Tall Tales

  Since I've been skydiving I've encountered two people that have tried to either pass off a jump story as true, or they could have just been messing with me. I'm curious how many others have caught people lying about jump experiences out in the wuffo world.  

  One was my boss's boss's boss at my last job. I found out that he was a former skydiver, so at some point I started a conversation about it with him. About 30 seconds into it he told me about a friend of his who was under canopy, saw a person in distress (unconscious) and in freefall, friend cuts away his main canopy to chase down the unconscious person, and finally deploys his reserve once he has a firm grip on the unconscious jumper. That boss was not a joke telling person in all of my experience with him. I never called him out on it, but my assumption was that he got really drunk and watched Dropzone and incorporated the happenings of that movie into his own life story. 

   The second was pretty recently at my current job. There were two guys in front of me at the coffee machine, and I could hear them talking about one of the guy's special forces service in the military. SF guy was talking about HALO jumps and whatnot, and I asked him if he still jumped for fun. He told me that he got it out of his system while he was in the military, and then he proceeded to talk about his escapades, the most outlandish of which was throwing his rig out of the plane and chasing it down. I get that people have done similar things, but I feel like the chances of that happening without me already knowing about him specifically are pretty slim. I just nodded and said "that's crazy" and walked away. He could have just been yanking my chain too I suppose. 

   I welcome anyone's stories of people blowing smoke, or if anyone has ever seen anything like the two stories I've heard I'm into hearing about that too. I've got to imagine that chasing a rig out of a plane is pretty much a non-starter cause of the terminal velocity difference.

For more entertainment, check out "Wuffo Stories" on Facebook. It's been pretty empty lately, but sometimes there are good posts. I don't have much, just a handful of one-and-done stories and a few SL from old dudes at work, but my dad was the best at it. He's always been big on stretching the truth, and once I started jumping he would regale me with tales from his Air Force days. According to my mom, he never mentioned jumping in the AF, but when I started AFF four years ago, he supposedly had 8 jumps. When I got my A, suddenly that number was 13. Then 45. Then 80-something. Despite not having been in the Air Force since before I was born and certainly not having jumped during my lifetime. He eventually gave up on one-upping me.

I might have had ten jumps when I encountered my first bullshitter. It was so obviously incredible that I didn’t even dispute his claims. It’s often best to acknowledge with a nod, a wow or that’s amazing and walk away. 

I have had the opportunity to shoot at least one especially arrogant BSer down in flames which felt good. 

More often than not I just let em bury themselves in their own BS. 

I had a retired Army Vet here in Canada, well up there in age, in his mid to late 70's tell me that his best friend died because he saw one of his SL students going into a mal and jumped out after her to help her "untangle", not realizing he didnt have a rig on.... I was like "Wow cool story" now the sad part is I have a hard time believing most of his stories which BTW some are pretty cool.... a little too cool now that i think about it lol

On my first jump - they threw me out of the airplane with a silkworm and a sewing machine and told me to, "Get busy!".   No this isn't a tall tale, that's how it actually happened - really honestly- I mean I wouldn't bullshit you.  You should have seen me in freefall -  boiling that silkworm and pulling the fibers out of it's ass.  Then there was the weaving of the silk and the sewing...  I mean, I was a fast learner.

When I started jumping - we had to walk to altitude.

When it was really windy, we put our canopies on backward, so we wouldn't land backwards.  ( I actually had someone tell me this one)

When I was bass fishing - I caught one so big it's shadow weighed 10 pounds!  Honestly - I mean I wouldn't tell a tall tale.

OK I know my post here is a waste of electrons.  Truth is  - we have all heard the "heroes from yesteryear" tell their baloney stories.  Usually I just put on a false look of wonderment and say , "Really, that must have been something.",  then walk away.

On 6/5/2019 at 10:59 AM, billvon said:

He regaled me with his exploits (including freefall in his military static line program) and

I met this "same" guy. He went to a "top-secret" combined military SL & HALO course at Ft. Bragg.  According to his DD214 - he had two months and two days in the military. Just about enough time to maybe complete basic and outprocess from the military.