The World's Most Daring Sportsmen

In 1933, H. W. Tilman decided he'd like to check out the beach at Cameroon. Only problem was, at that moment Tilman happened to be at his beach-front home in Mombasa, about 3000 miles away. To reach Cameroon's sandy shore required the first east-to-west traverse of Africa through the dense, uncharted jungles of Uganda and the Congo. Tilman was undeterred. Alone on his bicycle, armed only with a machete, he rode off into the sunset, probably pausing each afternoon at four for tea. A little more than two months later, he reached his destination. At the age of 56, with almost 25 years of exploration in Africa and the Himalayas behind him, the irrepressible old codger then bought a boat and, over several expeditions, eventually sailed it around the world. He even made a trip to the South Pole, which he reached just before his 69th birthday.

The decline of the British Empire and an increasingly well-charted globe have made the Tilmans of this world a dying breed. Once, an Oxford education, tweed trousers, two pairs of socks and a heavy coat were all a British gentleman explorer needed to make an all-out assault on the summit of Mt. Everest. These days it seems to require a six-figure budget, international sponsorship and a small army of Sherpas to get that far. Indeed, "the right stuff," as Tom Wolfe's test pilots called it, is in distressingly short supply. Or seems to be, anyway, until you cast your eye toward one David Kirke and that cradle of the eccentric idle rich, the university town of Oxford, England.

Kirke does not look like an adventurer or a hero of any kind. In fact, seen in his army-surplus coat (secured with safety pins) after a typical Friday evening at a smoky Oxford pub called. The Bear, he looks as though he might need help walking home. With a slight beer drinker's paunch, bristling gray-flecked beard topped by bulging eyes and receding brown curls, he seems the quintessential upper-class twit gone to seed. Which he is. But he also happens to be the roguish kingpin of the world's only club devoted exclusively to those sports and diversions so dangerous, so improbable, so utterly outlandish that no one else would even think of them, let alone try them. As founder, director, idea man and prime mover of the Oxford Dangerous Sports Club, Kirke is out to prove that the call of die wild still comes through loud and clear. In this age of electric socks and in-flight entertainment, he means to demonstrate that neither skill nor experience is needed to set a hang-gliding record, fly an airplane, climb a mountain, scale a live volcano or leap from a high-speed train. As Kirke carries his celebration of the dilettante to manic extremes, his actions tend to confirm what his friends cheerfully admit: that he is, by usual standards, deranged.

Even in his upbringing, the 34-year-old Kirke seems to have been molded as a Victorian adventurer. With an education in self-reliance through his early years, Kirke proceeded, well prepared, to Oxford. He spent three undistinguished years there, as befits a man of good taste, leaving with a "gentleman's third" in English literature to take up journalism in London. Whatever the initial romance of a profession that involved watching other people do exciting things, Kirke found early on that he much preferred being watched himself. Helped by the fact that no one seemed to think he was destined to be a great journalist, Kirke packed his bags in 1970 and returned to Oxford, to that haunt of great eccentrics and brilliant cranks.

There, with Christopher Baker and Ed Hulton, two friends who share a bit of that wild gleam that lights Kirke's eyes, he set about experimenting with adventure. Where some Oxonians becomeself-taught experts in dead languages or Australian wines, he would make himself the world expert on what he calls life-questioning sport.

The first step was to sample the traditional dangerous sports. During the summer of 1977, with no expertise and little equipment, Kirke clambered to the top of the Matterhorn. That August, without ceremony or training, he and Baker launched themselves down the Landquart in Switzerland, thus becoming the greenest of novices ever to survive what is probably Europe's most treacherous stretch of white water.

The reckless successes began piling up as Kirke, fired by his growing enthusiasm for danger, looked for ever greater potential disasters. Later that summer, though he lacked a pilot's license, he somehow rented a small airplane, which he managed to get airborne and return safely to earth without ever having flown one of the contraptions before.

The birth of the Oxford Dangerous Sports Club, however, was delayed until October, when Kirke planned his first group activity: champagne brunch for six, followed by a jump from Rockall, a 63-foot sea stack off the coast of Scotland. After a climb that was treacherous in itself, Kirke's little party looked down to where the ebb and flow of crashing waves created a cycle of filling and emptying pools--one instant safely full, the next nothing but bare rock for a diver to land on. Deciding that discretion was, indeed, the better part of valor, several would-be members of Kirke's new club turned around and risked the climb back down. Two people finally jumped, and Kirke himself dived headfirst into the freezing water, though he had never even jumped from a high board before. All that finally marred this Hue baptism of the club was that theboys already knew how to swim.

