An indoor skydiving place just opened a few minutes from me.

Technically, we consider arriving at the atmosphere-terrain interface without the canopy in a fully deployed configuration to be a “failure” condition. Unless, of course, you’ve let a German scientist experiment on you in a top secret government super-soldier program, in which case you should probably use your perfect teeth and imposing stature to hook up with the neighbor across the hall who keeps subtly flirting with you. Sure, she may be spying on you at the behest of your boss, but what better way to find out the truth, and besides, she might actually be interested in you (like every other woman in the Western Hemisphere–“Ask for her number, you moron!”) and she doesn’t appear to have any awkward lip piercings, obvious tattoos, or any other hangups that your 'Thirties era sensibility would find objectionable.

I had a point when I began this post but it has since escaped like a cybernetically enhanced Soviet master assassin.

Stranger

We took a bunch of French exchange high school students and their American student hosts to iFly Seattle. Everyone thought it was awesome! It wasn’t cheap. Most of us bought the tix at Costco and IIRC it was about $60/person for a total of one hour (with 2 2 minute flying sessions each). It was probably the highlight of the 3 week trip for most of the french exchange students.

They seem to be using the sheer power of awesome. I was not expecting to see aerial ballet today.

The one I tried had blower with 800 peak horsepower; that works out to about $80 per hour for the electricity. But then of course there’s all the other expenses that go with it, coupled with the fact that if the employee is using the chamber for free, then it’s not generating revenue…