Committee Members Parachuting From An Airplane Crossword Clue

Thursday, 11 July 2024

It's a slow, circling dance. "There was never a sensation of falling or fear in my dreams, although I'm scared of falling down while skiing, and of motorcycles--they're too fast. "Look at Sally, " she says. "Ready... set... Committee members parachuting from an airplane crossword clue dan word. go! " "This is a selfish sport, " she says. They rehearse the next, then go up again. Gloria Durosko, 30, a life-insurance sales / service representative living in Bloomington, Calif., joined the group in 1983.

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Three climb out, fingers grabbing the inside rim of the door, backs to the wind, huddling side by side. The video is stopped. They review a videotape of the jump. To precisely and consistently form a geometric pattern (a star, circle, horizontal line) with human bodies requires near-Olympian training efforts. Committee members parachuting from an airplane crossword clue 6 letters. The women make their way to the rigging area to repack their rectangular parachutes. The team reviews the tape between jumps. Four bodies shrink to dark pinpoints, plummeting toward a brown-and-green plaid at 120 m. p. h. In fewer than 60 seconds the choreographed free fall is completed. "The mere thought of jumping out of planes always scared me, " she says.

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Played, stopped again. A radio-advertising representative living in Manhattan Beach, Barnes began jumping seven years ago to re-create a childhood dream. On screen, on an impulse, Sally Wenner tracks off from the group. "I guess we just needed more experience, more training and practice. " And yet, there's the feeling of vulnerability--feeling small, yet in control of the situation. She began sky diving at 19, to fulfill a passion and, as with Barnes, childhood dreams. Winning at Muskogee would also have meant a gold medal for three years of sweat and training. Committee members parachuting from an airplane crossword clé usb. A missed grip is noted, critiqued.

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Sky diving demands total focus. She stares ahead, brown eyes wide, mouth agape. " Downhill skiers don't. The newest and youngest member of the team, Sally Wenner, 26, of Los Angeles, works for a loan company. And yet, that's our sport. The team is hampered by the lack of professional coaches in the sport. Though Georgia (Tiny) Broadwick was the first woman to parachute from an airplane more than 70 years ago, sky diving remains male-dominated. It reopened in August as Perris Valley Skydiving Society. ) Each member spends $580 each month on jumps alone; that doesn't include the price of transportation, food and accommodations.

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Money is also a problem, since the team doesn't have a major commercial sponsor. In competition, the scoring would stop. "When we get this look it's called brain lock. " Quest members acknowledge the obvious dangers of their sport, but they prefer to talk about its satisfactions and challenges, their desire to succeed and what they consider to be the ultimate experience of freedom.

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"How many learning environments are there with no coach or teacher? It's also called a bust. They half-turn, grasping arms to thighs. Quest's other cofounder, Laura Maddock, once said that she would never jump. We are the women of the '80s doing a different thing. But she had raced motorcycles and off-road bikes--high-speed vehicles that demand split-second timing.

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Barnes laments: "Laura and I think we are so damned marketable, and yet, the right person just hasn't come along. Formations were judged for precision, execution and time taken from airplane exit to completed pattern. Boyfriends are fellow sky divers, who understand the mental and physical exhaustion. The precision of the sport and the instantaneous decisions that have to be made attract 35-year-old Barnes, who explains: "I love the challenge of taking in information and responding in split seconds. Following penciled diagrams not unlike those of football formations, they go through the motions. It was the only all-woman group to compete against 62 men's and mixed teams and finished ninth out of 35 four-way groups (the remaining teams had 8 and 10 members). "It fills needs and wants. Compounding the difficulty is that midair judgments are made not in relation to a fixed object but to a fellow sky diver. The fourth, knees bent, one shoulder forward, faces them. "It's very difficult to learn in a self-evaluation, " Barnes says. It's the fourth dive of the day, and the air at ground level is abrasive with dust.

Body angles determine speed during free fall; jump-suit designs equalize height and weight differences--a skintight fit to speed up one woman, a fuller suit, sometimes with armpit fillets--to slow another. During practice jumps, team photographer Steve Scott free-falls with Quest and videotapes the performance. We're doing something that women never used to even think about. It is the last jump of the day, and Quest's four canopies burst open--red, white and blue rectangles against a chalk-blue sky. "After completing student status I realized that I didn't want to pursue the sport at a fun, low-key level, " she says. Today, at 37, she manages a small firm in Laguna Niguel that manufactures sky-diving equipment.

Canopies open; touchdown. A movement is miscalculated, a grip not completed; the formation is ruined and everyone knows it. A loudspeaker announcement interrupts their practice. I can't think of any. On the ground, two five-person judging teams viewed the choreography on ground-to-air videotapes. Not many high-action sports have two systems. The sport is uniquely unforgiving; yet to many, it is seductive. Quest, a "four-way" (four-member) sky-diving team, was in pursuit of a goal: to win the national parachuting championships last July in Muskogee, Okla. For a jump to be successful, each individual movement has to be accurate; reactions must be instantaneous. Letting Go: The Nation's Only Competitive All-Woman Sky-Diving Team Hangs Tough in a Mostly Male Sport. Curiosity about reactions and timing in sky diving led to her first jump.

Assembling on the ground, standing as they would be in the air, each takes her position. Four women, ignoring the temperature, move toward the open fuselage door. "We were disappointed and have mixed emotions about finishing ninth, even though it's respectable, " said Sue Barnes, one of Quest's co-founders. Geometric formations were tight, bodies balanced in a precise pattern, 360-degree turns were flawless, fluid and in control. Nine months before the national competition, Quest trained every weekend at the Perris Valley Parachute Center, a sky divers' Mecca, but the center closed in June. It makes me feel good and has built a tremendous self-confidence. With only weeks left before the nationals, the women were forced into long weekend drives to California City's drop zone to continue practice. We would have to stop and redo that formation. The women discuss the errors, why they occurred, how to avoid them in the next jump.

The drop zone is crowded with men and women sky divers. The 30-m. landing is smooth; the airfoils collapse like tired balloons. "I had dreams that I could fly, " she says. The pre-World War II aircraft waits, engines idling, propellers turning. That's never enough.