Look...Reach...Pull

We wear parachutes all the time. Occasionally we talk about using them. But very few of us have ever jumped. Despite this, we seem to be confident in our ability to do the right thing in an emergency. How hard could it be? Dive over the side and pull the ripcord...nothing to it, right?

Wrong.

Yesterday afternoon Sonny, Mike, Skip, Rick, Nancy, Gordon, Tom and Mary traveled to West Lebanon where Gregg presented "Jump school for dummies." It was fascinating. Gregg took us through the procedure in great detail. We learned the right way to do it, and we learned the consequences of the myriad ways of doing it wrong. We all got the chance to pull the ripcord, and we got to watch Nancy demonstrate proper steering technique.

Gregg pointed out that there is a lot more to survival than bailing out properly. We learned how to swim out from under the parachute, how to get down from a tree or a powerline, and the wisdom of attaching a survival kit to the harness.

Gregg, who has experienced about 3000 more takeoffs than landings in aircraft, has agreed to give the talk again later in the Spring. He also directed us to some reading materials.

And now for today's trivia questions: a) which club member (other than Gregg) most recently made a descent by parachute? and b) which member has bailed out of a glider in an actual emergency? The first right answer wins a fantastic prize (to be determined later).