"... died on Thursday in a paragliding accident along the Adriatic coast in Italy. He was 56....Mr. Baumgartner crashed to the ground a few yards from a swimming pool in the town of Porto Sant’Elpidio, the mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, said on Friday. He said that Mr. Baumgartner had become ill during his flight and had lost consciousness by the time of impact in a part of town popular among tourists. An autopsy was to be performed, he said...."
From
"Felix Baumgartner, 56, Professional Daredevil, Dies While Paragliding/Nicknamed 'Fearless Felix,' he jumped from the edge of space in 2012" (NYT).
The death-defying dive into a swimming pool — with tourists watching — called to mind the diving horses at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City:
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29 comments:
He died doing what he loved, falling.
Can you get a horse to dive off a platform if it doesn't want to?
So much for Red Bull giving you wiiings.
Not attractive to have the little fat roll at the top of your swimming suit.
Josephbleau, I dare you to post a selfie in a swimsuit!
But seriously... this is my nightmare scenario. When my kids were little, I had a terrible fear of flying, not so much because of my own desire not to die, but because I knew that if the plane went down, it would fall to me to try to comfort my children for the endless minutes between the start of the crisis and the ground.
It's not the height, it's the thought of falling that I hate: the inescapable awareness that the ground is coming. I've never understood people who choose jumping off a high place as a means of suicide. Weren't you already miserable enough?
Josephbleau said...Not attractive to have the little fat roll at the top of your swimming suit.
Are you seriously calling that woman fat? Everyone, no matter how skinny, has that “fat roll” around an elastic band in their clothing.
Jamie said... I've never understood people who choose jumping off a high place as a means of suicide.
I’m with ya. If I were to do such a thing, I wouldn’t want any gap between the irrevocable act and the result. I know I’d change my mind on the way down.
the run on ital seems to be thing these days. It was easier to catch when we could preview our post
It's been a bad week for daredevil thrill seekers.
"It was easier to catch when we could preview our post"
It used to be that the post faulted if you didn't close your tags. At least, it did for me.
Illegal alien... undocumented horses will migrate to do the jumps, while American horses will be left out to graze in the pasture. Maybe, baby.
It was easier to catch when we could preview our post
Blogger used to tell you if you failed to close a tag. It wouldn't publish an open tag comment.
Early indications are he had a heart attack while flying a paramotor. The crash was caused by his medical problem. It would have been just as bad if were driving as flying.
I saw the "Diving Aqua-mules" at the Ohio state fair back when we could have fun. The finale was a monkey, riding on a dog, riding on a diving aqua-mule.
I bet once they tried it, the horses like it, just like we would.
Once the horses were trained to do it, and they suffered no ill effects, I doubt it was that stressful for them. Horses have incredibly powerful necks unlike us. The real dangers are they aren't built to "Hold their breath" underwater. And getting water in their ears is bad for them.
The old movie "Jesse James" (or its sequel) has a Horse jumps off a cliff sequence. I thought that was a dangerous and cruel stunt, but now know its just a "Diving Horse".
Paragliding is not inherently dangerous - it's among the most popular tourist activities in Switzerland. "How" you fly the paraglider is a different story. If you're ever aloft in a tandem situation and the pilot asks if you want to do some fun stuff, Just Say NO!
I wonder how the mayor knows Felix went dark during his flight. There are suicidal maneuvers and there is suicidal intent.
Anyways, reminded me of an old friend, the late Joe Kittinger who held the record high-altitude jump (102,800 ft) for 52 years before acting as "ground control" for Felix when he took it up a notch.
Joe also soloed the Atlantic with a balloon. Flew three combat tours during Vietnam and did time as a POW before that ended.
We stared at each other across facing desks every afteroon (1966) when he was Ops Officer for Det. 1, 603 Air Commando Squadron - then when it got dark, Joe would go off in his A-26 hunting for trucks heading south on the other side of the Mekong. He was good at that, too.
Among his peers (some pretty wild and crazy guys, themselves), Joe Kitt was feared by some for his fearlessness. The A-26 was crewed by a pilor and navigator.
Some wished hard that Joe's Nav never fell ill, lest one of them might be called on to sit-in for a night or two.
Joe knew the edge of the envelope and that's where he liked to live.
Some people are just different from the rest of us.
Well, she looks happy, and the horse is focused on performing. My dog exhibits that same look while waiting to play catch. He's earned the appellation "Air Caesar". It's gratifying to work for affection and applause, with a break for water and nibbles.
