Morning Open Thread - Been there, done that, got the t-shirt edition

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Today I am standing in for exlrrp, who at the time of publication will have spent most of the previous 24 hours travelling back from Chile, where he has been having a good time and travelblogging

Since it at short notice, those of you who like to live in the present will be relieved to know this is not a history diary

While google wandering yesterday, I came across a video of the Monaco Parachute Team, which kind of struck me as funny as the whole country is only one sixth the size of Heathrow airport, has a population density greater then Brooklyn NYC, and does not have a a large enough open space to create a drop zone.

In addition to local shows and competitions, these guys compete internationally at for example the Dubai tournement and I can tell you these guys are pretty good.

Here is a video of one of them doing a jump into nearby Menton for the Arab horse show.

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But I also had a personal interest, since in 1982, to celebrate my employers company's 5th anniversary, I jumped out of a helicopter over Monaco and landed on the sand in front of the Beach Plaza Hotel at Larvotto.  This beach is on the extreme right of this photo. At that time ,as far as I am aware, nobody had ever jumped into Monaco from an aircraft that took off from Monaco.

There is a long story about how this happened, turning around the death of Princess Grace, who had died in an auto accident 10 dys earlier, and local parachute politics and a fatal accident in Germany where 48  parachutists died, but all this for another day.

So digging through my photo albums, I came up with a couple of shots. Shame we didn't have GoPros in 1982

Before the jump
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and a very young PF in orange after the jump.
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So, not really history on your doorstep, but making a tiny bit of history of your own.

Ever watched a You tube and had that "Been there, done that " feeling?