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Gordan Baxter, who wrote for both flying magazines and ones focused on cars, one had an article one a new innovative way to attend to the needs of nature while driving. Texas has a lot of long straight lonely roads, where there are very limited opportunities to stop a suitable facility and relive oneself.
So under those conditions, one option he offered was to open the car door, unzip, lean to the Left, and let fly, the aerodynamics of the situation ensuring that the stream of liquid arcs outward without touching anything. And, since this usually entails releasing the seat belt so to present an unencumbered trajectory, there is a hazard as well. Your remains could be found in the middle of the road with your pants down around your ankles and your car come to grief some miles down the road.
Gordan did receive a letter of compliant, the author saying he had caused his instrument panel to be ruined, signed, "Shorty." And today I have no doubt that a similar suggestion would bring charges of sexual discrimination and misogyny.
My pucker factor was so high nothing was getting in or outRob 23 - probably nothing worse than that "horseshoe" malfunction, especially at that altitude, you were very lucky .
And I guess you discovered that adrenaline is brown !!
I had to make 40 jumps under a round before I could transition to the square canopy. On my 42nd jump, at the '82 Zhills Thanksgiving Boogie I made my second square jump on a borrowed demo rig. I followed a fifteen way out of the DZ's DC-3, 40 Tango, delaying five seconds and did flips, 360's and seeing I was clear of the fifteen way I waved off and opened high at five grand to be able to play around with the parachute. Nothing happened. I looked over my right shoulder and saw my pilot chute, bridal cord, and my bag. I had a bag lock. I adrenalined, remembered the briefing about bag lock saying it was a 50/50 shot to cutaway, not cutaway and fire the reserve. Maybe it will clear if it the cutaway don't work, etc. So I rolled over onto my back and wound the bridal cord around my right arm until the bag was in my hand then rolled back over and pulled the reserve. It was a beautiful parachute, light yellow over white, steerable, conical in shape, just beautiful. That was my first malfunction.There's been a few, but one I'll always remember was in summer, 1985, when I was free-fall parachuting, using a round canopy.
I'd need to check my log book to confirm, but from memory, it was a 30 second delay, with a 360 degree turn to the right, followed by a 360 to the left.
I remember having a bit of bother shuffling to get out of the door of the Islander, but made a good, stable exit, went into stable free-fall and completed the turns, back onto the original heading. When I looked down to check my altimeter ( fastened onto the chest strap of my harness ), my "boogies" (goggles as used by horse jockeys ) had ridden up, and were across my eyes, blocking my vision. I eventually managed to see the altimeter dial, which was indicating 1, 800 feet, gasped, and then deployed the canopy, which was fully deployed by around 1,000 to 900 feet. ( deployment is supposed to be initiated at 2,500 feet !!).
After checking all round, I noticed something "floating" in my left peripheral vision, which turned out to be a snapped rigging line !
Re-checking the canopy, I now saw that three complete panels had blown out, and there were tears in a further four panels !!
It would seem that, when checking my altimeter, I had gone partially "head down", into a semi track, so instead of being stable at 120 mph, I was tracking across the sky at around 140 to 160 mph, hence the shock loading on the canopy and rigging lines !!!
I had two options to choose from, with about two seconds to decide - deploy the chest-mounted reserve canopy, or stay with it as it was, ride it down and expect a very hard landing, and possible injury.
I chose to stay with it, as the reserve very well may have deployed into the main canopy, causing a "bag of washing", tangling everything, leading to a very real disaster, possible serious injury or fatality.
Of course, I landed way off the airfield, in a corner of a farmers field, narrowly missing a wooden fence - but managed a relatively soft, stand-up landing, with no injury, except maybe to my pride.
It was a long walk back to the parachute center club house, where I received a bollocking from the chief instructor, for pulling low, although, as he knew I was just renewing my Category status, and having heard my explanation, he was OK about it.
After that little "incident" I changed my altimeter to wrist-mounted !!
Bummer! Zhills was a great place to jump. Mr. Douglas was cool too. It had a pretty good sound system and the rear bulkhead had a painting of the grim reaper pointing it's boney finger saying 'check thy gear'. No excuse to not get pin checks on Mr. D.I missed out on going to Z Hills in around 1987.
