[u]Paraglider survives after soaring to 32,000 feet[/u]
CANBERRA, Australia - A German paraglider was encased in ice and blacked out after being sucked into a tornado-like thunderstorm in Australia and carried to a height greater than Mount Everest. She survived.
I think Iâll stick with a seat in coach class, thanks.
Wow! What an incredible story.
Iâm just wondering why someone would fly around storms in a paraglider, upcoming competitions notwithstanding. I donât get it.
Not âgetting it,â is a neat way to avoid being encased in ice whilst being blacked out.
I never thought to consider bafflement as an elegant solution in the survival game beforeâŚthereâs probably a genetic component to it borne out of natural selection, I suppose.
I gotta get me one of them thar paraglider thingies.
Mebbe people who ride those things oughta consider some safety accessories to help cope with the possibility of an ascent like that.
I canât believe she made it back alive.
A common sense hat comes to mind.
My Low D whistle is a safety accessory. When playing, it keeps me from considering leaping (wheeee) into the cosmic blender for my endorphin load.
From a FAQ page in a paragliding school:
âQ. Is it safe to paraglide?
A. You can make paragliding, like most adventure sports, as safe or dangerous as you want. It is of course crucial that you receive instruction from a certified professional and use safe equipment â professional schools will create as controlled a learning environment as possible. But paragliding is still an outdoor sport and Mother Nature is unpredictable â the primary safety factors are personal judgment and attitude. You must be willing to learn gradually and to think with your head not with your ego. If you donât, then you can get injured or killed; if you do, then you can paraglide until youâre 90.â
I think that I will stay on the ground. I have a bad attitude when it comes to heights. Only in my dreams will I jump off of tall buildings.
Safe paragliding! It needs to be taught in schools.
I have a cousin who use to paraglide a lot. He stopped when he became a dad.
How did they come up with the exact figure of 32,612 feet, I wonder?
Some other guy who got caught up wasnât so fortunate.
Her GPS registered that sheâd gone 40 miles. What I want to know is how she managed to hang on while unconscious.
Wisnerska, whose flight was tracked by her personal GPS and computer, landed 40 miles from her launch site. [from the story]
I assume the rig included an altimeter.
It says sheâs training for a world championship. Iâd just go ahead and give it to her now.
Iâm glad that the woman survived.
I can tell that she and I are very different. She was praying to be blown away from the storm. I would have been praying to be killed quickly. I wouldnât really want to regain consciousness after something like that. I wouldnât want to remember it getting dark and then having lightening striking all around me. It almost makes me feel hysterical just reading about it.
I feel most people are not scared enough of lightening. You may think it is a good ways off when you count the seconds between the strike and the thunder, but there are freak strikes on the edges of storms that might hit where you are. You can get hit by it even if you are on a covered porch. If you are in a field, you should crouch down and try to balance on one footâYeah, good luck!!!âcows get killed apparently because they have so much contact with the ground. You shouldnât take showers or talk on the phone if there is lightening. It can come in through the pipes and wires. Oh lord.
can you imagine a boeing 747 crew looking out their window and
seeing that as they flew past?
better yet, can you imagine the reaction of the people on the ground
listening to the 747 pilotâs radio report about his âsighting?â
urban legends are made of things like this.
~shoelaces~
About 20 years ago a nasty storm was passing. I was in the middle of my apartment when I saw in incredible flash in the corner of the living room and heard what sounded like a gunshot and boom of thunder all at the same time. I was scared sh*tless. Once my heart started beating again, I went over to the corner and found a blackened striker plate blown off a couple of light switches. I also found the melted screw that had held the thing on.
edited because the swear-thingie changed shtless to sht. I donât think it should change an adjective into a noun. 
A friend of mine once had lightening run in on his sattelite dish cable and it caught his house on fire. Luckily he was home and not too much damage was done. He use to be bad to talk on the phone during a storm but not after that happened.