1, 2016 - 07:20am PT
|
Thanks nah000 for taking the time to post that.
|
|
overwatch
climber
Arizona
|
|
yeah but why the f u c k you? People are only entitled to your opinion? This isn't the memorial thread
|
|
guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
|
|
nah000 said... and while being a community doesn't mean we have to agree with or even like each other, i do think it means that we should be able to hold off on direct or indirect judgement for at least a bit after one of our community has passed.
Thank you for putting into words, my feelings on this subject.
best post on the TACO in a long time.
thanks
|
|
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
Anyone here wonder why there seem to be so few women in wingsuit base?
|
|
snakefoot
climber
Nor Cal
|
|
FF, not sure why you even post here. Its the ha ha i told you so attitude that shows you have plenty of room for future personal growth and hopefully you do through some process of healing, but until then, i will thoroughly enjoy your angry little self until that occurs.
|
|
Gunkie
Trad climber
Valles Marineris
|
|
Anyone here wonder why there seem to be so few women in wingsuit base?
But the ones that are involved are sexy as hell. Why is that?
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
The essence of danger as I see it is not the activity itself, but the personality of the individual.
If you have difficulty balancing the desire/need for an adrenaline rush with a more "boring" avoidance of risk that will kill you... well there are lots of ways this can end with the quote "but they died doing what they loved."
Kayaking. Motorcycling. Climbing. Diving. Hiking and scrambling near a cliff's edge. Paragliding. Proximity flying. Driving. Working on a scaffold. Drugs. Gangs. Soldiering. Fishing. Fire fighting. And so on....
Having more skill in any activity lowers the risk of failure through incompetence. But having a personality type that actively courts the risk aspect of the activity does not benefit from the increased skill. It just requires pursuit of more difficulty to ensure the heightened skill does not diminish the risk.
So the real culprit here is pursuit of risk. And that is one thorny and difficult to unravel problem.
For me, life would suck with no risk. And life ends with too much of it. We're all groping around to find just the right amount, and we each have a different equation for what satisfies us, makes us feel alive, and what we have to lose in our own lives and the impacts our loss would make on others. No easy answers, hard to pass judgment.
But I do think that having children is a major responsibility that factors largely into the equation. It takes strength and courage to be "boring," to stick around and be there consistently for kids. At some point there is the question of "do I have to live like a robot and reproduce and teach my kids this boring robotic life to just keep the species going?" Back to that continual search for a balance to the risk equation. We find our own balance and if we have kids we share our values for what that balance is with our kids.
Condolences to those who cross the line and can't return... Maybe from their perspective they mourn our lack of understanding and appreciation for what lies beyond the veil. I really like the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull and have to believe that many proximity fliers would strongly relate to it if they are familiar with it.
|
|
nah000
climber
no/w/here
|
|
FF: sorry for your loss[es].
donini: come on now, you know [and it would seem directly so, based on the life you have lived out] at least some of the answer to that one... :)
just as with the sex distributions found within the alpinist, soldier of fortune, or even hang gliding fields, at least a part of the answer likely lies in testosterone being one hell of a drug...
[and to give the necessary disclaimer: obviously testosterone is not the only, or even necessarily the most important, player and the underlying concept found in the question of a perfect "male" and "female" binary is a social/political construct anyway, but based on the at this point anecdotal reports of people who've lived lives both with what are considered typically female and male doses of testosterone it does appear to play at least a part of the role in the difference in the skewed statistical sex distributions found in the pursuits in question]
|
|
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
Beyond the veil....likely nothing. Live life to the fullest and resign yourself to a brief future as worm food.
Monsoonal moisture voiding climbing today, a combination that feeds pessimism.
|
|
nah000
climber
no/w/here
|
|
overwatch wrote: "yeah but why the f * # k you? People are only entitled to your opinion? This isn't the memorial thread"
whoops, missed that that was likely directed at me the first time around.
the fUck you was directed at pud starting a thread by writing "The cost of base. The many children left behind pay way too much for their parent's need for this adventure. Having children is a life long responsibility. Don't want that? Don't have kids." within hours of it becoming public knowledge that somebody within our community who had children had passed while base jumping.
at the end of the day pud's welcome to his opinion and can start whatever threads he likes.
i'm also welcome to my opinion that there is a time and a place and at minimum a respectful manner for expressing a judgemental opinion, that is obviously responding in part to someone in our community that has very recently passed.
and after expressing my opinion, i have not checked back into the entirety of that thread, because while i'm happy to have discussions with people who have different opinions, as has been found in this thread, i'm not interested in having any sort of conversation with someone who has already made up their minds and has the need to post their judgemental opinion in a public place where anybody can read it, including grieving family members and friends who had only found out hours before that a contributing member of our community had passed away.
|
|
overwatch
climber
Arizona
|
|
ok, thanks for the reply.
I doubt that the family and friends were surfing around reading multiple threads on base jumping when there was one specific memorial thread but it is possible. So your point is well taken. I just don't think anything worthy is accomplished when you start throwing around the personal insults. Especially that one...I have seen some of the most knock down drag out brutal fights happen over that simple phrase
|
|
nah000
climber
no/w/here
|
|
^^^^
point taken...
i just went to the last funeral for a grandparent that i'll attend in this lifetime a week ago, so there's likely a bit of misdirected fallout from that, that ended up in my response to pud...
regardless, in case pud's reading this thread, my apologies for the fUck you on the thread you started.
i still think you should have gone about expressing your opinion in a more respectful way, and barring such you should have deleted your thread.
but that doesn't excuse the way i chose to respond, so my apologies for the f u portion.
|
|
overwatch
climber
Arizona
|
|
Good man you cannot ask for more than that by the way I always enjoy and appreciate your posts
|
|
the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
|
|
I have a friend who is/was self employed and never had health insurance because he was always healthy and figured he could deal with the consequences of an accident.
His family had an "intervention" and laid it out as "if you get hurt and can't afford good care we are going to chip in and take care of you, even if you don't ask us to do it or tell us not to. We don't have a choice, you are family." He went out and bought health insurance immediately.
|
|
Klimmer
Mountain climber
|
|
Wing suit BASE jumping is awesome but the risks are too high for me. I love watching the footage from flights though.
I would do it I suppose on the most safe objects, just to get a BASE patch then hang it up. I've had dreams about it. It requires a total type A personality to do it safe, I think. Go through a logical progression: expert skydiver, then BASE, learn to wingsuit fly out of a plane, then progress to Earth objects. That all takes a long time in my opinion. But you have to do it that way, I think to really maximize the safety. Stick to the rules and draw a line you won't cross no matter the peer pressure or conditions. "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the sky, than to be in the sky wishing you were on the ground. There are no backups in BASE. You either do it right every single time or you die.
But paragliding for me fixes that desire. I love it. It has inherent risk too, same mind set required, same type A personality requirement, again stick to the rules and draw a line you won't cross no matter the peer pressure or flying conditions. "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the sky, than to be in the sky wishing you were on the ground."
Paragliding has back-ups and you can occasionally make a small mistake and you usually have the room, low speeds, altitude, to fix it and you have an emergency reserve as a back-up when it goes to poop. The rewards of flying are wonderful. The vistas are grand. It's like playing chess in the sky. You have to think and visualize using macro and micro meteorology to stay aloft for greater time and to go the big distances. Time to do photography and remote sensing leisurely. You can share it with family and friends! Get a tandem license and take them to the sky. Awesome.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!