I used to manage a display tram at the time, and the lads were going over to the USA for a boogie at ZH, jumping Mr. Douglas. I was too busy with my job, and had a new daughre, just about 3 months old.
Those were magic times. Carefree, in a way, few responsibilities and hanging with people who were aviation freaks that happened to skydive. I'm sorry you missed out on the Zhills experience. Those DC-3/C-47/C-53's were great jump planes with history like participating in D-Day. And there was nothing like dirt diving some megablot 30 way that would end up funneling before more than 10 people got in. Great times!Yep, I remember that from the description the lads gave me on their return - and also remember all the tales of BBQ's and beer in the evenings, b*st*rds !!
Good for you, seeking a second opinion-- the first guy was a shitty doctor anyway.I've been on the fence about this experience, I really did not realize how many times I came sorta close to THE END plus this one might be objectionable to some. But it really happened, going back to the age of fourteen in the mid '70's when I started experiencing diarrhea off and on with the frequency increasing with time. By the time was I was fifteen-sixteen I started to lose weight, break out in abscesses, and just feel quite rundown most of the time. I called my malady 'assenfuego' as my butt was on fire most of the time. The summer I turned sixteen I played soccer with the YMCA with the rest of my high school team, as our coach said we really needed the practice. He wasn't wrong..... we were pretty bad.
It got to where before a game I'd have to sit in front of the air conditioner register and slap myself with with a cold wet rag to get enough energy to play. I lost my center half back position due to just running out of gas early in our games. My parents blamed it on personal issues like teen angst and stress and I couldn't figure out anything any better myself, so that's what we went with. Then school started back, and me, Sluggo, and several other kids who were in both CAP and NJROTC did a big combined group rappelling trip to a cave. I wasn't feeling well, but I went anyway, and while there I got assenfuego and wandered off into some boulders for a little privacy. With my pants down, I started throwing up too then passed out. My friends found me, cleaned me up and took me home. I was at a point where I could eat something and five minutes later it was passing chewed up but undigested otherwise. I lost forty pounds from my 155 pound frame, most of it muscle mass, and ended up in the hospital where the doc thought it had to be a tumor. So that's what they looked for.
I was in the hospital for a month as they did upper and lower GI"s with the hideous barium, laxatives, enemas, more imaging, stool samples blood work, but where was the tumor? There has to be a tumor..... I was in a bad way, literally starving to death despite having access to food. One morning the doctor asked me to follow him to a treatment room, so I shuffled along in my gown and tube socks. He patted an exam table and said "hop up here, head down butt up" and I did as asked. The nurse squeezed an entire tube of KY onto his gloved hands and I was lubricated, you know where, and while peeping from between by legs I saw the doctor take something that looked like a big glass syringe and as he said "deep breaths and relax" in it went, which hurt pretty bad, then he pulled back on the plunger thing and oh my gawd, the pain. In my mind I saw those little green plastic army men stabbing me with bayonets and I begged the SOB to pull the thing out. He said for some reason the damn thing, whatever it was, was not working anyway so mercifully he pulled it out.
I breathed a sigh of relief then felt the assenfuego coursing down and out, no way to stop it. The doctor was standing right behind me and I yelled "Doctor!! Look out!!" and then BBBBLLLLLAAAAATTTTT all over his chest. His white doctor coat was covered, so was his tie and shirt. He just stood there looking down at the mess as the nurse ran away as the smell was pretty bad. I started laughing. I could not help it, I just laughed and laughed.
After another month of more assenfuego and starvation and one foot in the grave, a different doctor in a different hospital did a biopsy of my duodenum and diagnosed Celiac Disease. My aspirations for a military career ended that day as Celiac is one of the medical conditions that the military will not take, no exceptions. I think the diagnosis and being told "NO" is a reason I took up mountain climbing, scuba and skydiving. Maybe, who knows. Once on a gluten free diet, which was tough to do back in 1977, my intestines slowly healed and weight came back and has not stopped.