Land Locked

Become a human air mattress at 3,000 feet? Um, no thanks.

Dear Justin Shorb:

You see, as far as I'm concerned, there's still one thing wrong with this "wingsuit" thing of yours. It seems to be the next big variation on sky diving. Instead of a parachute, you dress up in suits that inflate when they hit the air, so you look like big air mattresses or the Pokemon balloons they sell at parades. Apparently, this is a slow-motion form of the sport. But here's the problem I have with it: It still requires you to jump out of an airplane.

Unless you have been ambushed by Messerschmitts, what would possess the ordinary non-winged human critter to jump out of a perfectly good airplane? Airplanes are our friends. They bring us up and bring us down. They once even served us food. All that was required was that we stay . . . on . . . the . . . airplane. Once out of the airplane, to paraphrase an old Monty Python skit, human beings do not so much fly as plummet. It is my understanding that sky divers occasionally drop toward the solid surface of our solid planet at 120 miles per hour. I would not get out of bed at that speed. Now that you've opened your Flock University wingsuiting school in Pepperell, you say wingsuit jumpers descend at a much slower rate -- as much as 100 miles per hour slower, or 20 miles per hour. This does not comfort me. I have hit things with my sturdy American automobile at 20 miles per hour, and I have dented it, and I am not anywhere near as sturdy as it is. You're not fooling me, sir. I did not just fall (slowly) off the turnip truck here.