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Comment by Harry Moore on June 21, 2008 at 4:31pm

This tale is a walking contradiction,
Partly truth and partly fiction…………………………………

And the farmer says,
”What’s time to a pig?”
(Dave works this saying into almost every conversation he has over the next nine days)

But this isn’t a tale of farmers or pigs or time or even a tale of character or character building,. Instead it is a tale of characters.

Growing up in the seventies I was surrounded by characters, never suspecting life would ever be any different. And going to college in the seventies, my goodness, there was a character on every corner and fifteen between you might say. When I lived in the bar section of town I would wake up in the morning and there would be three characters sitting on my front porch and two more outback.

The abundance of genuine characters perhaps diminished my true appreciation of characters, after all I was rich with characters in my life and why should life change?

Change it did,
The Cars may say, “Life’s the same except for my shoes.”
But there was a point in my life when I said,
“Life’s the same except for my characters.”
Upon entering the working world characters slowly became fewer and farther between.
Real characters slowly assimilated into the mass culture or moved to faraway lands.

My list of characters dwindled and I despaired. And when it seemed as if characters might be endangered in my life and the character tide was at its low ebb………….I discovered rock climbing and skydiving.

These sports were populated almost entirely by characters. I suspect it is a lot easier to become a climber or a jumper if you are already a character. Normal people are just not as easily attracted to scaling sheer rock faces or jumping from airplanes in flight.

So if you are already a little (or a lot) off center you either find these sports or these sports find you, either way its one big grab bag of characters. Climbers are character coated characters with character filling dipped in character sauce and jumpers are character volcanoes spewing flaming wads of molten character.

I am sure there are some normal climbers and jumpers out there, it’s just that I don’t see them around much.

So now you are asking,
“Hey Harry—what’s a normal guy like you (LOL) doing mixed up with a bunch of characters?”

Well I guess someone has to keep tabs on all the characters out there for documentation purposes if nothing else. Maybe I’m here to provide Yin to all their Yang?

In skydiving there are so many characters it takes a huge dose of character to stand out and some of this tale is about one such character.

And the farmer says,
“What’s time to a pig?”

And I wonder-- what’s time to Dave Ruckert? Time with Dave is not linear as it is with most of us. I know folks who knew Dave from The Gulch in Coolidge, Arizona
(Ghoulidge we call it because those guys were seriously disturbed)
in the seventies and they say Dave looked exactly the same then as now.

Dave has circular logic and radial reasoning. He will answer any question you ask him but not always in linear order.


I asked Dave----
Why is the inter-tropical convergence zone so prone to turbulence in the flight levels?

And he answered,

“The reason the jump plane always uses the south runway is that the kangaroos are especially aggressive at the north end and must be avoided at all costs.”

We are in the Australian bush or the outback depending on who is doing the storytelling and the dingoes and kangaroos and wallabies are peripherally in attendance. The serious outback vehicles here have bull bars and they are for avoiding damage when you collide with a horny bull kangaroo during the rut when they are most aggressive and unlikely to yield to vehicles. And Dave says, But what’s time to a pig……………

And in all honesty I had asked Dave yesterday why the jump plane always departs the same direction regardless of the prevailing wind so he is answering my questions--- just not in the order I have asked them.

Dave is one of those folks most of us were lucky enough to know in the seventies and might still know. The type of folks that have grown all too scarce in the world these days. Things being what they are, things are not always what they seem and I wonder how the world appears to Dave through his multi-colored glasses?

This is The POPS World Meet and we are an outpost in the bush with two hundred jumpers from twenty different countries. The chance to renew old friendships and make new friends is what makes these events fun. Betty and I will always remember the exact circumstances of how we met Renata, The Northern California girl who turned out to be an amazing person and someone we now feel fortunate to call a friend.

We are eating, carousing, laughing, crying and bonding in our little U.N. encampment. This event is similar to a festival from the seventies only everyone in the crowd is in the band as it were. We are all participants of this event of our own creation. Triumph and Tragedy will all play out in a very real way over the next nine days. There will be one death and three hospitalizations but there will also be many good times and renewed friendships. I’m comin’ down fast but don’t let me break you. We will hit the high notes but also troll the low ones. We will lose one of our friends to an auto accident right after the event’s opening ceremonies. Helter Skelter and it all goes dark.

We are vaguely arrayed in little nation-villages, with The Danes over yonder, The Russians to our left, The Italians to our right, The Swiss across the way, I got blisters on my fingers, She comes in colors everywhere and tonight I smell the sweet leaf wafting up from one of The Southern Hemisphere Camps. One guy there has the perfect Aussie accent and the Russians come by drinking that clear liquid of theirs straight up-- no chaser, no mixer and find their favorite Aussie standing by the fire and by this time they do not even explain themselves anymore-- they simply go up to Graham from OZ and demand—Say it Say it, SAY IT!!!

And Graham obliges them with;

“That’s not a knife, this is a knife mate.”


