The scenario: you’re flying at 155 mph – fast enough to literally sound like an overhead jet – directly at a rock face in Roca Foradada mountains in Montserrat, Spain. Your target: a VERY narrow opening in the mountain that folks are calling “the Bat Cave”. If you make it, fame and serious bragging rights (and some cool video to show for it). If you don’t, well, it sucks to be you.
That’s the scenario. You’re either:
a) Jeb Corliss
b) Certifiable
c) A really, really good skydiver
d) Alexander Polli
I’d check items b, c, and d after watching this video in which European Base jumper Alexander Polli hits crazy speeds as he hurtles towards an admittedly tiny opening and prays to the Almighty that he gets it right. Well, he does. And the video adds yet further evidence to a growing list of “Why you should buy a wing suit”. Hint – any good supplier won’t sell you a wing-suit until you’ve earned your cojones as a skydiver.
This video brings memories of Jeb Corliss’s recent wing-suit dive through a mountain in China. Is there a rivalry developing here? Don’t know, but Alexander Polli scores points with an awesome video and a reputation as being one of the baddest wing-suit dudes in 2013.
“It’s not tragic to die doing what you love”. Truer words have rarely been spoken then when they came from Bodhi in the greatest movie of all time. With that in mind, I pay tribute to Shane Murphy, a 29 year old wingsuit pioneer who’d done over a thousand jumps and lost his life on August 7, 2012 in the Chamonix mountains in Switzerland, just weeks after Chamonix passed a ban on the practice. A sad, but not tragic, end to an inspiring life and a seriously cool dude.
Not sure if this was out of interest or a gentle nudge from my Mommy that I haven’t posted for a while. In any event, good old’ Mom sent this parahawking video to that, if you watch it, might just make your Monday.
For the uninitiated, parahawking is what you get when you go paragliding and hawks fly up to you and pose for the camera, mid flight, land on your arm and pause for a seriously awesome Kodak moment. The sport was created in 2001 by British falconer Scott Mason, who was in Nepal, noticed the many birds of prey and felt it wouldn’t be a huge leap forward to train them to hang out mid-flight and celebrate the bond between man and raptor.
Epic times, as you’ll see in this video by Lite Touch films.
At the present time, Pokhara Nepal is the ParaHawking capital of the planet, with tours available for interested travellers. There are also rumors that you’ll soon be able to go ParaHawking in the United States. California, perhaps?
Love the video. And after viewing it in its 1:47 minute entirety, you just may have a new item to add to your bucket list!
After five years of planning, training, and summoning the biggest set of cojones on the planet, Felix Baumgarnter has jumped from space. And Roswell, New Mexico will go down in the record books for something other than little green men – it’s the place where fearless Felix set his two feet down on terra firma after a five minute free-fall from outer space, 24 miles up and above.
Data is still trickling in, but it’s believed that Felix broke the sound barrier on the way down, which would make him the first person in history to do so without an aircraft. Coincidentally, he jumped 65 years to the day that U.S. pilot Chuck Yeager became the first human to break the speed of sound (in an aircraft).
So to reiterate, the records set here. Baumgarter has now completed the highest skydive, ever. He’s travelled faster than anyone unassisted. And I think most of us would agree, he’s got the biggest set on the planet.
Awesome shit. Seriously. Felix Baumgartner is truly the man.
“Our guardian angel will take care of you,” said Joe Kittinger, who set the previous record jump way back in 1960. I’ve blogged about the comraderie between Felix and Kittinger before. Really touching to see one brave guy pass his torch to another.
Here’s the video of the jump, which attracted seven million viewers live on YouTube apparently. Pull up a chair – this is history in the making.
If Bruce Wayne ever finds an inkling to hang up his tights and do Billionaire boys club stuff, I hereby nominate Jeb Corliss as the next Dark Knight. Not sure if the dude can fight or has a nifty Batmobile (I so love the Tumbler), but he’s got the wing-suit going on and a fly-past in this video, at 1:43, that’ll trigger pacemakers across the globe. Watch it at full-speed for maximum incontinence-causing viewing pleasure. He did the video two years ago, called ‘Grinding the Crack’.
Is Jeb Corliss as hardcore as some of the other high-flying bad boys, like Dean Potter or Felix Baumgartner? Well, he’s the same dude who flew through a mountain last year in China at mach 50 or something, so he’s definitely up there. And he really, really knows how to trigger an OH Shit! moment…like I said, watch the video from the start, and wait for the balloon man to appear…
Swiss inventor Yves Rossy took Elton John's Rocket Man just a little to seriously
Remember those cool jet packs you saw in the movies as a kid? Well, they’re for real, folks, as we saw this week, when Swiss inventor/daredevil/rocket man Yves Rossy jumped out of a perfectly good helicopter and treated onlookers in Rio De Janeiro and the Christ the Redeemer statue to a little jet-powered ingenuity before landing on Copocabana Beach.
At present, Rossy is the only man ever to have had the pleasure to live out his wildest Jetsons wet dreams, as his jet pack, which he invented himself, is the only one in existence (darn!), though this wasn’t his debut flight. Rossy became the first man every to fly with a jet pack back in 2009 when he did a fly by over the Swiss Alps.
