Tomorrow

Just when you feel satisfied w/ your personal accomplishments:

Joseph William Kittinger II (born July 27, 1928) is a former Command Pilot and career military officer in the United States Air Force. He is most famous for his participation in Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior, holding the records for having the highest, fastest and longest skydive^[1] and as being the first man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon. Serving as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, he was shot down and spent 11 months in a North Vietnamese prison.

Captain Kittinger was next assigned to the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. For Project Excelsior (meaning “ever upward”), a name given to the project by Col. Stapp as part of research into high altitude bailouts, he made a series of three extreme altitude parachute jumps from an open gondola carried aloft by large helium balloons.

Kittinger’s first high-altitude jump, from about 76,400 feet (23,300 m) on November 16, 1959, was a near-disaster when an equipment malfunction caused him to lose consciousness.^[2] The automatic parachute opener in his equipment saved his life. He went into a flat spin at a rotational velocity of about 120 rpm. The g-forces at his extremities have been calculated to be over 22 times the force of gravity, setting another record. On December 11, 1959, he jumped again from about 74,700 feet (22,800 m). For that leap, Kittinger was awarded the “Leo Stevens Parachute Medal”.

On August 16, 1960, he made the final jump from the Excelsior III at 102,800 feet (31,300 m).^[2] Towing a small drogue parachute for initial stabilization, he fell for four minutes and 36 seconds, reaching a maximum speed of 614 miles per hour (988 km/h)^[3][4] before opening his parachute at 18,000 feet (5,500 m). Pressurization for his right glove malfunctioned during the ascent, and his right hand swelled up to twice its normal size.^[5][6] He set historical numbers for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest drogue-fall (four minutes), and fastest speed by a human being through the atmosphere.^[7] These are still current USAF records, but were not submitted for aerospace world records to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).

These jumps were made in a “rocking-chair” position, descending on his back, rather than in the usual face-down position familiar to skydivers. This was because he was wearing a 60 lb (27 kg) “kit” on his behind, and his pressure suit naturally formed the sitting shape when it was inflated, a shape appropriate for sitting in an airplane cockpit. For this series of jumps, Kittinger was decorated with a second Distinguished Flying Cross, and he was awarded the Harmon Trophy by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Laird Hamilton (born Laird John Zerfas, March 2, 1964, San Francisco, California) is an American big-wave surfer, co-inventor of tow-in surfing, and an occasional fashion and action-sports model.

It was Hamilton’s death-defying drop into Tahiti’s Teahupo’o break (commonly known as, CHOPU) on the morning of August 17, 2000 which has become the measure of his surfing career to date, and has firmly established his reputation as the greatest and bravest big wave surfer in the recorded history of surfing. A wipeout at Teahupo’o reef on a “big day”, a particularly hazardous shallow-water reef break southeast of the Pacific Island of Tahiti, could result in a surfrider’s death.^[7]

That particular day at Teahupo’o reef, Hamilton dropped into what is widely considered to be the most dangerous wave ever ridden, due to the sea “sucking down” into a huge well and forming a never-before-witnessed enormous mass of moving water –under, behind and over Hamilton — throughout his ride.

And on that day, a larger than normal ocean swell, “The Wave”, approached. Darrick Doerner piloted the watercraft, with Hamilton in tow on his surfboard, into position. In an instant, the big wave jumped and the ocean floor dropped into a monster wave, an über wave. Pulling in and gracefully releasing the tow rope, Hamilton physically ‘drove’ his surfboard and body down into the well of the wave’s enormous tunnel vortex, possibly betting his own life on the wave-punishing Kamikaze ride, in full view of the boat-based photographers’ and videographers’ cameras recording the unexpected. With his signature artistic flair and grace on big waves, Hamilton continued deeply carving water through this high speed epic ride of a lifetime, emerging back over the wave’s shoulder without a moment of faltering. Cheers and screams came from all present on the surrounding watercraft who witnessed the feat. As if Hamilton had ridden the giant as a disciplined “wave-riding man-machine”, his ride there on that day, chronicled in photographs and video, is known by surfers worldwide ever since simply as “When Laird Hamilton rode ‘The Wave’”, and a still photograph of him riding The Wave (appearing as if it were a giant mouth of water about to gulp him up) made the cover of Surfer magazine, accompanied by the caption: “oh my god…“^[8]

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