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In Issue #16 – December 2010

The last issue of 2010 is now in the capable hands of the postman, making its way to your hot little hands. We hope that the holidays were kind to you and that your fallrate or wingloading did not increase to the point that you need to go up a size in the new year. But, if that did happen, gear dealers are standing by, ready to empty your wallet help.
Here is what you will soon be feasting your eyes upon:

  • Industry News: who was hired/fired – what’s new and exciting – any juicy gossip – is PD finally done with R&D on the Katana… no – wait, that already happened. You get our drift.
  • The Turkey Bastards: an epic story of “so close to the trophy I could lick it” in Z-Hills. Box of Kleenex required for reading.
  • Blue Skies MagBox: new! Letters to the magazine/editor. Someone FINALLY had something to say to us, read all about it!
  • RENO 411: This is THE FEATURE. If you are going to Reno, you must reads this to know what to do/not do. If you aren’t going, you must reads this to know what you are missing out on. If you don’t know what the hell Reno is, you really must read this. And the pictures. Illustrations. You must look at those too.
  • Women’s Vertical Formation World Record: Pretty pretty pictures and sort of a “who’s who” of the chickadee upside down world. Match the list of names to the girls in the pictures – provides for a fun activity on a weather day.
  • Turning Points: ok 4-way geeks, we listened. And brought in a specialist. Kurt from NSL will from now on provide insightful commentary on the bellyflying landscape.
  • Riggers, SkyHook and AAD’s: The Grim Rigger rattles your world once again by making you think about the downfalls of safety devices.
  • The Tandem “OH SHIT” Factor: Our favorite one so far. The Fuckin’ Pilot gets in touch with his softer side.
  • Trust Your Ducks: Melanie Curtis quacks up some hard core life-coaching wisdom.
  • Random Stranger: Meet Russ Haas – all the way from the mid-west.
  • And lastly, but really firstly: A Happy New Year Top Ten – where we count backwards some of our favorite feedback from our readers in 2010.

Thanks again for a great 2010 – and we are already looking forward to doing it all over (except bigger and better) in 2011!

In Issue #15 – November 2010

Yah, a little late with this post, but copies are still available, so I figured why not!

Here is what you missed out on:

  • SANS: Society for the Advancement of Naked Skydiving. Yep, exactly what it sounds like.
  • Jump for the Rose: Texas chicks break all kinds of records at Skydive Spaceland and raise funds for breast cancer research. Good job laides!
  • Dirty Pirate Hookers get a website and the Pink Mafia is resurrected by Merriah Eakins.
  • Top Ten Ways to Immaturely Deal With Adult Situations (such as close calls of your own or others).
  • Chicks Rock recap: a memo to the TEAM (that’s you) from Melsinore, plus some awesome photos.
  • The Joy of Freefall Sex. Soon to be our most requested column ever, written by Dick Gosinya and Blondie Shagswell.
  • Ladies’ Lodi Sequentials – Live Bigz. Love Life. Skydive, by Stephanie Soria. Lots of awesome pictures by Brian Buckland.
  • Learning to Fly – again. A little skydivers journey to becoming a paraglider.
  • PIMP centerfold showing Mike Steen scraping the ground, in FREEFALL.
  • No Shit, There I Was: Stuart Schoenfeld of team Slipstream Airsports tells a scary tale of almost not cutting away a Velocity 71.
  • Thou Shalt Not Tattoo: BSM readers’ response to a letter published in Parachutist magazine not long ago. Brilliant.
  • Show Me The Money: by the Fuckn’ Pilot. Rants of a tandem master who would like to get paid more. Funny as hell.
  • Kapow! Don’t miss this one, life coaching column by Melanie Curtis. The one and only.
  • SkyGod: spilling wisdom as always, answering burning questions.
  • Jump a Random Skydiver: Meet Kevin Brown of Skydive Chicago. Blue mowhawk and all.

Phew. There you go. So yeah, contact us if you want to get a copy – or if you want to subscribe and include this one, we can always talk about retroactive subscriptions as well.

March Madness

I just finished proofing the March issue from our brilliant designer, Pierre (who is a miracle worker, by the way) and I can’t decide if I’m super excited for everyone to get it or if I should hide in the closet until it’s next month’s kitty bin liner.

For starters, there’s our article on what happened at the Dubai swoop meet in January. Holy shit. I’ll probably have more to say about this in the future, but this thing has already made me lose sleep, caused my teeth to hurt from grinding and put about 8 pounds on me from stress eating. Maybe no one will care besides those named in the article, but clearly it’s made me think. The biggest issue for me, personally, was how to report a situation based entirely on what other people said happened, with some parties more than willing to tell their stories and others telling me that I’m a pretty terrible person and only doing this to bring shame and sensationalist drama to the sport and the event.

I’ve gone over it and over it, and I still think the story is worth telling, if only to tell the truth about a skydiving event for once. In general, I can’t stand event articles, because they’re all the same and never say much about what really happened. Something definitely happened in Dubai, and people are still upset about it. That alone is worth telling. And, not to burst anyone’s bubble, but the world of skydiving is not the roses and sunshine version you read about in association mags.

For the record, as I’ve said many times, the harsh light of reality is not appropriate for association mags. It’s their job to present the sport in the best light possible, and anything other than that would be an irresponsible use of member dollars.

We’re not an association publication. We don’t have to represent the sport in any light but the true one. In fact, you probably gave us your money because you wanted to read about what things are really like, so if anything, we have a duty to you to print the real stories, as ugly or uncomfortable as they may be.

In any case, this article in particular was difficult because it involved my friends. I don’t want them to be mad at me, but I also don’t want to disregard another person’s opinion or version of a story just because I don’t know them well or at all. I’m a silly person and don’t take much seriously, but ethics, fairness and morality is the exception. I can honestly say I did my very best to not take sides in this article and present the stories so you, the reader, could make up your own mind. I hope you’ll read it and send a letter to the editor (uh, that’s me, lara@blueskiesmag.com) with your reactions.

I also hope you don’t mind the text-heavy nature of this issue. There was a lot to say! Taya Weiss has a good article about the wingsuit drama and Melanie Curtis is starting an awesome new column about life coaching. Kolla and I both got chills reading it (even though we wouldn’t admit it to each other). Simon “Bones” Palacio teaches you how to brew your own beer! And Karen Woolem tells an epic couch-surfing/BASE jumping/Dudeism story that is 100% Californian.

Important notice: we are running out of booby pictures – both female and male – to print. Please send more!

See? We’d never go 100% serious on you ;)

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