The following summer, for Kirke and his club, was devoted to experimentation. Having by then tried all traditional dangerous sports of importance, they felt it was time to move on, to invent new ones. In addition to the simple thrill that novelty provided--and it was becoming increasingly hard to thrill Kirke--there was an increased element of risk involved. Danger was relatively easy to evaluate when one knew what had happened before; it assumed mysterious dimensions, however, when the odds were unknown. It was about that time that the calculations for all the group's events--the crucial calculations of speed, velocity, impact and so forth that determined survivability--were turned over to Simon Keeling and Alan Weston, two of Kirke's buddies who had taken their respective Oxford degrees in engineering and computing, and who thus could be counted on to produce reasonably reliable estimates. However, because the dangerous sportsmen were not about to let the tedious certitude of modern science interfere with the spirit of their challenge to nature, they adhered to a policy of undertaking only adventures never before attempted, so that there would always be an element of uncertainty involved.

Thus did various bobsled runs in France and Switzerland take on new dimensions in the summer of 1979, when negotiated atop a block of ice fitted with a seat. Wheelchairs turned nearly lethal as they were moved out of hospital corridors and onto steep hillsides for the purpose of quick descent. During the traditional running of the bulls through the narrow Spanish streets of Pamplona, Kirke and company substituted skate boards for foot speed. And in what was planned as the climax of the summer, the tuxedo-clad sportsmen were to have parachuted into the Longleat animal park's lion enclosure, each armed with a revolver containing only one bullet. The fact that this event never came off probably had more to do with lack of organization than with lack of nerve.

Exactly what makes Kirke tread the edge of the great abyss with such regularity is impossible to say for sure. When he is not risking a final farewell, his daily schedule borders on the unbearably routine--a sort of burlesque of life in Oxford. Emerging every day about noon from his chaotic apartment, where books are strewn all over and trophies of dangerous ventures litter the shelves, he ambles to the center of town in time for lunch at The Bear. There, surrounded by his cronies, the world's most daring sportsman sits eating omelets and drinking pints of beer until the sun goes down. Then it's off to his club, where he can sit in a leather wing chair and read the papers with England's finest, warmed by frequent doses of good Scotch.

Now, admittedly, this is not the regimen of either genius or fitness. And, indeed, Kirke takes unconcealed pride in the fact that he is usually at least five years the senior of his fellow Dangerous Sports Club members and apparently in (continued on page 192) (continued from page 142) the worst shape of all. He also Lakes pride in the fact that while climbing Kilimanjaro, he went straight to the 19,000-foot summit without missing a stride, while his young companions wheezed and gasped their way from behind.

The secret of his stamina and of his remarkable ability to survive the unsurvivable is neither training nor any particular talent but a psychological toughness that produces unparalleled performances through the sheer force of his will. Kirke assumes he will survive and, believing it, he does. With heroes of the era of the amateur--with men like Scott in the antarctic and Stanley in Africa--he shares a mental determination that enables him to endure horrendous pain and to think clearly in the most disconcerting of crises. "Everyone has a certain level of anxiety," he says. "I direct my anxiety into the events I attempt. The rest of my life is very calm."

Maybe so, but to the impartial observer, Kirke's behavior is not as calm as he claims. A man who prefers extremes in every aspect of life, Kirke replaces the disintegrating army coat and safety pins each evening with an equally battered black tie and tails. He throws a succession of extravagant parties that seems to keep him stylishly in the hole. It may ultimately be more accurate to say that Kirke's "events" are the safety valve for anxieties and preoccupations that are larger than life.

But whatever the cause, there can be no doubt that by the fall of 1978, the manic gleam in Kirke's eyes had inspired a full-fledged organization of dangerous sportsmen and assorted hangers-on. With the trio of Baker. Weston and Keeling forming the core of the club around Kirke, the sportsmen were beginning to stir interest in wider circles. Since their personal resources were rapidly dwindling and their schemes growing exponentially more expensive, that was a very good thing. Late in 1978. they enlisted the support of an independent film-production company and the BBC for a hang-gliding expedition off Mt. Kilimanjaro. Kirke had never bothered to master the sport, of course, but his smooth talking and confident air convinced the men holding the purse strings that he was champion.

