What's 'The Worst That Could Happen'?
I skydived with a guy we called "D.B."--so did Creatrix, oddly enough. His nickname was short for "Dead Bob" and an homage to D.B. Cooper.
Ever had one o' those days? He came out of the plane just fine. After that the jump went to $#!7. Neither his main nor his reserve opened. He apparently survived falling from 10,000 feet because landing on his side distributed the destructive force better than landing flat.
He was three months in a coma and three months after that learning to walk again. Shortly after leaving the hospital (with a piece of paper explaining to all the people manning {personning?} all the metal detectors he might ever in his life have to walk through that he had 181 steel pins, plates, and screws holding him together), he was skydiving again.
This seemed to me to be tempting fate. But when I queried him about this he said:
"Well think about it: what's the worst that could happen?"
I had to admit he had a point.
posted by Metro @ 10:12 am
3 Comments:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/12/21/1166290658706.html
May be of interest. Seems to be a lot of it about. I remember reading about an allied airman (during ww2) who survived a similar fall when he landed in a snow drift.
When DeadBob told me about it, he said that his main semi-deployed and wrapped around his reserve, preventing it from opening. (Cutting away did no good.) He was probably doing 60 mph when he hit, instead of the 120 mph of terminal (heh) velocity. That's how he survived. When I used to jump with him, he had a football jersey with the number 76, and he'd lettered above it, "I SURVIVED THE CRASH OF". That's the year it happened to him. What a small world, that Ted and I both know him...
Metro, love, the word you're looking for is "staffing".
:p
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