Re: [kiss_the_sky] Pussied Out Of My First A!
Thanks for sharing your experience; this is a great post. Good decisions like that will keep you kissing the sky and not the ground.
Knowing when NOT to jump is an important and often overlooked/underappreciated part of becoming a successful BASE jumper. Ah yes, I remember my first walk-down like it was yesterday. I was cutting my teeth with the Atlanta base crew back in the mid-to late 2000s, and like most brand new jumpers was super horney for jumps. Myself and another very new jumper went to jump a 400ish foot crane downtown that we had jumped the week earlier with our then mentor, who I’ll call BG. We were a little concerned about the wind once we got there but we figured, why not go up there and just see how it looks. So we hopped the fence, climbed the stairs, and made our way to the access point to the crane, a small catwalk that extended from the under-construction building to the stick about 100’ below the cab. From here surveyed the winds the best we could but they were no better; too strong, gusty, and blowing in a poor direction to fly and land in the primary landing area, an adjacent parking lot. We figured lets climb up to the cab and check it out because hell, there’s a wind meter up there, maybe we could even turn the thing on and move the boom over a better spot. Once we got in the cab we each took turns trying to convince the other why it was OK to jump or lay out some scenario of how we could successfully jump in the obviously garbage winds, “maybe if we open low and do a quick 180 we can land in that small spot between the giant pit and the pile of re-bar…” We each pointed out the obvious flaws in the other’s plan just to pitch an equally ridiculous alternative. It went on like this for over an hour as we waited for the conditions to improve. Then we started calling all the more experienced BASE jumpers we knew, none of whom had wanted to come out with us tonight for some odd reason, to get there opinion on the conditions and what our course of action should be. I realize now that we were not seeking guidance, we were seeking permission. We wanted someone with more experience to give us the green light, to tell us it was OK to jump, just go for it. We wanted to take the responsibility for that decision off our own shoulders. To their credit, none did.
Long story not as long, we eventually climbed down, walked down, hopped the fence again, and drove home. It was my first experience climbing down, and I was too young and too dumb to recognize the significance of it or appreciate it at the time, but I realized later how important it was in my development as jumper. Someone once told me, there are old BASE jumpers and there are bold BASE jumpers, but there are no old, bold BASE jumpers (admittedly, this point could be debated in another post). I’m working now on becoming an old BASE jumper, and I’m finding that suits me just fine. As it allows me to enjoy the sport and everything else life has to offer, hopefully for a long time. So remember, each time you jump when you shouldn’t and get away with something stupid or each time you climb down when conditions are dangerous, it becomes easier to do that thing next time… so make sure you’re reinforcing the behavior that will help you become an old BASE jumper. Just my humble opinion.
I tired to get good visualization but couldn't. 
