Re: [esiwluap] Group Dynamics in BASE
>>I am a champ at climbing down. I have more climb downs than I have jumps.<<
That's a Nugget . . .
On the subject of "group dynamics" you can track how it's changed over the years . . .
At first in the early 1980s we celebrated any achievement no matter what it was. By the mid-80s we were starting to realize some behaviors were detrimental to the sport, but we threw up our hands and called it trying to herd cats.
By the early-90s we thought organizing was the key to our survival. In the mid-90s we turned BASE into skydiving and starting holding meets and handing out trophies. By the late 90s the first generation of BASE started retiring and it became a fact you could make a thousand BASE jumps if you were really really careful. And also several BASE jumpers were jailed and a few lost their lives because they truly believed in the cause.
In the first years of 2000 the largest influx of jumpers appeared thinking they had the world by the balls. They were truly the first generation that could purchase BASE gear off the shelf and not have to cob something together from parts. They had access to more legal sites than ever before.
By mid-2000 the brotherhood of BASE jumping, in the largest sense was all but gone. Getting a BASE number became quaint and anyone could hang out a mentor's shingle and call it death camp. The BASE fatality rate soared from a few a year, to a few a month.
In 2007 the freedom to jump in Europe is hanging by a thread, it's the year that will be remembered as the beginning of the decline of Bridge Day, and when too many BASE jumpers sold out the sport to corporate interests. National Parks jumping is still unresolved. Some BASE jumpers will be remembered for following the Hell's Angles example and cloaking their activities in the guise of charity events.
The question of what the future holds, must include specific laws banning BASE, gear manufactures being sued out of existence, and the result of the idea Maggot can write the word BASE in shit at the exit point and nobody says much. That doesn't bode well for us.
The thing you have to ask yourself is a purely political one - are we better off than we were in the early 1980s?
I know full well I sometimes sound like the voice of doom and gloom to younger jumpers here. But I know if Mike Allen was here, if Rick Payne was here, if Mark Hewitt was here, if John Hoover was here, if Nigel Slee was here, if Dennis McGlynn was here, if Frank Gambalie was here, if Jan Davis was here, if Don Swazye was here, if J.D. Walker was here, and if Matt McCarter and Lane Kent were here - they would all be telling you the same thing.
And when I'm finally gone it will only be Maggot and the word BASE written in shit . . .
NickD
BASE 194
