Ah what a bummer. I really liked Jon. He seemed really sincere to me and I enjoyed the way he carried himself. He was an easy person to judge from a facade but the more I got to know him he shed light onto the fact that judgements are baseless and undeserved. Glad I got to know him.
At the same time I think there’s value in this topic and the outcome of circumstances that now leaves him dead. I’ll refrain on assuming because I don’t know the details of his incident. What I can say is I met up with Jon and a bunch of his friends a few years ago at a famous beginner BASE jumping location. Although there was one experienced jumper in the group, Jon was certainly taking the fast and ill-prepared track to jump. With very minimal skydive experience, (and a crashed landing due to inexperience which resulted in broken gear he had to pay for) he then went up to this spot to learn to BASE jump. Our mutual friend and him asked me to help him out with his base stunt of jumping off a truck over a bridge and deploying a parachute for his music video. I told him it was a pretty dumb idea and wouldn’t offer my parachute for him to use but was willing to offer advice in any way I could. We hung around my friends and I did a few jumps and he ended up getting a parachute and going though with the stunt. He ended up doing it, and nailing it like a boss. But the bigger part in all of this is that moment represents so much of what is happening in all extreme/action/adventure sports. The information and content is out there more and more each year. The pace at which people progress is faster than ever, but it isn’t coupled with a depth of experience and humility that needs to happen in order to truly understand yourself and abilities, not that anyone will ever perfectly know themselves, but most people improve the knowledge of self over time. Time is the variable missing in all of this and it is something I sit back and have seen kill so many of my friends involved in high risk activities. The value of time in the equation of skill and experience has been written in blood over and over again. There’s a benefit to being exposed to something for a long and meaningful period of time.
The irony is that I’ve made the mistakes I’m preaching against and here I am being hypocritical albeit sincere in the words that even if they only are heard by one person that truly listens, will make it all worth it.