We have discussed here many issues that relate to being in the air. Today we will discuss a serious problem that occurs on the ground. Not everyone is vulnerable to this problem. If you are, you may either be unaware of it, or you may keep it a secret. It is an expensive problem that can cause marital strife. It starts simply and insidiously grows to be a greater problem over time. This problem is …. Being a “gear head”. Some of you noobs who are struggling to find and pay for gear cannot imagine that someone could have too much jumping gear! Trust me… it can happen. It will be much easier to talk about this problem if I come clean at the beginning: “Hello. My name is Jim and I am a gear head.” Wow… it feels so good to get that off my back! “What is a gear head?” A gear head has an affinity for acquiring and keeping skydiving gear. Some of the gear is jumpable; some has seen better days. A gear head always can see the potential in a piece of gear, even if it was made during the Reagan administration. “How can this be bad?” you might ask. Well…. I honestly don’t know how many harness/containers and reserve canopies I have in my gear room [counts on fingers]. I think I have four harness/containers, two of which are ready to jump; two “need some work”. Reserves? Um…. Five? Possibly my biggest pile of odd gear is my collection of pilot chutes and bridles in various stages of wear, repair, or cannibalism. I even have a variety of main canopies… only three today (there were four a few days ago). Bear in mind that these numbers EXCLUDE my wife’s gear. I have multiple hook knives of various types, helmets, and a collection of connector links of various types and vintage. I have only been in the sport seven years… imagine what the gear heads who have been around several decades have! Since I am not obsessively neat (which would be a virtue for a gear head) my gear room often looks like a tornado sucked up all the gear at a small DZ and dumped it in every corner! Fortunately, my wife is quite tolerant of my gear antics. As long as I keep the stuff in the “gear room” and she never knows how much $$$ is involved… she is tolerant of my addiction. Enough about me… how can you tell if this is happening to you and what can you do about it? Clues to being a gear head are that: --You have more gear than you can use. --You aren’t sure how much gear you have. --You see the potential in almost all gear… no matter how old and worn. --You don’t flinch when you see fabric cutaway housings. How to manage this addiction: --Avoid seeing old unloved gear… Don’t attend “old gear” sales. Stay OUT of your rigger’s “old gear” closet! --Set a hard limit on how long an item can stay in your collection without being jumped. If you haven’t fixed it and jumped it in 12 months… goodbye! (That is easy for me to write, and VERY hard for me to do!) --Do your best to downplay your acquisition of old gear to your loved ones. Just carry it in the house nonchalantly, rather than celebrating it: “LOOK what I found!!” I know that most of you are free of this addiction, and cannot imagine how a jumper could be drawn to a rig that has been packed since when you were in elementary school…consider yourselves lucky. To those of us afflicted, we know that there is no cure. At best we can recover, knowing that the addiction remains and is ready to drag a closet queen home at any opportunity. You aren’t throwing that away are you? Doorrr!!!
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 15:11:04 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015