The expedition served to clinch Kirke's status as a legend among the cognoscenti and, at the same time, proved a disaster for the BBC. Loaded down with hang-gliding apparatus, supplies and the obligatory formalwear, two of Kirke's companions abandoned the attempt during the tortuous ascent. Weston, the only experienced hang glider in the group, got to the top but crashed on take-off, destroying his glider and injuring his ankle. Keeling, meanwhile, managed a take-off, then bounced his wing lip off the mountainside, swooped upward and then screamed back toward earth in a nylon and metal-tubed power dive leftward. The BBC captured approximately 12 seconds of filmed flight, which depicted the Kirke posterior disappearing into surrounding clouds. But what was the end of a short film clip best forgotten by the BBC was only the beginning for Kirke. Once enveloped by clouds, he continued to fly through the mist without a compass or an altimeter, eventually coming in for a gentle landing on a coffee plantation 25 miles away.

The Kilimanjaro exploit proved to be a crucial watershed in the history of dangerous sports.With it came a greater cohesiveness of the group and, symbolic of that new clubbiness. an official club tie (a silver wheelchair on black background). It also established the club as a media darling--and, just as important, convinced the sportsmen that anything they did was a media event. Kirke continued to indulge a mania for secrecy about preparations for the group's events, but he was increasingly receptive to the idea of coverage once the events were under way, particularly if that meant money. And, finally, it was Kilimanjaro that first prompted him to speculate seriously about what was to become the club's most spectacular undertaking--a modern variation on an ancient puberty ritual that would be suitable for mass-media coverage.

Kirke's new scheme actually originated with natives in the highlands of New Guinea who, in a strange rite of passage, tie springy vines to their ankles, then leap from high trees. As they hurtle headfirst toward the ground, the vine snaps them to a mind-jolting halt just inches from the forest floor. Kirke and Baker replaced the jungle vines with plastic bungee cord, similar to the straps used to hold books on the back of a bicycle but strong enough to bring supersonic jet fighters to a stop on the decks of aircraft carriers. And it would not be jungle trees the sportsmen would leap from but high bridges--preferably over rivers.

The first jump, on April Fools' Day, 1979, was from one of England's highest suspension bridges, the 215-foot Clifton Bridge in Bristol. One end of the bungee was tied to the bridge, the other to an improvised harness designed by Keeling and Weston. With champagne toasts, Kirke, Weston, Keeling and Tim Hunt--younger brother of champion race-car driver James Hunt--all stepped off. Like tuxedo-clad yo-yos, the dangerous sportsmen dropped the full length of their cords, stretched another 100 feet waterward and bounced back up nearly 200 feet; then it was down and up and down again, in bounces of decreasing magnitude, until they hung, limp but ecstatic, 120 feet below the bridge. It was only after Weston had popped the cork on the celebratory champagne he'd carried along on the leap that the remaining members of the party hauled them back up to the bridge.

Arrested and photographed, the sportsmen had achieved both of their objectives: They had garnered national publicity and all four jumpers were alive, which proved their new sport could be played. After another trial leap that October from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Kirke decided they were ready for the big time.

What he had his eye on was nothing less than the world's highest suspension bridge. Like a toothpick slung across a funnel, the 1260-foot Royal Gorge Bridge spans that gorge over the Arkansas River just outside Canon City, Colorado. The gap, which is about 800 feet wide at the top, narrows to less than 60 feet at the base. Without even having seen the bridge, the sportsmen were eager to jump from it. Keeling and Weston got to work on their computations. Alter much deliberation, they announced that a bungee cord 415 feet long, with Kirke attached, could be expected to stretch at least that distance again; Kirke would be subjected to a force of five gs and would pass out on the rebound.

Kirke was intrigued. "This will require total control, mental and physical, and you won't know the result until you wake up. How excellent!" he exclaimed. "If you do everything correctly up to the point you pass out, then you'll survive, but if you don't--if you make a mistake--then you'll die not even feeling your own death." But even as they indulged in that kind of existential reflection, Kirke and friends lost no time wrapping up the publicity and the dollar side of the expedition.

Back in early 1980, That's Incredible!, the now-notorious ABC show that specializes in video-taping self--inflicted mutilation for mass consumption, had a lot less to its discredit than it does now. Kirke was convinced that anything called That's Incredible! simply had to need his kind of adventure. As it turned out, he was right.

