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My Favorite Campsite For over 20 years a certain lose-knit band of pilots and skydivers have been holding informal fly-ins at this "secret" dry lake bed location in the Mojave desert. I joined them in 1993. Our unofficial macho-bravado motto was "Friends Don't Let Friends Bowl!". (Unless your idea of bowling is dropping a bowling ball from a speeding aircraft, 50 feet of the deck -- naw, uh-uh. Never happened.) |
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Three years after earning my skydive wings, I realized that as much as I loved parachuting, I truly hated the mainstream skydiving scene. I had become totally fed-up with the trendy, commercial, competitive -- sometimes outright uptight -- atmosphere at mainstream skydive centers. So I joined-up with this band of jolly flyers. Soon, their annual fly-ins (sometimes held three or four times a year) became my only outlet for parachuting. I'd hitch a ride and jump from any available airplane. I found this style of parachuting to be far more enjoyable than mainstream skydiving. But there were drawbacks. With "bandit jumping"* like this you can't rack up the jump numbers and become a professional or competitor. But where else can you parachute right into your campsite and share tall "no shit" tales around the world's greatest BS campfire, with some of the most interesting and diverse aviators around? * There's nothing illegal about our activities. The term "bandit" is a derogatory term championed by mainstream skydivers who sometimes don't understand the legitimate world outside their commercial bubble.
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