Alternative Bridge Day

[d-dog]

I will not be attending Bridge Day this year.

Tom makes a number of valid and substantive points to the contrary. Here, at core, are my reasons for disagreeing in the final analysis:

1. Breach of civil liberties in demanding more information on me than is required when I board a plane to fly across my own country. This is a big issue for me, both philosophically and practically. Anyone who ignores this is implicitly supporting this over-reaching travesty.

2. Clear effort on the part of the NPS to squeeze the life out of BASE at Bridge Day, and thus seal their denial of BASE jumping in our national parks. They know that many active jumpers will not accede to the data requested, and thus BD will turn into a circus for newbies and skydivers. This will then be used to justify the closure of all NPS lands to legitimate jumpers. We are better served by vocally and publicly PULLING OUT of this travesty, than going along quietly and watching it happen with no chance for protest.

3. Today, there is no need for new jumpers to go to BD to learn how to jump safely. Nowadays, the gear manufacturers offer sound and effective first-jump courses that are within the financial means of any motivated American citizen. Someone too cheap to invest in these courses, and too lazy to learn through apprenticeship to a senior jumper (as I and many other jumpers still do outside of BD or any other organized event), does not belong in our sport.

4. I feel that BASE will develop in this country through positive interaction with local communities that WANT us to visit and jump. BD has turned into a cancerous monster where the BASE jumpers are a small sideshow. We need events where BASE is central; this is what will change hearts and minds, first locally and then nationally.


The best alternative day I can see is a weekend at the Perrine, organized in conjunction with the local authorities. The event should be publicized as an "alternative to Bridge Day" so as to make the point about NPS over-reaching and why BASE jumpers are not attending the BD in West Virginia. There should be an organizing committee, minimum jump standards, etc.

If there can be more than one (foresthill, etc.), all the better.

In sum, let the market handle this problem. Local communities will see the benefits that Twin Falls and any other venues reap from such events, and every year there will be more and more. Rather than one big, unwieldy, government-micromanaged event let us have a dozen smaller, local, positive ones around the country - and around the world.

Bridge Day is dead - long live Bridge Day! I am a new jumper and never attended a "real" BD as a jumper (though I was in town climbing several years). I missed the heyday of BD, and I mourn that. But the past is the past, and the future will never be the same in West Virginia. Rather than battling against an uphill current, let us expend our energy to organize friendly, positive, citizen-supported events. That's what BD was when it started, after all.

Criticism/feedback/etc. appreciated.

Peace,

D-d0g
ddog@wrinko.com
www.wrinko.com

[imported_Tom Aiello]

>2. Clear effort on the part of the NPS to
>squeeze the life out of BASE at Bridge Day, and
>thus seal their denial of BASE jumping in our
>national parks. They know that many active
>jumpers will not accede to the data requested,
>and thus BD will turn into a circus for newbies
>and skydivers. This will then be used to justify
>the closure of all NPS lands to legitimate
>jumpers. We are better served by vocally and
>publicly PULLING OUT of this travesty, than
>going along quietly and watching it happen with
>no chance for protest.

I disagree. If enough people pull out, Bridge Day will fail. If Bridge Day fails, BASE loses it's only foothold in NPS land.

I doubt we will ever gain another foothold if this happens.

--Tom Aiello
tbaiello@ucdavis.edu