a dude jumped from outer space

did you see that? this past sunday? a dude, no... not just a dude... felix baumgartner is his name, jumped to the earth from damn near outer space. it was fucking insane! and i if you're reading this blog, then i assume you're internet savvy enough to have already seen this or at least know about it. so i'm not gonna dedicate this time to bore you with the details.. .which is good, cuz then i'd have to do some research. and any fan (okay, maybe not fan, more like any passive observer) of my writing knows how much i don't like research.

i didn't even know this was happening till right before it happened. i've heard it in passing over the past few months but i never really focused in on it. i never really took a minute to think about what was really happening here. but there i was on sunday, facebooking through the abundance of commercials during the jets game and there were tons of updates about watching this space jump. i quickly rushed through my channel guide and saw it was being televised on the discovery network. i actually switched from the jets game (big leap for me) to watch it.

what i saw was something so inspiring, so crazy, so exhilarating, so fucking amazing... and probably dangerous. this dude took his little pod to the very edge of our atmosphere... to the edge of outer space, to the ever so fragile line that divides earth from universe. if he'd have just done that, gone all the way up there in his little single person pod and come back down, i would have been amazed. but he didn't. he went all the way. he walked out of his pod in his spacesuit and right over the edge to make his epic descent back to the planet.

this dude fell and fell and fell.... free falling for multiple minutes and several thousand feet. seriously, during free fall, i was thinking, "isn't this guy gonna die?" hopefully he wasn't thinking that. i'm sure he had his plan and that plan ended with him living. but to see this individual falling in the sky.... all by himself, from outer space till the ground of the earth, it just blew me away. that's quite the landing. some space shuttles can't pull that off (not trying to be insensitive but i feel like the comparison gives it some perspective).

as he pulled a cable or pressed a button on his super suit,  his big ol' red bull parachute filled the air and slowed him down so that he could complete his elegant descent back onto the earth. holy shit. holy fucking shit. i couldn't believe i just saw that. no frenzy of jets touchdowns could replace something so amazing. in a moment's notice, i had totally forgotten all about that dude who walked over niagra falls.

i'm just inspired that someone would choose to do this. shit ain't perfect and the world's a fucked up mess. but every now and again someone does something absolutely amazing to help restore just a bit of my faith in other people. i'm sure there's a payoff and a paycheck... but this isn't done without passion and without purpose. this dude's driven.

and i know a jump from outer space isn't gonna fix the world... but if we could all just pause for a second and let go of all our bullshit and just be in awe of a human being who wanted to stretch the limitations of what we consider to be possible, isn't there something redeeming in that? i'm not looking for a revolution of space jumpers to come plummeting to the earth. but look around... there's so many possibilities, so much that can be done. let's get to work people. felix is doing his part. go be amazing.