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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.rec.skydive
Subject: Re: USPA Boogie Tales
Message-ID: <1220@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 14:29:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1220
Posted: Wed Sep  4 14:29:44 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 05:13:55 EDT
References: <41800023@hpcvlo.UUCP> <41800026@hpcvlo.UUCP>
Reply-To: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin (DRXAL-RI) <wmartin>)
Organization: USAMC ALMSA, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 34
Summary: Groups vs. alone

This posting has pushed me over the edge (how appropriate for skydive!)
and inspired me to post the question that has been nagging at the back
of my mind for all the time I have been reading this group. I have never
jumped, so am looking in from the outside of this activity; it sounds
like fun, but I doubt that I'll ever get involved in it. Anyway:

When I think about the pleasures of skydiving, what comes to mind is
that it must give one a sense of great freedom and independence, to be
flying through the air (or falling, as you prefer), but, at least for
those few minutes, completely free of gravity and the restraints of
earthbound existence. It must provide a sense of exultation and joy.
You can be totally isolated and independent, free of every other
influence, a creature of the air, shedding all earthbound cares.

Yet, most of these descriptions I have read, and this last tale of an
accidental collision of two skydivers, emphasize GROUP activity.
This seems to me to violate and destroy the main advantages and benefits
of what you are doing. Once you leave that plane, and until you reach
the ground, you can be totally alone, more alone than you can ever be in
any other situation. So why spoil that wondrous isolation by diving in
groups, where you contact other people, and interact with them, and have
to pay attention to what they are doing and what you do in relation to
them? Not only would you have the joy of total freedom, but you would be
safer, too -- no mid-air collisions to spoil your flight.

So why do this in groups, and try to make patterns of linked bodies, or
whatever else is done in these group activities? It all seems
inexplicable to me.

Please post, not mail, responses.

Thanks!

Will