That scene will play out at least five times tonight and the Russians wander off roaring and backslapping. They have an interpreter by the name of—What else?---Svetlana who Betty and I have buddied up to, now I have two Russian girlfriends, Svetlana and Natasha, what can I say?, Something about that name—Natasha----really sends me and Natasha has a wild streak which works out well with this crowd. She thinks I am wicked funny cause I always come up behind her and whisper,
“Must get Moose and Squirrel”

H----e---y I cannot resist and turning fifty is about growing older but not up as Jimmy Buffet is fond of saying.


When you see the Southern Cross
For the first time
You understand now
Why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from
Is so small.
But it's as big as the promise
The promise of a comin' day.^^^^CSN



And when it all gets too weird I just go and lay in the grass and stare at The Southern Cross amid a starry sky that is strange to me and let Crosby, Stills and Nash take me away to that special place…and wonder can that really be The Milky Way splashed across the night sky?

But I’m really here to talk about Dave, even though he is the first to tell you—
“Dave’s not here man.”

But Dave says they told him he was in Viet Nam so he must have been there and Dave wears a Woodstock 1969 t-shirt that says, “They tell me I was there.”


Initially I was convinced Dave was a character but upon further observation I realize there is a good chance he is also an actual Force Of Nature. I have made the acquaintance of several bonafide Forces Of Nature during this all too short walk through life and I cherish each and every one of them. You have an actual Force Of Nature on your friend list and that counts as like fifty+ regular friends.

The local FM station held a multi day remote broadcast at The Drop Zone and interviewed any and all who strayed too close to their booth but asked everyone virtually the same questions so when they asked me,

“What does your family think about you skydiving?

I told them, “My family doesn’t know I jump from airplanes” and then I asked the DJ to assure me this wasn’t being broadcast in The States so my secret would be safe.

She took the bait and asked,

“Well then, what does your family think you are doing when you are out skydiving?”

And I deadpanned,

“My family thinks I play piano in a cathouse”.---

---- Even the sound engineer about fell out of his chair laughing. The hostess thought it was all good fun and did not seem in the least offended, just went on to the next question, gotta love that Aussie sense of humor.

It’s an old skydiver joke, don’t know if whuffs think it’s funny but jumpers do. We know why the birds sing and whuffs do not. Behind blue eyes, John Wilsey our Disciple of Flail always says,
Freak The Whuffs!”………………..but at least it was well received.

Dave raised more than a few eyebrows with his interview when he actually blurted out on the air, in response to the question,
“How long have you been skydiving?”

“Between the LSD and the marijuana it’s hard to remember.”

Dave was kidding by the way, at least I think he was kidding….and he did say so on the air immediately but some folks were less than happy with him for that one………..But what’s time to a pig?

Let me explain some of this---- jumpers are often portrayed as death seeking nut jobs by the media at large (why is the media “at large”? Can’t we corral these folks?)

And so we figure we are just irreverent enough to give it right back to them. In 1998 when we did the Texas State Record in San Marcos the local FM station was there doing interviews when the nine way base all dropped their drawers during the interview (male and female) and mooned the interviewer, true this would have been better had it been television but you work with what you have, right? There was some dead air during that interview but what’s time to a pig?

Comin’ in from Los Angeles
Bringin’ in a couple of Ki’s
Mr. Customs man don’t search my bags if you please.~~~A.G.

So we are attempting The Australian National POPS Record and we are so close to getting it we can all taste it but every jump some little thing goes wrong, so close but yet so far and Dave rallies us with the story of how Kirby sold so many vacuum cleaners in Seattle in 1955 and I for one thought we would set the new National Record on that jump but it was not to be. And what was Kirby’s secret?

The salesmen all shouted this each morning,

“I FEEL GREAT TODAY!”

“You set sail across the sea, long past thoughts and memories
Childhoods end-- your fantasies merging fast with new realities.”~~~~ Childhoods End P.F.


TALENT NIGHT

At the talent contest, which the Americans did not win but easily got the most raucous crowd response for our answer to the ugly American, Dave got to do a solo act since he holds dual OZ/US citizenship. And Dave starts in with a jump story from Seattle in the sixties. That degenerates in to several interwoven tales of the sixties and Dave gets gonged but continues unrepentant. Finally three of the Aussie girl judges literally pick Dave up off the floor as he clutches the mike and continues his tale. Seeing they are going to carry him past the reach of the mike cord he closes with, “Stay away from the Brown Microdot, stay away from the Brown Microdot! And I wondered if he yelled this at Woodstock or “thank you, you’ve been a great audience.” as he was removed from the stage. A force of nature indeed---and after all---What’s time to a pig?

FEED THE BEAST

First it helps to understand the nature of the beast. The beast is always hungry and looking to be fed.
Snowboarders have a saying, ”you can’t carve what you haven’t tasted.” Meaning if you are not eating it once in awhile you really are not going for it and there are times when you gotta go huge or go home.
?”> Skydivers have a similar saying----Blue Skies, Black Death or BSBD for short. The beautiful blue sky is our playground and we love it, but Black Death is always lurking and sadly is the occasional price we pay for the privilege of enjoying the sky as we do.