Kirke and the producers agreed on an $18,000 fee to fill the club's coffers. Fill them, thatis, so they could be emptied again. For, in the spirit of the club, Kirke ordained that every cent of the take would be spent on the jump itself and associated celebration.

The television company scheduled the filming for March sixth and requested three jumpers. Kirke decided to do it his way or not at all. He insisted on flying over as many of the club members as wanted to go, and most of them converged on London first for a preflight party. From Paris came Hunt and Hubert Gibbs, a shy young musician who was to be the jump's official pianist. From Ireland came ex-Oxonian Anthony Murphy and his wife, Sophia. Oxford yielded Murphy's brother Rob, Kirke and me--an experienced rock-climber, in charge of tying the bungee cords.

Finally, tired and drunk from their various preliminary celebrations, the party converged on San Francisco five clays before the scheduled jump. Weston was to meet up with the crew at the jump site, but Paul Foulon, Weston's stepbrother and the group's second American, drove down from Portland in his pickup--bringing with him the bungees used in the Golden Gate jump the year before.

"Every event may be my last," Kirke declared, before we set out for Colorado in a convoy consisting of a white Cadillac convertible, two small trailers and the pickup. "Festivity is required. If anything goes wrong, the party must celebrate life, not mourn death."

A parody of a motorcade, the Dangerous Sports caravan weaved, skidded and violated the law at an average of 70 miles per hour across the Great American West, white Cadillac in the lead, packed to the brim with silly-looking weirdos in ties and tails. To the uninitiated, the convoy itself looked like dangerous sport: 31280 worth of liquor Stowed in the trunk, all being pumpedwith indecent haste into the already saturated livers of Britain's sickest and strangest, who even in England could not be relied on to find the right side of the road.

No one slept, of course, for total party required total commitment. Besides, if the revelers tried to sleep, they might actually pass out, and given the amount of alcohol diluting the blood of those Englishmen, it might be weeks before they would see daylight again. After 18 hours of continuous merrymaking, the Dangerous Sports Club pulled into the truck stop in Ely, Nevada, at six o'clock in the morning. The boys tightened their bow ties and swaggered in. Forty-five truckers' jaws dropped into sedimented cups of coffee. Warily, the waitress approached. Kirke smiled his evil smile, while all eyes bulged expectantly. Anthony Murphy, part of the supporting cast, stepped diffidently forward. Dressed in a Royal Navy dinner jacket with tails, he peered benevolently at the permanent-waved waitress. "Excuse me, but can you tell me, how viscous is your porridge?"

Later that day, as we crossed into Utah, a storm blew in, and how the Brits loved it! Windows rolled up, visibility zero, we fishtailed wildly down the invisible road--40 miles an hour on a skating rink you couldn't even see! This was danger fit for dangerous men, and they reveled in every bit of it. With public school voices jabbering at cocktail-party levels, the drunken caravan roared on into the dark, a meteor of the English upper class burning insanely across the snowdrifts of the American desert.

We arrived in Canon City, 14 miles outside Royal Gorge, one day before the jump. Up to that point, the club had been a bit worried about how seriously That's Incredible! was going to take its sport. One look at producer Alan Lands-burg's preparations and all were reassured. In addition to a dozen cameramen, a helicopter had been rented for some aerial shots. Eying thec hopper wistfully, Kirke said, "There may be some tangible benefits from this television company, after all. Perhaps I could persuade them to let me have a go with their helicopter."

At the site, the boys took a look around--and down. Standing atop the wind-swept bridge, 1053 feet above what looked like a pencil line of river, the club looked for the first time just the slightest bit pensive. It was a long way down.

No time for regrets now, thought Kirke, and he took the rest of the Brits oft for early-afternoon drinks among the natives of Canon City, while the two Americans on the team set to work tying on the cords that would be used in the next day's jump.

It was a tricky business. In previous jumps, Kirke had explained, to my horror, they had used seven-millimeter yachting rope and overhand knots to secure the bungee cord to the bridge. With that sort of knot tying, the jumpers would have about a 50 percent chance of dropping directly into the river below. So we spent eight hours constructing a line from two strands of 17-millimcter bungee cord, then tying the line into a carefully designed mountaineering-rope anchor that would secure the cords while preventing a fatal, frictive rub between the bungee cord and the bridge. Meanwhile, a piano was rented for Gibbs. It began to look as though the event would come off.

