When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

04 July 2008

Burning out his fuse up here alone

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's . . . Fusion Man!

Make that Yves Rossy, a 48-year-old Swiss daredevil also known as Jet Man, Rocket Man, the Bird Man of the Alps.

Thanks to his homemade, jet-powered wing suit, Rossy can flash through the air at a Superman-like 186 mph. Imagine George Jetson, the futuristic cartoon character, pumped up with nuclear steroids and leaving his boy Elroy in the dust.

"It's always been my dream, to fly like a bird," Rossy said in an interview at his home in this Swiss village overlooking Lake Geneva. "And I don't want to do it just for myself, but to show mankind how to do it."

"Zooming Around The Alps In a Homemade Wing Suit" (Washington Post, July 4, 2008)

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