Jack, on the Hiking trail

"See that wood on the side? That holds up the trail. It holds us up. 'Cuz if it didn't, we would roll down the hill like a baseball."

Bill Cosby

The first album I ever bought was Bill Cosby's.

First favorite quote, "Noah.... ( After Noah got mad and went into a complaint to God,)

" How long can you tread water?"

Tonight I saw a tribute to this great comedian. Heard another good one by Bill Cosby.

"Don't play the moment, find the honesty in the moment; that's where the humor is."

For example, when George Washington said, "Father, I cannot tell a lie, I cut down the cherry tree." Bill says, "They never give that Father credit, he let that boy live! "

And then, "Of course you cannot tell a lie, the tree's cut down, and you're the only kid!"

Honesty in the moment!

I think my brother Lem does this well. So does my cousin, John Butler.

I also think this can be a work of grace- the ability to lighten things up.

We need these people, just so we can keep treading water.

Got my grandkid fix!

Spent about a week with Selah and Isai, Rosie and Justin, and then the next with Bowden, Lucy, Jack, Miles and parents. It was wonderful to see them all, been too long. Even though the little Paulson-Wentzel kids were sick, they still functioned pretty well in the daytime and were a real joy. Poor Mommy and Daddy. Remember those sleep deprived years? All I can say to you kids is that when you come out the other side, they're worth it!

I've got a million great shots, but need to download them from my camera, which means finding the connector. Technology can be such a pain in the rear. Or is it my bad memory??? I don't know, can't remember.

Stats on Skydiving

Sorry to all my faithful readers. I was busy discussing skydiving with a friend who was asking about the death incidents and looked up this article. I then copied and pasted it here, omitting the reference and fact that it's an article. Plagiarism was not my intent, and I'm sorry to say I don't have the author's name. It was one of the first references on google search, though. And I presume you could look up the United States Parachuting Association to verify the info.

Then you can come diving with me!!!! ( bold print just showed up- no really!)

Risk of Skydiving Accidents

Skydiving is a remarkably popular sport. The United States Parachuting Association has 34,000 members. It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than 3 million jumps in a typical year.

The big question is always, "How dangerous is skydiving?" Each year, about 30 people die in parachuting accidents in the United States, or roughly one person per 100,000 jumps. Look at the US Skydiving Incident Reports to get an idea of the types of problems that lead to fatalities. If you make one jump in a year, your chance of dying is 1 in 100,000.

How does the fatality rate in skydiving compare to other common activities? Since most adults in America drive cars, let's compare skydiving to driving. Roughly 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents in the United States [ref]. That's 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. Therefore, if you drive 10,000 miles per year, your chance of dying in a car wreck in any given year is something like 1 in 6,000. In other words, we accept a higher level of risk by getting into our cars every day than people do by occasionally skydiving. You would have to jump 17 times per year for your risk of dying in a skydiving accident to equal your risk of dying in a car accident if you drive 10,000 miles per year.

A logical question to ask here is this: Given these statistics, why do we think of skydiving as dangerous and driving a car as safe?

• The first reason has to do with frequency. At 30 per year, fatal skydiving accidents are infrequent. That tends to make each one newsworthy, so you are likely to hear about them. On the other hand, there are about 110 fatal car accidents every day in the United States. In a city of one million people, 160 people die every year in car accidents. If you heard about every car accident, you would go insane, so you only hear about a few of them. That leaves you with the impression that car accidents are infrequent even though they happen constantly.

• The second reason has to do with familiarity. Most people drive every day and nothing bad happens. So our personal experience leads us to believe that driving is safe. It is only when you look at the aggregated statistics that you realize how dangerous driving really is.

For more information on skydiving and related topics, check out the links on the next page.