Canopyflyer

That's awesome!

I live about an hour away from Lake Geneva, WI, which is Gygax's hometown and the birthplace of D&D. I worked with someone that worked at TSR during the 2e days and he has a lot of stories. (The only thing he has to say about Gary Gygax is; "The guy owes me money.") Last April I attended a conference in Lake Geneva at the location of the very first Game Con. The Wisconsin Historical Society sponsored it. It was a great time and will be going back again this year.

My books look in great shape... From that angle. LOL... They have thousands upon thousands of hours of playing behind them over the last 40 years. Every page has smudges on them from where they've been turned again and again.

Here are the older edition books I have. My 1e DMG and PH have been lost to time. That copy of the Monster Manual is one of the originals. The Deities and Demigods though is NOT one of the issues with HP Lovecraft's monsters in it. I have seen one of those editions, one of my local games stores has one for sale for over $300, but that's not what I have. Not shown are all the 5e stuff I have. In my youth it was a challenge to save up enough to buy material when it came out. As an adult, especially since I got the wife playing, yeah... I've indulged quite a bit.

I had two full rigs, both containers were Sunpaths. One Javelin and one of the first Odysseys off the production line (this is going back a ways.) Both rigs had PD mains and PD reserves, plus CYPRES AAD's. On top of several jump suits, including three that were competition quality with larger grips and reinforced seams. I competed in both 4-way and 8-way.

I am overstating things just a bit with the down payment on the house, but I did pay for the wedding and honeymoon to Maui by selling most of my gear. I actually still have my Javelin container. It's from 1995 and lacks the bridal protection that the later containers all have, so even back then it was obsolete and wasn't worth much.

54M here. Rolled my first D&D character in 1978. Played GURPS, Twighlight 2000, Traveller, you name it I probably have at least dabbled in playing it.

Today I play D&D 2024 and 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Castles and Crusades and a few others. Some on Roll20, or Foundry VTT (which is awesome BTW.) My primary gaming group is all fathers and mothers spread out across the country.

As far as actual Computer games, I used to be into Flight Sims, but dropping $500 plus on JUST a graphics card is just not something that is going to happen. It's not the wife acceptance factor, it the sheer balls the graphics card manufacturers have charging that much for their crap. I still dust off MS FS 2004 and run it on my Dell Precision laptop, but my machine won't run the latest version. I would like to see if it would run Battlestar Galactica Deadlock though.

Otherwise, I have had a home server for many years. It runs Proxmox and I have containers running Plex, Homeseer, SMB (acts as my NAS), and it provides backup services for every other computer in the house.

For reference, I am an IT Professional, with about 30 years in the business.

I have several direct antecedents that lived over 100. The last was my paternal grandmother, who died in 2004 at the age of 103. She was born in 1901 and outlived 3 of her 6 children (one child was stillborn). Her last child, my Dad, died just this past February at the age of 88. He was the youngest.

I live in Wisconsin and have a co-worker that lives in the general Tallahassee area. She sent me some photos of her making snow angels. She has a LOT more snow on the ground than we do.

It's rather disturbing.

Former skydiver.

Performed a lot of Demonstration jumps into everything from airports, race tracks, professional sports stadiums, high school sports stadiums, golf courses, and a few other places that required skill and knowledge to land in safely.

Also, spent a lot of time teaching canopy skills to up and coming jumpers.

I KNEW IT!

I'M A LESBIAN!!!!!

I've known my whole life and it's a relief to FINALLY to be able to come out officially.

THANK YOU PRESIDENT RUMP!

Both my competition and Demo teams decided to call it quits, for various reasons. One was we were all burnt out and it caused some of the deep seated interpersonal issues in the teams to explode. That actually all happened in 2004 and I jumped another two years. However, by that time I had met and started dating Mrs Canopyflyer, who is not a jumper. No, she did not force me to quit. Being with her just made me realize that there were other things I wanted to do in life. I'm also neurodivergent, so when I burn out, I tend to burn out completely and have to leave what ever activity that caused me to be in that state. So I sold my gear, turned that money into a wedding, honeymoon, and down payment on a house. We've been together 20 years and have two kids.

Today, I'm old and have a bad back so there is no going back, but I have no regrets.

They can go as high as they have fuel and oxygen for. The highest skydives ever were all done from balloons, although they were helium and not hot air balloons.

I'm in the USA, so a BASE rig would be illegal to use from a Balloon. Any jumper exiting from an aircraft must carry two parachutes, one of which is packed by an FAA Certified Senior or Master Rigger. The other chute must be packed by a Senior, or Master Rigger, someone under the direct guidance of a Rigger, or the person who would be jumping the chute. BASE rigs typically do not carry a reserve as there typically isn't enough time to deal with malfunctions.

To specifically answer your question, yes I used a sport skydiving rig. The lowest was from 2500 feet, so essentially I pulled my pilot chute right as I exited the basket (at least that's the story I tell). I've jumped from as high as 5k on other balloon jumps. Early in my career I jumped a Sunpath Javelin J2. Later I had a Sunpath Odyssey. The only BASE jump I've ever made was off the bridge in West Virginia and even that was using a sport rig where the main parachute was modified with a mesh slider and a BASE pilot chute.

My favorite was being the only jumper going up. There were 4 or 5 other passengers plus the pilot. She took off from the DZ and the DZO told her if she used his airport, yes he owned it, then she had to take at least one jumper up. No one else was ready to go, as it was really early in the morning, so I got to go. The eyes on those passengers when I jumped... Oh man you would have thought they were seeing someone killing themselves. I was probably safer than they were.

I've been retired from skydiving since 2006.

54m here for reference.

Best long term romantic relationship: We will be celebrating 20 years married this year. Two kids and we're well on our way to spending our dotage together.

Best Friend: We've been friends for 5 years. Have literally played hundreds of hours of D&D and other role playing games, along with a group of fellow fathers and mothers that all like family. We got to play D&D in Lake Geneva, WI at the very birthplace of Game Cons this past year. That was pretty great.

Familial (specifically, blood relations): Terrible. My parents are dead and I would be estranged from them now if they were still alive. Estranged from both my older brothers. I have no plans to reconcile with them. They made their choices and it did not involve their younger brother. I have a FB connection to ONE of my many many first cousins.