Peter Lovesey, a crime novelist, has written some novels based on late 19th and early 20th Century sports spectacles. They're very odd and remote from what we see as sports today. I recommend them.
Josephbleau, I'm sure she had to tie that swimsuit tight so it wouldn't do the untoward when she hit the water.
I bet we wouldn't survive one day wearing the torturous underthings women had to wear back then. Nor men's underthings.
She looks to me happy, fit, and attractive, though I am no Daughter of Bilitis.
Dang. I watched the livestream of his record-setting jump from 24 miles up.
"Can you get a horse to dive off a platform if it doesn't want to?"
Probably not. That said, neither can a horse be deemed an informed chooser. A horse's visual perception has evolved over many millions of years to detect motion over a very wide field, approximately 350 degrees, at the cost of depth perception. A horse see wide but every flat. This is why puissance jumping exceeds what a riderless horse can do on its own. Those Steel Pier diving horse could not know or appreciate the height of the fall. It was all a matter of trust and reward.
For a animal not equipped with fins, a horse is a swimming fool. I've swum horse many times in large lakes in hot weather. It takes persistent attention to prevent a swimming horse from setting course for Davy Jones' Locker. Once in the water they want to swim to the opposite shore. They love it, but have no idea of distance.
Jamie said...
“Josephbleau, I dare you to post a selfie in a swimsuit!”
Here ya go, Jamie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R62x5udsuL4
"Those Steel Pier diving horse could not know or appreciate the height of the fall."
I imagine it did the second time.
"I imagine it did the second time."
Horses do remember trauma vividly, which can present very difficult to diagnose behavioral problems for trainers to solve and correct. This is why a horse can react intensely, even violently, to a stimulus that we humans would disregard as too remote to be threatening. Distance means little in equine psychology; a perceived threat, near or far, will produce the same response because a horse literally cannot see the difference. The fact that the Atlantic City diving horses repeated the same performance twice or three times a day for months strongly implies the plunge they took did not cause pain, and that they were well reward with affection and care after their dives. Horses can carry out some amazing tasks with positive reinforcement. They can learn to ignore circumstances we would immediately perceive as life-threatening, and by the same token, react in blind panic to stimuli so trivial to us humans as to seem imperceptible.
Thanks for the info Quaestor! Horses are amazing creatures. And a bit of a puzzle to people like me, who don't have much experience with them. I know they can be incredibly brave in battle, so i was suprised when at my local hiking spot, I saw a horse refusing to go over a wooden bridge. It was only 20 feet, but it just wouldn't go!
And despite the first 2 horses going over with no problem. One of the riders had to take manauever (sic) one of the "veteran" horses and have him look directly into the scared "Newbie" horses eyes. The veteran horse then backed up over the bridge, while the scared horse walked over the bridge, with his eyes locked on the veteran horse. Nose to nose.
Quite a performance by the rider and horse!
In reply to RCOCEAN II:
There's no telling why that horse feared the bridge, but my experience leads me suspect bad training regarding trailering. To a horse, a bridge could be the same as a horse trailer, if you consider the bridge's resemblance to the wooden floor of a trailer. They sound the same. A horse that fears getting on a trailer will mostly likely fear a wooden bridge. Correct one fear, and you'll probably solve the other automatically. I train for loading and bridge crossing by gently encouraging the horse to walk over a 4x8 sheet of plywood, first on the lead, then under saddle. When the horse will walk, trot, and even canter across the plywood, getting aboard the trailer or crossing a footbridge is no problem. The important thing to keep in mind is how the sound of something hollow underfoot could be perceived by a horse.
"...jumping off a high place as a means of suicide."
"I know I’d change my mind on the way down."
Or, as the joke goes, as every floor flashed by the jumper would think, "So far, so good".
You know, like the national debt.
..."I've never understood people who choose jumping off a high place as a means of suicide...... I know I’d change my mind on the way down. "
There was a study I read about, a series of interviews with suicidal people that had survived their jump, against the odds. A subset of people who jump off bridges, but live for whatever reason. A surprisingly large number of them, according to this study, had a profound sense of regret the instant after they had committed profound enough to remove any future such thoughts.
Laughs aside from the obvious comedian's observations, I thought this to be a compelling finding about suicidal impulses. I've relayed this story a couple of times to people I was close to, who were suffering and had death approaching - and for whom such thoughts had, at a minimum, entered their consideration - and I could tell they were paying keen attention in each instance.
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