Garrett's
Cyber Corner

While permanent content isn't up yet, I'll use this space to show you a couple sweet parachuting pics.

a swooping parachutist competitor during landing
Here's a picture of...
...A parachutist swooping into a competition. Competition swoopers land across a very shallow pool of water so that the fiction of grazing the earth doesn't impede their flare. Flaring is the technique used to land a parachute. A swoop is a high-performance landing. The goal of the competition is to see who can land "safely" with the longest flare, which results in skating across the pool and onto ground where lines are marked to measure distance.
nine members on a group skydive
In this picture...
...Nine members of a group skydive are trying to get their formation together, known as relative work (RW). This activity is also performed in a competitive arena. Skydiving communities of the world hold competitions for different numbered sets of RW teams. This would be called a 9-way group formation if they get it together before break-off altitude around 3,000 feet. In this formation, the objective is to turn points. A point is a grab or hold, such as a hand on a wrist or jumpsuit gripper. The number of points in the dive is choreographed on the ground before the jump is flown. When they turn points, they will individually change heading by maneuvering skillfully and taking another pre-staged grip.