Is it a bird? Is it a plane…
…no! It’s Ultra-Fast Flying Squirrel Man! Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a plane 30,000 feet over Dover early this morning, then glided at about 135 mph across the English Channel, to land safely in Calais. He used a small carbon fibre wing strapped to his back to turn a plummet straight down into a slightly more controlled glide.
Logically, I know that you are travelling pretty fast when you’re skydiving, but it really brings it home to you when someone is skydiving horizontally. Felix crossed the Channel in only 14 minutes. Beats taking the ferry, I suppose.
1
It's a pretty impressive achievement, even if the guy is a complete dingbat.----- are you with eddie izzard and myself in thinking the past tense of glide should be glid [cf slideslid]? 'glided' feels really clunky.
by dvd @ 31/07/2003 11:07 am • Permalink •
2
Glid or Gled. Grin
by Lyle @ 31/07/2003 12:07 pm • Permalink •
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re #2: dvd! have you given in to the temptation (?) of dial-up already?
by mrtn @ 31/07/2003 4:08 pm • Permalink •
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Lyle: Yep, no argument from me -- he's a nutter. I heard him interviewed on the Today programme. Someone asked him why he did it, and there was a silence in which you could almost hear his incomprehension: why wouldn't anyone want to plummet across the channel at suicidal speed?
dvd: Yep, glid is good. And I second mrtn's question: what are you doing online? I have to say I told you so: disconnection is worse than moving house or divorce.
by bsag @ 31/07/2003 8:07 pm • Permalink •
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you ain't seen me, right?
[before, i just popped into uni for a few things. this, here, is sheer boredom and unpacking-avoidance.
]
by dvd @ 31/07/2003 9:07 pm • Permalink •
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pom pom pompompompompompo BATMAN!!
by JoRo @ 01/08/2003 10:08 am • Permalink •
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JoRo: In the UK it's pronounced 'dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner BATMAN!!'. Or at least it was when I was at primary school
There was some kind of elaborate joke that went with this, but for some reason, I only remember the punch line.
by bsag @ 01/08/2003 9:08 pm • Permalink •
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what does batman's mother say when she's calling him in at suppertime?
[aah, years of memorising christmas cracker jokes finally pays off.
]
by dvd @ 03/08/2003 8:08 am • Permalink •
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