Re: [laird] It's 3'o clock have you seen your ninja skills?
In reply to:
I can't help but think that the majority of those jumps are legal. I could be wrong..[].. but what if you didn't count your legal jumps. Would that cut your BASE experience in half?
...maybe these busts lately are because of the lack of knowledge (ninja skills) being passed down (or the participants were just stupid). So the question is “Are we losing the skills needed to pull off such jumps?”
Ok. Without trawling though my logbooks, i'd say 75% of my jumps are non legal - that is, required trespassing. The rest are pretty much big walls in europe or the few small cliffs we have over here which although not condoned are not illegal.
So now to the main issue. Firstly, the implied connection between lack of ninja skills and recent busts. Well firstly, I'd have to question whether there is ANY increase in busts lately. Probably not.
As to whether some of the recent busts are down to stupid jumpers and lack of ninja skills... well you'd have to be specific as throwing together jumps as diverse as the recent aussie one, my recent bust at Wembley and the guy who PCA'd a mate off a building in the states and climbed down to a welcoming party....each case on it's own merits.
Getting busted on a remote antenna because you elected to jump it; in the middle of the day, when a farmer was in the fields near-by or when engineers were on site, well you could notch that up to bad practice, lack of common sense and lack of ethics.
Getting busted jumping an occupied building because Police happened to be driving by just as you land.....well that's an issue which could be hotly debated here. Some will argue that you shouldn't have jumped the building at all if there was any chance of getting busted, others would argue that jumping is about calculated risks, and busts like injury, are all a part of the equation.
Similarly, many of us will have run out onto motorway (highway/interstate) bridges to jump from the centre or have been dropped off by getaway drivers at the middle. It's all down to good or bad luck as to whether a police car happens to drive past at that exact moment. Day or night?
The one thing i would say is that people really seem to be buying in to this 'ninja' stealth idea that being cunning is going to ensure you don't get caught. That's naive rubbish. Canopies do not understand the concept of stealth. When they open, they let the world know. When they do, there's a certain amount of luck involved in who happened to be in earshot at that exact moment.
Can you really account for every security guard, every police officer, every have-a-go hero?
Yes certain measures can be employed, basic common sense applied but just like physically surviving a BASE jump, a big chunk of it boils down to raw luck.
Some jumpers take the absolute piss and get away with it for years. Some take all the cautious measures they can and still pay the price.
Me. I live and work in the Capital which I believe pre-disposes me to greater bust risks than if i lived in a more rural area. I don't have to do the jumps I do, but I choose to, and when I do them I go in with eyes wide open.
I'll take the necessary precautions to avoid getting busted but some jumps, and specifically the one I was busted on recently which I guess you may have alluded to as it was mentioned in a thread here, well, some jumps you either do them or you don't...and doing them nearly assures you of getting busted. I was willing to do that and I have no regrets whatsoever...well a few minor ones if i'm honest.
What I can say is that I would have regretted not seizing the moment and going for that jump forever. The window of opportunity would have passed and I might have spent years thinking 'if only'.
That is not why I started jumping. I BASE jump to turn 'what ifs' and 'if onlys' into real incredible experiences. As corny as that sounds....I'd say that pretty much sums it up for me, so the odd bust, providing I've done all i can to minimise that risk and the impact of my actions on others (beyond not jumping) is something I can live with, and at the end of the day, I have to live with myself and not with the few who would piously use any opportunity to slap me down.
ian
ps. and i'm not suggesting you were being pious.
