Archive for October, 2007
Running Log
Oct 18th
Tuesday night, I went for a run, and had a horrible time. I don’t know if I started off badly, it sure didn’t feel like it, or if I was slacking off on runs too much, or just had a bad day, but I only ran about 4 miles in 45 mins before I gave up and walked home.
I tried again tonight and had a much better time out.
Lee & Mason’s Wedding
Oct 15th
After plowing through a ton of photos and lots of editing, I’m happy to present to all of you the photos from Lee & Mason’s wedding. Click through and enjoy!
Day 18 – Project Excelsior
Oct 14th
This is one of the reasons I love wikipedia so much. I ran across a reference to Project Excelsior and went to look it up.
This dude, Captain Kittinger in the picture above:
- Ascended to an altitude of 102,800 feet in a open gondola helium balloon.
- Leaped out and free-fell 85,300 feet (16.1 miles!) in 4 minutes and 36 seconds, at one point reaching a speed of 714 miles per hour before deploying the main chute at 17,500 feet.
- Total time from stepping off, and touching the ground was 13 minutes 45 seconds.
I can’t imagine a better way to spend 14 minutes of my life…
Also check out this video on YouTube. Its so surreal and trippy. Kittinger steps off the edge into the void an then there are intercuts of chaotic footage of earth spinning around wildly and the almost serene footage of him falling, falling for an eternity in the dark cold space. Then once he passes through the cloud cover, the sun is shining, the sea beckons below and everything sees so bright and life-affirming.