The exact date for Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic free fall from the edge of space is not yet scheduled. But this week, the Austrian daredevil jumped from 18 miles above the planet, coming one step closer to setting the record for the world’s highest skydive.
Baumgartner, an expert skydiver who started jumping at age 16, hopes to become the first human to break the sound barrier without a plane. To do that, he will have to set a world record 125,000-foot dive (that’s 23 miles) armed with gear that will slow him down and keep him alive during the nearly six minute free fall.
Part of a Red Bull-sponsored event, Baumgartner’s 60-pound parachute system includes a main chute, an emergency backup and an oxygen system. Should he go spinning out of control, a stabilizing drogue, also along for the ride, will be deployed.
Make no mistake, this is no weekend skydiver out for a joy ride.
“The pressure is huge, and we not only have to endure but excel,” Baumgartner told ABC News before his jump reports Space. “We’re excellently prepared, but it’s never going to be a fun day. I’m risking my life, after all.”
The previous record, jumping from nearly 103,000 feet, was set on August 16, 1960, by Air Force Col. Joe Kittinger who is serving as a consultant on this latest attempt that hopes to be a supersonic free fall.
As a sports fanatic and traveler who’s always been fascinated by the intersection of nationalism and sport, I never miss the Parade of Nations during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. It’s a little like a quick stroll around the world in that you get a look at athletes from 204 countries around the globe.
You can tell a lot about a country based on how their athletes dress and the way they carry themselves. It’s also a gas to listen to the broadcasters as they try to find something interesting to say about each country and their contingent. In case you missed the parade last night, here are some of the highlights and lowlights.
Borat Makes a Cameo- As the athletes from Kazakhstan made their way into the arena, I had a premonition that Bob Costas and Matt Lauer were going to say something about Borat and sure enough, they did, making reference to the fact that Borat’s version of the Kazakh anthem was played for a Kazakh athlete who won a gold medal at a shooting competition in Kuwait in March.
Andorra’s Old Geezer- Costas took comfort in noting that Joan Tomàs Roca, a 61-year-old sports shooter who served as Andorra’s flag bearer is a year older than he is. But I don’t think Roca’s had nearly as much work done.Coolest Hats- Congratulations to the Olympic contingent from Lesotho, which clearly had the best hats of the evening. Their conical, pointy bamboo hats made them look a bit like Vietnamese rice farmers.
Most Ridiculous Hats: The group from Belize was wearing the kind of hats you’d see on a carnival barker. Why?
Ignominious Distinction: As the athletes from poor Bangladesh entered the stadium, Costas informed American viewers that Bangladesh is the largest country never to win an Olympic medal as their athletes snapped photos and waved to the crowd. Woo-hoo! Now there’s something to shout about.
Most Colorful Robes- When the Cameroonian athletes were introduced, I nearly had to adjust my television set. They wore blinding, black and red robes with almost every color of the rainbow thrown in somewhere. An “A” for effort.
You Wore What? They were only on my screen for a matter of seconds, but I swear the Chilean contingent looked like extras from Zorro the Gay Blade.
Inane Commentary Part 1- Croatia’s flag bearer was a handball goalkeeper, prompting Matt Lauer to make one of the evening’s dumbest remarks.
“Handball – this is a sport that doesn’t have a great foothold in the U.S., but if you’re looking to get an Olympic medal, this would be a good sport to take up,” he said, seemingly at least half serious.
Right, the sport isn’t popular here, so go ahead and take it up, you’ll be sure to get an Olympic medal in it.
Um, We Have Nothing Whatsoever to Say About These Countries- Costas and Lauer had something to say about almost every country but in a few cases they just said the name of the country and nothing else. Surely, the Republic of Congo, Cote D’Ivoire and the other snubbed countries are seething this morning.
Smile!- I wasn’t surprised that the athletes from North Korea weren’t smiling, (you’d be grimacing if you lived there too) but why did the flag bearers from Cape Verde and Armenia look like they were ready to kill someone? I guess they had their game faces on.
A Dig on Badminton and the Danes- Costas introduced the Danish team by mentioning that they were the best non-Asian nation at Badminton. Hmmmm. That probably ranks right up there with being the best at table tennis, excluding the Chinese. And after that ignominious distinction, Costas couldn’t resist a dig at the sport writ large.
“And if you’re looking for badminton coverage, and who isn’t, you can find it on nbcolympics.com,” he said.