And I thought the Swiss just made clocks and chocolate…
Anyway, a little video of Rossy’s adventures high over Rio de Janeiro in his jet pack. Let’s see how long before he auctions it off on Ebay…
The on-again-off-again Felix Baumgartner space jump is on again, according to statements from Red Bull and various media outlets including BBC .
Baumgartner is, as you may recall, an Austrian daredevil with a penchant for jumping off stuff that he really shouldn’t, but he does anyway, and it makes for some sick video. That’s why he’s awesome. On his list of de-virginized BASE Jumps, Petronas Towers, Taipei 101 and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro. God bless you Felix Baumgartner.
But it’s his next jump, planned for several years now, that I blogged about a few years ago, that’s really gonna drop your jaw. This time he’s setting the record for a free fall – he’s jumping from a location up, WAAAYYYY up, 36 kilometres above the Earth, in what’s been dubbed ‘The Space Jump’.
If he’s successful, the jump will eclipse the previous record, set by Joe Kittinger in 1960, in which Kittinger did a 31 kilometer free-fall. Cojones the size of watermelons that man has.
Baumgartner’s Space Jump, assuming it happens, will have him falling so fast he’ll actually break the sound barrier. That will be the first time man has achieved that speed without assistance from a machine.
BBC and National Geographic are working on the documentary. Will keep an eye on this one…
Watch the video, and hear Joe Kittinger as he speaks of his 50 year old record and passing the torch, so to speak. I still think it’s touching everytime this man talks about working up the courage to set such a crazy record, and how he “said a little prayer” before he jumped.
He’s Russian and he’s in a mid-air dogfight resulting in an unplanned eject. We’ve seen that one before. But in the history of aerial dogfights, this one’s a first. And the video has gone viral.
The gist of it: Russian paraglider cruises over the Himalayas. All’s groovy, the video’s awesome. Then it happens – the guy gets unsanctimoniously rammed mid-air by a vulture who’s not too keen on sharing air space. Russian paraglider ejects, but the pissed off raptor gets stuck in the parachute. Fortunately, they’re both OK. But their egos? That’s another story. If only the vulture knew his territorial spat is making the rounds online…man…he’d blush.
Porn star/Sky-diver Alex Torres gets his freak on mid-air with Hope Howell.
This rocks and sucks at the same time. Keep reading though cause there’s a porn video at the end of this post.
Last week, a porn star who moonlights as a sky-diving instructor, Alex Torres, pulled one of the coolest stunts a guy could think of. He and his lovely co-worker, Hope Howell, had sex in a plane and continued said sex while sky-diving. And they taped their escapade.
Coolness. So why is the guy now in hot water? Some admirable teen ager (who, if you ask me, is a little jealous of Torres’ sheer awesomeness) had an issue with the girl in the video, Howell. So he gets a copy of the tape and posts it online. A few days later, the tape goes viral and into the hands of the local cops and the owner of the skydiving school where the couple worked, Skydive Taft, in Bakersfield, California.
Now Torres is fired. The school’s owner, Dave Chrouch, hasn’t decided whether amorous secretary Hope Howell keeps her job. The cops say no charges are pending. But…because the couple got medieval on the seat in the cockpit, next to the pilot, the FAA is now investigating.
Understandably, safety is always a priority, so the FAA is certainly obliged to check out the escapade. And it’s understandable that the business owner, Chrouch, has to make a living and therefore canned Torres, who also goes by the moniker Voodoo.
But to the teenager who posted the video because he basically didn’t like the girl, I’m sorry, but you’re a serious wanker. Torres and his leading lady did something amazing and engaged in an act of celebration of life that precious few people will ever achieve. Having sex while sky-diving? That is just too awesome.
And to the angry parents who called the cops and the sky-diving school’s owner when they saw the video of Torres and Howell and their mid-air rendez vous, ask yourself, is making love while skydiving any worse than the violent video games that your kids play? Is it ok to watch a TV show in which a man threatens to kill another with a gun, yet a couple celebrates the gift of life by making love in a completely original and exhilarating manner and you call the police? If your answer is yes, I believe there is something wrong.
Torres may be fired, but as far as I’m concerned, the guy’s a stud. Ditto for Hope Howell. And notably, the Mile High Club has two new, very deserving members. I hope these two safely land on their feet.
Get ready, there’s a new dare devil on the block. And after seeing this ridiculous video, you’ve got yet another reason to ask Santa for a wing-suit this Christmas.
In the video, Corliss jumps off a helicopter and flies through a narrow crack in Tianmen mountain in China. You gotta see this one to believe it. Something tells me we’re gonna see more of Jeb Corliss in the future.
The scenario: you’re flying at 155 mph – fast enough to literally sound like an overhead jet – directly at a rock face in Roca Foradada mountains in Montserrat, Spain. Your target: a VERY narrow opening in the mountain that folks are calling “the Bat Cave”. If you make it, fame and serious bragging rights (and some cool video to show for it). If you don’t, well, it sucks to be you.