Everyone was "quite keen" to be the first off the bridge. Kirke decided to have five jumpers leap simultaneously, on cords spaced evenly along the bridge. Kirke, in the middle, would be on a 415-foot length. Weston and Hunt would flank him on 240-foot lengths, leaving the outside positions for the novices (Foulon and me) on 120-foot cords.

The biggest risk was Kirke's. Dangling at the end of 1000 feet of line, to within a few feet of the water, he would be subject to immensely widened pendulum swings. The slightest breeze from the wrong direction could blow him off course and slap him into a sheer granite face only 30feet away at the base. "Strawberry jam spread on rock" was Weston's cheerful description of the probable result of an error in his calculations.

Another problem was the force of gravity, and, again, Kirke was to be most affected. Exactly how much force he woiuld be exposed to if all went well, no one really knew. The Weston-Keeling estimate of five gs seemed plausible, but no one would have been surprised if they'd been off by 200 percent. Astronauts in their specially designed suits pass out with a force of ten gs. No one wanted to think what would happen if any of the jumpers was head-down when the g force built up.

All in all, this was unmistakably a Dangerous Sports Club presentation: No one knew to precisely what length the bungee cords would stretch on a jump from this height. Moreover, no one had really tried to find out. Not knowing, and not wanting to know, was what the club was all about.

Our celebration lasted until three the next morning. The jump was planned for eight A.M., in order to minimize the breezes that could turn Kirke into a pulp: but it wasn't until nine that the first of the club staggered in. We quickly set up a portable bar right next to the ambulance thoughtfully provided by That's Incredible! Missing members of the club were pulled from lied at 11 o'clock but still had to dress for the event.

Overhead, the copter blades chopped ominously, and a crowd started to gather. Five characters dressed as game-how m.c.s were about to fling themselves off the bridge. This promised to be better than a hanging.

At noon, Kirke finally arrived, had a drink and was promptly approached by the bridge authorities. They wanted him to sign forms relieving them of all responsibility. His hand trembled as he took the pen. He had to steady himself before he signed. No one had ever seen Kirke shake before.

Looking down at the looped bungee cords dangling off the bridge and blowing gently in the wind, the sportsters were beginning to think quite seriously about getting hurt, and to think especially that if anyone were going to get hurt, it would very likely be Kirke. Hearing that Weston and Keeling had estimated that he would come within nine feet of the river, Kirke approached me and said, "Geoff, old man, I realize you have worked hard on the preparations, but is it still possible to extend my rope by four and a half feet? I'm quite keen to just touch the bottom before bouncing up." When it was pointed out to him that he was likely to be unconscious, he decided to reconcile himself to the nine-foot margin.

That settled, the club members wanted to enjoy a few leisurely drinks before the jump, but everyone else seemed impatient. The television crew began to worry about whether or not the leap would take place at all. The ambulance crew fretted about the winds whipping up the canyon, which would throw the jumpers off course. And the tourists complained of the cold and began to call for the jumpers to hurry. Kirke was undaunted. Quieter than usual, he requested that his breakfast of eggs Benedict be lowered to him after he jumped. While Gibbs played appropriate bungee music on the piano, Kirke pondered how to keep the eggs warm on the descent.

Finally, after posing for a picture next to the ambulance, the group began to get ready. Beyond having a few more drinks, that involved my tying each of them into a full body harness and attaching it to the bungee cord. The club has a tradition of never checking its own knots, and only Foulon, who was wearing a cowboy hat with his tuxedo, was gauche enough to inspect his harness. Weston, dressed in a gray morning suit and club tie, seemed worried as he was secured to his bungee, calling for "more drink, please." He lit a large Havana cigar and puffed nervously while the others were readied. Next to be tied in was Hunt, who sported a black tux with tails and a gray top hat secured under his chin.

Now, only minutes before leaping into the unknown, Kirke was moving slowly. Weston impatiently cried out, "Please get to your rope, David. I can't wait much longer. I have to jump off soon."

Kirke nodded and solemnly walked to the long cord in the middle. "Have a good one, old boy,"he called to Weston. As I tied him into his harness, he tried to light his pipe, but his hands shook too much to strike the match. Dressed in a black morning suit with tails, a black--velvet top hat and the club tie, he allowed one of the cameramen to assist him with a light. He quickly got control of himself and joked that the harness was too tight. "I really must go on a diet!" he exclaimed. With Gibbs at the piano setting the mood, I finished Kirke's knots and headed for my own rope. It was almost three o'clock.