Nice Boots!- The Czech team was decked out in some snazzy bright blue rubber rain boots, in a nice dig at the notoriously crap English weather.
Please Drug Test the Independent Olympic Athletes Contingent- There were four “stateless” athletes who came out under the Independent Olympic Athletes grouping and they all clearly looked like they were on something. A blonde from The Netherlands Antilles was jumping around more than an extra in a House of Pain video.
Did George Washington Sire Any Children in Palau?- If anyone can explain to me why Palau’s flag bearer was wearing what appeared to be a colonial-era wig, please let me know in the comments section.
Give That Man a Meal- Mike Tebulo, a marathon runner who served as Malawi’s flag bearer looked like he weighs about 100 pounds. (And according to his bio, he’s actually 119 lbs!)
Coolest Headcovering- Zamzam Mohamed Farah, a track athlete who was Somalia’s flag bearer, wore a power blue head-covering with a big star on her forehead. Without knowing what the cultural significance of this outfit is, I can only say that I thought it was the most badass costume of the night.
Giving Nauru a Break- Lauer mentioned that Nauru had the smallest Olympic delegation but failed to mention that it’s the fattest country in the world.
Ugliest Shirts- OK, Togo, I’m talking to you here. What was up with the garish, gold floral patterned shirts?
Shiny, Happy Spaniards- As I said from the outset, you can tell a lot about a country based upon how its athletes carry themselves and the Spaniards looked like they’d just come from a bar, befitting their nation’s late night party ethos.
Cheer Up Eritrea- So perhaps the Eritrean team has no chance at winning any medals, but why were they so dour looking? Was it the fact that they were kitted out in somber looking gray suits? Or did someone replace their coffee with Folgers crystals?
TEAM USA: Not Tough Enough– I was not a fan of Team USA’s Ralph Lauren metrosexual made-in-China outfits with the big polo player logos and cheesy berets. We want to intimidate people, don’t we? I think we could have taken a lesson from American Samoa, which had a few Rambo-esque shirtless dudes in tribal garb leading their contingent. Now he looked tough.
Orkney is an ancient land where prehistoric monuments still dominate the landscape, along with the wide sky and surrounding sea. Plenty of strange stories have grown up about certain places. Some of the strangest have to do with a little island called Eynhallow.
Eynhallow has been deserted since 1851. Considering that it’s a little less than 200 acres of treeless grass and rocky cliffs surrounded by dangerously strong tides, it’s a testament to Orcadian toughness that it was ever inhabited at all.
For a long time, the stories say, it wasn’t inhabited by people, but by the Finfolk. The Finfolk were a race of magical beings who in the summer lived on the island, which was then called Hildaland. This island itself was magical and was usually invisible to mortal eyes.
The Finfolk were evil beings and sometimes abducted people, much like the elves of European folklore before fantasy writers turned them into metrosexuals. One day a Finman abducted the wife of the Goodman of Thorodale, an Orcadian farmer. Thorodale saw a tall, dark figure making off with his screaming wife in a boat. The brave farmer rowed after them and the Finman turned his boat invisible and escaped. Thorodale grieved for his wife until one day he heard her voice singing to him over the waves, telling him to visit a wise woman on the island of Hoy. This woman told him how to get his wife back and kick the Finfolk off Hildaland. The rest of the tale is told here.
Hildaland, after it was rid of its pesky Finfolk, became known as Eynhallow, a corruption of the Norse word for “Holy Island.” Fanciful folktales aside, there may have been a reason for this. Some believe that a monastery once operated on the island and this is why the Vikings called it a Holy Island.
%Gallery-161239%This seems to have been confirmed when a medieval church was discovered on the island. It had been lived in and built around by the last nineteenth-century residents until disease killed many of them and the rest fled. It was only after it was abandoned that scholars realized what it was. The church building may, or may not, have served a monastery. No excavations have yet taken place. But why would a sizable church and perhaps a monastic community have been built on such a small island, only to be ignored by medieval chroniclers and completely forgotten?
I visited on an annual trip hosted by the Orkney Archaeology Society, a friendly group of professional and amateur archaeologists who love the land and its past. They wanted to explore the mysterious church building. This wasn’t a simple outing to an uninhabited island. Two visitors supposedly disappeared on a trip there in 1990. Some say the ferrymen bringing the group there and back simply miscounted; others say it may have been vengeful Finfolk.
Orcadian folklore hints that the island is still magic. It’s said that if you cut grain there after sundown, it will bleed, and a horse tethered to the ground will always be found running loose after dark.
