Word: jump
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Then Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal ticked off a list of drastic measures that the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board will take to uphold the greenback. The key moves: 1) raising the federal discount rate by a full point to a record 9.5%, the sharpest jump in 45 years; 2) reducing by $3 billion the funds that U.S. banks have available to lend; 3) amassing $30 billion in foreign currencies, nearly all borrowed, to support dollar prices on foreign exchanges; 4) greatly increasing U.S. sales of gold...
...sort of reverie as the ancient DC-3 climbs to 12,500 ft. Like all jump planes, it has no seats. We sit on the floor in three long rows, 35 of us, facing to the rear, our legs supporting the backs of the jumpers in front of us. There is an occasional attempt at conversation over the engines' throb, but mostly we sit, eyes closed or staring vacantly, catching someone's glance, exchanging a vague smile or nod. The adrenaline is just beginning to flow now, just beginning to lift us. We look at the altimeters...
Then the call: "Jump run." We line up at the door. The first two members of our 16-man team are hanging out of the plane, grabbing the fuselage so we can go together. I stand, back to the open door, the balls of my feet balanced on the frame, feeling the surge of wind across my back. "Ready!" yells the team captain. "Ready!" we reply...
...because it used to occur around Thanksgiving, is perhaps the most popular of the 120 formal contests held every year in the U.S. The meet started in 1969 when parachuting was just beginning to take hold in this country, and it has managed to maintain a special appeal while jumping has become a highly organized international sport, one now dominated by Americans. Part of the lure of the meet is simply the Florida weather: only the hardest of the hard core like to jump in northern climes when winter is coming on and the temperature...
...they made the first leap to see what it was like or to prove something to themselves, to overcome that perfectly sensible fear of diving from an airplane into a void above the hard ground. If they stay with it, and perhaps only 10% do after the first scary jump or two, they develop what Kim Adams, 31, a graduate student in anthropology at Rutgers, calls "parachuting personalities, incredibly independent, uninhibited." Sky diving becomes a way of life, infinitely challenging, indescribably energizing...