Swoopers

There’s a new way to risk your life these days. It’s called swooping. One bad turn can kill you.

It used to be that people thought that jumping out of a perfectly good airplane at 13,000 feet with only a large piece of nylon or silk preventing you from becoming a messy pancake in someone’s backyard was, well, a little nuts — something reserved for Army Rangers, midlife crises, and old guys trying to prove they still have some chutzpah (like George H.W. Bush, who did a tandem sky dive on his 80th birthday in 2004).

In reality, though, sky diving itself is relatively safe. In 2004, for example, there were only 21 fatalities out of 2.4 million jumps nationwide. That’s better odds than you get for just driving your car around.

In today’s extreme sport environment, though, making things safer also correlates to making it relatively boring for the more adventurous. It’s not enough to land safely and unscathed after tumbling from the sky — now it has to be done with style and maniacal speed.

Enter the new extreme sport of canopy piloting, more...