Aaron spent the Tuesday of his Spring Break skydiving in Dallas, TX. Yep, skydiving, plummeting from 10,000 feet and challenging the impact equations from Newtonian physics. This coming from the guy who has a sore back so often that he spends a lot of time popping his neck and shoulders, resembling something of a praying mantis in need of a fix. Apparently freefall is easier on the joints than sleeping, who knew? Ah, Aaron, I kid. He had a great time, and has a DVD to show us all at some point as video evidence substantiating the need for his institutionalization.
On a side note, I debated with my mom whether Aaron's "putting his life in some stranger's hands" was any riskier than the way we put our lives in strangers' hands on a daily basis - like your auto mechanic, other drivers, an airline pilot, the guy who designed the escalator so it doesn't eat hapless children. She insisted that "this was different" and I'm kidding to some extent here, obviously it's a lot more direct to strap yourself to some dude, jump out of a plane and implicitly say, "Um, please don't drop me." But it reminds me a lot of the Malcolm Gladwell points in The Tipping Point (Ed: note that iPJ himself pointed out that this was actually from Freakonomics by Steves Levitt and Dubner, not Malcom Gladwell - I read those books all around the same time and confused them; please don't sue me) how people freak out about gun laws and children, when really it's about 1000 times riskier to have a swimming pool in your backyard than a gun in your house. And we spend millions of dollars on Homeland Security when you stand a much greater chance of dying from, say, a leaky levee than a terrorist bombing. Even stranger - I remember the interviews with midwesterners before the 2004 election, and time and time again people said they felt their kids were "safer from terrorists" with Dubya in office. Leaving jokes about his particular military expertise aside - I mean, dude, you live in Kansas, you really think your suburban horse ranch is target A1A?
Alright, this is morphing into a musing. No good. Suffice it to say that hey bro, if you need your dopamine receptors stimulated by freefall, that's cool with me. I will enjoy the experience vicariously. Just don't buy a terrorist infested swimming pool anytime soon.
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