Thanks
It took me a while to articulate this the way I wanted, here goes. I came into this experience with little knowledge of what BASE really was or how it was going to effect my life. It was mainly just a next step, and it became something that will never truly leave me. It has become part of who I am and has made me the person that I have become. It has instilled more confidence in me than anything that has ever touched my existance. I never imagined that things like this were possible, let alone that I would be able to do a lot of those things. I owe BASE my life, literally, because I would still be a marginally overweight, money addicted person who is looking for something to fill the hole I have inside myself. I stopped believing in amazing (even magical, as corny as it may be) things. BASE made me feel good. It felt right. It made me
believe again. It made me believe you
could do the things everyone else says were impossible. I realized that money wouldn't always be there, and I realized that the hole I am trying to fill may never be filled, and that is okay, because maybe it is the end that fills it. I think all of us who are fortunate enough to take from this what I have, owe it to themselves to help people along the path, to find, maybe, what they have found. BASE scares me, and when people want to take it up, I want to tell them how dangerous, scary, and deadly it is. I want to tell them about cutting signatures and email addresses out of logbooks, shaking the hands of dead people. I want to tell them about the addiction of it all, the downward spiral that some people find. Then I remember what it would be like if I hadn't done that first jump a little over a year ago, and I think about how different I would be without
all of it. The way I express my feelings, the things I tell people, the decisions I make, are all effected by the fact that I may not walk away from this or that jump. I may not even survive. I left my house once to go downtown, solo, to do two jumps off of two different B's. As I left my house, a thought flashed through my head. Not a thought like those crazy things we all think sometimes that you brush off as sub-concious, but a
real thought. I thought,"What if this is the last time I leave my house?". I'll never forget how that felt, or what it made me realize. It made me appreciate life and the people in it so much more. I think what it has done, truly, is made me in a lot of ways a better person. So seriously, thank all of
you, I have learned more from everyone I have met along the way than you all could ever realize. I can't even thank all of the appropriate people, there are too many, and not all of them are here anymore. I could never keep something this amazing from anyone who truly wants it, not with how much I love it, not with how much it has made me love. I can only hope everyone in the world can find that in something, someday. Thanks again.
Adam Foster
BASE 921