We set out across the chilly gray water at 7:30 p.m., which in the Orkney summer means it’s still bright enough to read outside. We passed between the islands of Mainland and Rousay and one of the group members pointed out several medieval brochs on either shore.
After about 20 minutes, Eynhallow appeared before us as a green hump in the sea. There’s no pier on Eynhallow, so the ferry ground to a halt on a rocky beach, upsetting hundreds of terns that flapped and squawked at us. Soon we were tromping down the beach. The ferry had some other runs to make so it pulled away with a scrape of steel on stone and chugged off. We were temporarily marooned on an island inhabited only by malevolent spirits. I love my job.
After we left the angry terns behind, all we could hear was the wind. We headed inland across thick grass and wildflowers to reach the mysterious church. It’s a strange building and I can see why the archaeologists are puzzled by it. Parts are skillfully made, while others looked slapped together, probably by the later farmers. A staircase leads up to nowhere and debris and lumps in the earth suggest a series of outbuilding that may have been the monastery. From what can be seen, it certainly looks like a planned community built at once, with the later farmers’ additions put on every which way.
It’s a lonely place now. Grass and nettles have overgrown the site and birds have built nests in holes in the walls. As we explored, one of the group, a singer at a local church, stood in the nave and sang in Latin in a deep, resonant voice. The effect was eerily beautiful.
After puzzling over the church, we headed out to circumnavigate the island. Now, it was about 9 but this far north it meant we had a good two hours of twilight left. The increasing gloom only enriched the colors – the deep green of the grass sparkled with lighter shades of wildflowers, the pale blue of the sky, the endless gray of the ocean. The shore had brighter hues. Red cliffs studded with tufts of wildflowers housed nests for raucous birds. Fulmars, cormorants and puffins were everywhere. Angry mothers guarded their chicks by flapping their wings and squawking at us. They must have been warned by the terns.
The natural beauty continued all around the island. Waves lashed against the jagged rocks and birds studied us from sheer cliffs. As we made our way around we came across several cairns. Some were guide markers for fishermen, while others may have been ancient. A flock of sheep came out of nowhere and passed on by with barely a look at us intruders. We rounded a bend and humped over a hill and there ahead of us shone the lights of the ferry. It had come back for us.
I almost felt sorry.
For more on Eynhallow, check out Orkneyjar’s excellent collection of Eynhallow pages.
July 27 will mark the first day of the Olympic Games, and participating athletes are certainly excited. Many are even taking to social media to express their feelings and, while mostly positive, some are having a bit of trouble watching what they say.
This was the case for Greek triple jumper and track and field athlete Voula Papachristou, who tweeted a racist comment in her native language about African immigrants. According to Digital Trends, the tweet translated to, “With so many Africans in Greece … At least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!!!”
After followers criticized the remark and called it insensitive, Papachristou deleted the comment and apologized on her Facebook page, saying she was “very sorry and ashamed” and “never wanted to offend anyone, or to encroach human rights.”
Unfortunately, the apology was not accepted, at least not by Olympic’s officials, and the athlete has been banned from competing.
Papachristou’s coach, George Pomaski, does not agree with the punishment, stating, “It’s too much, the penalty should not have been so strict. She has already apologized for her remarks. This is a big disappointment not only for her but for her family and for myself, and anyone involved in the Greek team.”
Do you think Papachristou’s punishment was too harsh?
For those who have ever dreamed of naming a commercial airplane and having their creativity being broadcast in the sky for all to see, you may want to enter Thomson Airways’ new contest. The airline is reaching out to Twitter users for help naming their brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Britain. Beginning in May 2013, Thomson will become the first British airline to operate the plane.
Using the hashtag #nameourplane for entries, the airline is asking voters to tweet a suggested name for the aircraft, along with their reason for choosing it. Of course, this needs to be done in 140 characters or less. Additionally, if you happen to spot the contest’s signature hashtag-adorned plane (shown right), you should attach a photo to your tweet for “special consideration.”
According to The Age, entries will be judged by a panel that includes Thomson managing director Chris Browne, and the airline’s head of training and 787 test pilot, Captain Stuart Gruber.
“The arrival of the 787 Dreamliner will be an exciting time for Thomson Airways and our customers,” said Miss Browne. “It was only fitting to name one of these revolutionary aircraft in an equally innovative way.”
And the best part? The winner will also receive a free flight on-board their personally-named aircraft.
Click here to go to Thomson Airways’ Twitter page for updates.
