Petronas secret technical director Dwain Weston finally got it through his head that doing double gainers from 180 feet does not qualify him to administer a BASE jumping competition or select its overall participants, so he went running to “Mama” Anne Helliwell to bail him out of the clusterf**k he helped create by abusing the trust I placed in him several months ago.

That’s right: Despite Mr. Dann Lee’s declarations to the contrary, Dwain Weston is no good at picking anybody but his Aussie buddies and aerials clinic groupies (and his girlfriend, of course) to join him for the Petronas Beer Demo – and he finally figured that out, so he dumped the whole stinking pile of manure in Anne’s lap and ran for cover.

Now Anne Helliwell has become the official chief enabler of the Petronas Beer Demo gang, abandoning her business at a critical time for a free trip to aid and abet the bad behavior of juvenile delinquents who every day are finding out how right I was (and the event professionals who back me up) when I said there wasn’t enough time and money to do this event safely, professionally and legitimately.

Ms. Helliwell freely admits that this is now a “B Team” enterprise and the true goal of this alleged “competition” is not to see who wins but to try to make sure everyone lives, and that she is bailing on her business and business partner because she thinks maybe she can help keep all the marginal and/or unknown jumpers on the load from killing themselves. Noble sentiments to be sure, but classic “enabling behavior as defined in substance abuse and other addictive behavior literature.

And like Mr. Hewitt, Mr. Weston and Dwain’s Girlfriend, Ms. Helliwell is, through the Petronas Beer Demo, saying “yes” to conditions, circumstance, vibes and personnel to which she would emphatically say “no” if she was organizing one of her Norway expeditions – or even just a friendly jump at Rubidoux or Auburn.

All these people are accomplished BASE jumpers who preach safety, preparation and proper conditions and gear when jumping, and all of them are now knowingly and willingly violating all the BASE premises they preach and normally live by…

For every one of them, if this was an individual jump of some kind, they would run away from it so fast it would make your head spin, but here they all are, making excuses and suspending their ethical and moral judgment so they can go jump the world’s tallest building.

That Ms. Helliwell in particular lends herself to this dysfunctional mess when she of all people knows better is a testament to the allure of the world’s tallest building and how it makes the brains of even the most experienced people twist up and spit out nonsense (See “Petronas Perils #1: Everest Parallels Loom Large” for some details about those who are so driven by ambition to “bag” the world’s highest mountain that they do all sorts of ill-advised things to get there).