I threw the beast a morsel twice in the last week, both during the record attempts. The first time was when I got sloppy on an exit from 15,000 feet, we had done a go around at altitude and maybe hypoxia clouded my judgment but I was careless on my exit from the hero slot (last out of the plane) and I struck the back of the plane as I was leaving, pure carelessness on my part, I know how to prevent this, but oh well. I immediately feel my arm for signs of being broken. With the adrenaline pumping it is not uncommon to do serious damage and be unaware till later when the adrenal surge subsides. Later on the ground I found chunks of flesh absent from my arm and Renata took one look and said, “Door Food” and she was right. Feed the beast……….


The second time I fed the beast on approach to landing. I tangled with an Australian whirly whirly.
The Aussies pronounce it so it sounds like willy willy. In the states we call them Dust Devils and they are the skydivers’ bane in the deserts of Arizona and California. They grow big in the super heated desert air-----over a thousand feet high and robust—lasting for thirty minutes or more---in The Sonoran Desert and kill or maim unwary jumpers on occasion including some folks I have known. Here in the outback we have not seen the monsters we are used to in the desert but they are here nonetheless and just as vicious given the right circumstances.

I was on approach to landing at about five hundred feet when my parachute snapped, crackled and popped like a wet towel in the gym locker room. I looked up and thought, “What the hey?”
When it cracked like a whip again and the light began to dawn on me, Oh boy, I’m in the maw of The Willy Beast.

I have to escape but in which direction?, crosswind or upwind is always best but which is which? I look at the wind sock and get another CRACK. Crosswind looks to be the surest path to escape. But ole Willy Willy is not done yet. He circles back around me just as I am landing.

I am just beginning my landing flare when ole Willy sneaks up and pushes me from behind like the school yard bully. And I’m thinking, “But what’s time to a pig? And is there anymore time for Harry?” as I experience a huge increase in ground speed rather than a gradual decrease and landing as would be normal.

Here comes the PVC pipe the windsock is mounted on--- right for me. Collision is imminent and at this point unavoidable, all that is left for me as a canopy pilot is to try to minimize potential extensive damage as they say.

At the last possible second I turn on a dime to avoid a full body plant right on the pole. Unfortunately the dime was attached to the windsock. Let the rodeo begin, I bounce off the PVC pipe swapping paint and skin with it and careen off it like a pinball. I make contact with the ground several times at several angles and even though I am wearing a full face helmet I am spitting out rocks and grass as I bounce ass over teakettle.

My sight picture goes Blue-Green-Blue-Green till I tumble to a stop. I lie on the ground and take stock. Yea Roadie, I’m conscious and all my parts are still attached……………... but my kneecap hurts like the dickens.

Natasha the Russian gal lands next to me and begins asking a million questions in her native tongue and I just lay there looking up at her and think, “Natasha, I should have known it would be you.” That is the wildest body plant I have had in thirteen years and there’s nothing like doing it in front of a pretty Russian Girl . “Hey Natasha, Help me up, must get moose and squirrel.”

Natasha laughs and then Dave Ruckert lands beside us and says,
“Hey Harry, thanks for the show, you really cracked me up! But what’s time to a pig?”

Well, there you go. I have had the pleasure of being entertained by characters for a good portion of my life and now I have returned the favor. Doowha, Doowha……………………………..


=======================================================================




Apple Eater
There was a man from the city who was visiting a small farm, and during this visit he saw a farmer feeding pigs in a most extraordinary manner. The farmer would lift a pig up to a nearby apple tree, and the pig would eat the apples off the tree directly. The farmer would move the pig from one apple to another until the pig was satisfied, then he would start again with another pig. The city man watched this activity for some time with great astonishment.
Finally, he could not resist saying to the farmer, "This is the most inefficient method of feeding pigs that I can imagine. Just think of the time that would be saved if you simply shook the apples off the tree and let the pigs eat them from the ground!" The farmer looked puzzled and replied,
"What's time to a pig?"

Comment by Harry Moore on June 10, 2008 at 5:32pm

Flailers way down south

Comment by Harry Moore on June 10, 2008 at 5:29pm

Comment by Anne Chambers on May 12, 2008 at 9:18am

Can't wait to fly with you guys when I head out to visit this summer!!!

Comment by Glen Medley on April 30, 2008 at 2:41pm

This was an early Team Flail Record Attempt at a 50-Way.

Comment by Harry Moore on April 18, 2008 at 8:13am

Representing Team Flail in New Zealand on U.S tax day. We jumped at Lake Wanaka and all managed to board the correct aircraft. Since there was no tram we could not claim extra points for all getting on the correct tram. We did the Team Flail secret hand shake in the plane to amuse the tandems and it worked!

Comment by CHONG on April 2, 2008 at 1:54am

toad...need i say more

Comment by Anne Chambers on April 2, 2008 at 12:13am

Miss you guys!!!

Comment by Harry Moore on April 1, 2008 at 7:16pm

"Airspeed eat corn dog----
Flail eat corn dog."

One of John Wilsey's pre-jump inspirational speeches to the troops.