Galileo had already made a significant beginning toward a knowledge of the law of motion. He discovered the law of inertia and the law of bodies falling freely in the gravitational field of the earth.
The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.
It's physics. Pure physics, I'm falling fast and faster still. So fall with me. Fall down with me. And stay.
A fall from such a height is rarely straight downwards.
We may stop ourselves when going up, never when coming down.
I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: "If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight." I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.
Gravity is one variable in a lot of scientific processes. If you can remove gravity or minimize its effect, then you can understand the other processes that are going on.
From regular, relative skydiving, I went on to freeflying. Freeflying is more the three-dimensional skydiving.
When you lift off, the pressure is supposed to be maximum. But actually, it was very benign. Very enjoyable. But as soon as the engines cut off and you get to zero gravity, you felt as if you were being pushed off your seat. You feel disoriented. You don't feel aligned with anything. I felt for a few good hours that I was falling.
I experimented with all possible maneuvers-loops, somersaults and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill, distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of the air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy, I flew around in space.
My sky diving experience was spectacular, to say the least. The number of safety measures and repeated cross checks make it safer. The team did not let us jump alone, as individuals are not expected to have the expertise to do so safely on their own.
As a jumper, I try to defy gravity as long as I can. But no matter how far I jump, I'll always hit the earth eventually.
Self-destruction would be a brief, almost autoerotic free-fall into a great velvet darkness
BASE jumping is skydiving from fixed objects, like buildings, antennae, bridges and earth - meaning mountains, cliffs. It's for sure - for me - it's the ultimate feeling of being in free fall, with all the visual references.
A little bird told me that jumping is easy and the falling is fun, right up until you hit sidewalk shivering and stunned.
[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.
Falling is one of the ways of moving.
I cling to nowhere until I fall - the crash of Nothing.
Falling, falling, falling, falling down. Look yourself in the eye before you drown.
And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.
For some, it was easier to take the leap from the leafless tree and dance on nothing until dancing was done.
The one thing we can't really train for is weightlessness, real weightlessness. It's a ton of fun. It's pure Newtonian physics. You push in one direction, you go in the opposite direction with an equal force.
The best advice I can give you about falling is to never land.
Weightless is a great equalizer.
I never went bungee jumping. The closest I did was I was born.
