Blue sky, black death (1992)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

TYPOS IN PREVIOUS POST--"Southwedstern," "varrios."  Sorry about that.

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BLUE SKY + BLACK DEATH--891 Google hits, 197 Google Groups hits
BLUE SKIES + BLACK DEATH--486 Google hits, 716 Google Groups hits

   This skydiving entry deserves a post for itself.  It's Fred
Shapiro-worthy.  I'll check it on FACTIVA later.


(GOOGLE)
http://hem.passagen.se/TopFrame/lopsedel/0910/
"Blue sky, black death"
Philosophical expression for jumping hard and having fun without getting
yourself killed.


(GOOGLE GROUPS)
Blue skies
... work". "I adopt a stable freefall position, raise my fists to the heavens
and scream 'Blue Skies! Black Death!'. "Does that help". ...
rec.skydiving - Mar 5, 1993 by SKYDIVE - View Thread (8 articles)

Re: Newbie Greens
Blue Skies! Black Women! "Blue Skies. Black Death". is a much better quote.
Fits
in better with the current topic and no problems with political
correctedness. ...
rec.skydiving - Mar 3, 1993 by Robert Vernon - View Thread (3 articles)

Check out these lyrics...
... Do it if you dare Leaping from the sky Hurling through the air
Exhilirating high
See the earth below Soon to make a crater Blue sky, black death I'm off to
...
rec.skydiving - Aug 27, 1992 by traurig at ncavax.decnet.lockheed.com - View
Thread (1 article)

Re: FAQ
... I called the color pattern "Blue skies black death". Anyway, one of our
club officers
was joking around and come up and unzipped his pants as I was packing. ...
rec.skydiving - Apr 24, 1992 by Robert Church - View Thread (20 articles)


(GOOGLE GROUPS)
http://www.afn.org/skydive/culture/bsbd.html
From: Pat Works <works at interramp.com>
Newsgroups: rec.skydiving
Subject: Re: Why Blue Skies ?
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 1996 20:46:10 -0800

Keith Levine wrote:

> Please anyone, why do we sign off with "Blue Skies", how did this get
> started & what is the intended interpretation.
>
When sequential RW was just getting started in the mid 1970s it started in
ST, AZ, CA, TX, KS, IL western USA. Jumpsuits were small. Most skydivers wore
boots. Belly reserves and ripcords were the norm.

Of course, good inteligent, cool skydivers never got caught dead. we beleived
that until Jim Heydorn bounced with a double total. Poof, the myth of the
right stuff vanished. If Heydorn could bounce, ANYBODY can bounce! Thus, the
brighter pioneer sequential types began to notice that the quality/quantity of
people getting killed by impact appeared random... good skydivers and bad
skydivers both bounced about as high. We noticed that it was not that He screwed up
but rather that fate is the hunter and there is a real element of chance in
skydiving.

We learned that the bright blue friendly sky was balanced, yin/yang style, by
a dark forboding ground. Since the ground snuffed the life it was/is death.
Unsafe practices, as a group were termed black death. The exit count used by my
8-way teams and several others was Blue sky/ Black Death. Sport parachuting
became Sport Death. While the Black Death thing was an insider thing which
translated to Hey yall, lets avoid danger up there it later got adopted and/or
banned by folks who did not and do not understand what it means.

So just as goodby means God be with you

> Blue sky/black death is a salute to the sky/earth that means
> something like lovely up there/watch out
>
crazy pat