Bird Dream Adventures at the Extremes of Human Flight

Matt Higgins, Adam Verner

eAudio - 2014

Human flight is one of the last great challenges on Earth. Not like how the Wright brothers flew, but how we fly in our dreams. This is the goal of the Wingsuit Landing Project: to soar through the sky at speeds up to one hundred miles per hour and to land without the aid of a parachute. This project is the creation of thirty-seven-year-old Jeb Corliss, Jr., a Southern Californian who seeks to emulate a mode of flight more like a flying squirrel than bird or plane.Journalist Matt Higgins gained intimate access to Corliss, who, after years of BASE jumping and skydiving, set out to be the first person to be dropped 2,400 feet and land solely with the aid of a wingsuit. But somewhere in the UK, forty-two-year-old Gary Connery was plotting to b...eat Corliss at his own game. Along with an international group of wingsuit devotees, Corliss and Connery race to leap into the unknown as the world's foremost wingsuit pilots. This race will nearly cost one of the competitors his... more