UTMC

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HOLY SHIT! I will stick to 2 wheels for my life threatening terror fun. While watching this my brain was screaming 'No, No, No!'.

I have so many dreams like that, minus the board and kite...

He can't hear you right now, because he's 300 feet off the deck asshole.

"Malik, that was jangleplatz! You should've seen yourself, man! Holy shit!"

"Yeah. I have shit in my pants. I need to go home."

Beaker, meanwhile, is still trying to calculate the wind direction and velocity required to lift a muppet 300'.

i see nothing wrong with this. period.

He tasted sweet freedom for but a few short seconds before the earth's cruel embrace pulled him back onto the cold, hard rocks...

Kind of reminds me of the blimp landing accidents I've seen footage of. You gotta know when to just let go of the rope. He is so lucky to get put down as gently as he did, and soon enough that he was able to hang on for the whole ride.

It also makes an interesting dilemma for the camera man: Do I put down the camera and risk missing the most awesome stunt ever, or do I keep rolling and risk capturing my friends death on video?

Rabbit_Fighter wrote:Kind of reminds me of the blimp landing accidents I've seen footage of. You gotta know when to just let go of the rope. He is so lucky to get put down as gently as he did, and soon enough that he was able to hang on for the whole ride.

It also makes an interesting dilemma for the camera man: Do I put down the camera and risk missing the most awesome stunt ever, or do I keep rolling and risk capturing my friends death on video?

Apparently the handle bar is just for steering the kite, and you're actually harnessed to the line. So letting go would not improve things. There is a quick release, but he was probably already too high by the time he figured out what was happening. The kite is basically a parachute anyway, which is exactly the kind of thing you want when falling from a great height.

I think I might try kiteboarding if you could guarantee that this would happen. That looked awesome.

Those kites have a control to depower the kite by changing it's shape, which is theoretically what he was supposed to do. I've got to say he did alright though. You hear about that sort of thing happening all the time, people definitely die that way. The line between a kite and a parachute gets pretty blurry at times. If you haven't tried flying a parafoil I highly recommend it, I have a little 4.5m trainer kite that will have you leaving parallel skid marks all over the beach. Super fun.

That had to be one helluva ride.