Every chart has a story . . .
I can recall the very day I made that chart for Basic Research in the early 1990s (it was a Friday) and like a lot of things in BASE, there was a ying and yang to it.
Answering the phones at BR (and I'm sure for the other early manufacturers as well) in those days was a real lip biter sometimes. On the one hand we wanted to sell gear, wanted the sport to grow, but man - I wish now I had recorded some of those phone calls.
It's difficult to state BASE was in a transitional period back then because BASE is always in transition. Yet, the sport was indeed fundamentally changing from Carl Boenish's idea of a "small band of brothers" to, and I'm only slightly kidding now - a "large group of goofballs." It was the dichotomy of being around since before there were any real BASE gear manufactures to a time, like now, when anyone with a few BASE jumps can jump into the game. And that's pretty amazing when you think about it.
Luckily I knew Todd before he started building BASE gear as we were all part of the same small crew jumping everything in So Cal in the late 1980s. And I watched as he went from building gear only for his friends to first becoming T&T Rigging then Basic Research and now Apex BASE. Younger than me Todd was always smarter than me when it came to BASE. He realized long before any of us, if the sport was to survive and prosper, it would be through education and our getting away from the bandit image. I was open to that, but always thought, either way we'd always be all right as no one could ever stop BASE jumping. No matter our mistakes, no matter how many glory hounds, no matter what new laws were enacted, as long as there was one daring and curious boy with a parachute left in the world there would always be BASE jumping.
But I was living the BASE dream and Todd was running a business. When I read the words of today's young guns, I understand where they are coming from, because I hear Todd. I first met him in 1983 when he worked for me as jumpmaster at Lake Elsinore. Since then we've had a thousand arguments about BASE and he's still one of my best friends in the world and even though he had good reason to fire me over and over he never did.
So back to the chart.
When I first worked for BR it was rare for someone to call that I didn't know, or at least, hadn't heard of. They'd want this or that piece of gear and I merely processed the order. Then, and slowly at first, people started asking me what they needed. It was a sea change and one I was never entirely comfortable with. There were no full blown BASE courses in those days, and people were still getting into BASE the way we all had. You were an experienced enough skydiver and just figured it out. Or you didn’t, or were just unlucky, and wound up on the Fatality List I was keeping. It wasn't uncommon for me to be at my desk at BR working on the latest fatality report when the phone rang and some guy with a credit card, a hundred skydives, and no clue, wanted to buy the whole shebang. I'd go to Todd, and tell him I'm not selling to this guy, and Todd, bless his heart, would kiss the 2000 bucks away by saying, "That's cool, Nick." But you can’t do that forever and stay in business. So BR started doing for real first BASE courses.
With the luxury of looking back, and still being lucid enough to be able to look ahead, I wince a bit when I see the bravado in us being dissed. Like I wonder how we can talk about the latest potato fatality by throwing the guy overboard so easily. "Liquid courage," is bandied about (we used to call it partying) and for what? No object is worth a single life, but to save that object, to save those convenient jumps, it's become okay to throw one of our own to wolves. I don’t think so . . .
If your store-bought BASE jumps are that important to you, than I don’t know what to say to you. It's shitting on everyone who came before you. You may think you have that right, but you don't.
So back to the chart.
"Hey Todd, I'm getting a lot of calls, and it seems people are really confused about pilot chutes. How about we make a chart or something?"
"Yeah, that would be good," Todd answered, "until some lawyer pulls it out and says, ladies and gentleman of the jury - my client was following this chart and now he's dead."
But as much as Todd realized he'd mortgaged not only his own future, but the future of his wife and two boys on BASE jumping he never backed away from the getting sued thing. "Okay," he said, "show me what you come up with."
The first version of the chart and the one I showed him had only smiley and un-smiley faces on it, and he okayed that. I only added the skulls later and then we had argument about it. Todd was anti-death (before it was cool) while I was more of the Moe Viletto school of BASE where death is used as an educational tool. When I first met Moe I remember the first thing he said to me was, "Want to see some autopsy photos?"
Somewhere between Todd's and Moe's view of BASE seemed to be safe ground and it's the ground I staked out for myself. And only history will bear out who was right or wrong. I do, however, know one thing for sure. And you can say this about every name on the BASE Fatality List, they didn't fuck up, they just went BASE jumping . . .
NickD
BASE 194
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Originally Posted by nicknitro71
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