Walking from Kirke to my place at the side, I was struck by the reality of what I was about to do. Until that moment, I had been so absorbed in the partying and preparations that I had not really worried about my own jump. Suddenly, there was nothing more I could do for the others.Now it was my ass out on the line. The sounds of classical piano and helicopter blades were replaced in my ears by the pounding of my heart. I gave a final glance at my comrades, then I looked down.

Nearly 1100 feet below, the river looked like a thread. The canyon walls seemed only inches apart. I trusted the bungee cords and the knots I had tied. I was the only one using a safety line--a security measure that Kirke considered highly unethical. Rationally, I knew I would be safe; yet I was gradually enveloped by fear. I tried to calmly remind myself that I'd been subjected to more danger than this climbing vertical rock walls. Just as I began to regain control of my trembling body, I was inteirupted by a cameraman who said, "Boy, aren't you afraid that there safety rope will wrap around your neck as you bounce up and hang you as you fall back down?"

I hadn't been, but suddenly I was. My testicles quickly receded into the safety of my body. My entire groin tightened. My mind raced incoherently. The others were already over the retaining fence. I clambered after them while my panicked brain screamed, "No!"

For a moment, we paused on the farthest supports. It was reassuring, at least, to see how much farther Kirke's cord hung down into space, blowing gently at the limit of my vision. All sound ceased. Time stood still. Kirke raised his hand, signaled one . . . two . . . three, then stepped calmly into the air.

I pushed off and my mind immediately signaled, "Error!" Like a cartoon figure, I desperately tried to walk back to the bridge while hanging motionless in the air. Then I fell.

My mind stopped. My heart stopped. The only thing moving was my body, free-falling into the void. My life became calm as I came to a gentle stop 400 feet down--only to be catapulted violently skyward. Accelerating upward, totally out of control, I was elated. The bungee had held. Is lowed to a stop again, now 50 feet below the bridge. Regaining body control, I was able to turn and see the other jumpers. Foulon, at the far side, was at the same height I was. Far below, Weston was beginning his first upward bounce. Kirke was still falling, a dot disappearing in the abyss. I watched them all during my next descent, noting happily that no one had become strawberry jam. I thoroughly enjoyed my last few bounces, trying several somersaults as I rose and fell.

Soon we were all hanging like spiders, suspended between heaven and earth in a giant V. The television helicopter circled us and we waved to it and to one another, thumbs up all around. It was now only a matter of waiting to be hoisted back up. Soon Hunt, Foulon, Weston and I were safely on the bridge. Foulon appropriately described the feeling for the television audience as"incredible."

Meanwhile, Kirke's cord proved to be making it impossible to pull him up. For nearly three hours, he hung 900 feet below us, without so much as an overcoat to protect him from the cold. With wind whipping up the canyon and the temperature near freezing, we knew he was in considerable pain. The harness would be cutting off circulation to his legs. The medical crew began to worry. Finally, we found a way to bring him up by pulling the bungee with a tow truck. When he reached the bridge, Kirke's only concern was the whereabouts of his prized top hat and pipe, both of which had been lost in his struggle to remain upright.

Kirke described the jump for the television cameras, saying such an experience "definitely gives one heightened appreciation for life." Privately, he admitted a slight disappointment with the event. The Weston-Keeling estimates had been way off. He hadn't passed out and had stopped a good 100 feet short of the water. "Quite the worst of it was, I didn't get a good bounce," he said. "My cords stretched and stopped. The shorter jumps were definitely better sport."

While the television crew disbanded, Gibbs and various of the sportsmen took turns jumping. And, as always, the party went on.

For most of them, the Dangerous Sports Club is only an occasional diversion, so this was a rare event, to be savored and prolonged. Only Kirke has made the club a way of life, moving fromone event to the next. Recently, he made the first motorized-hang-glider crossing of the English Channel, nonstop from London to Paris. Since the Frenchman Jean Marc Bovier surpassed Kirke's high-altitude hang-gliding mark, Kirke has been trying to talk his way onto an expedition to the peak of Mt. Everest. "I shall hang-glide off Everest by 1985," he predicts, "even if I must charter a helicopter to the summit." He is also planning "an extremely festive outing" for his friends in a padded school bus floating over Niagara Falls. His top priority, however, is to set the world free-fall record by parachuting from a helium balloon at 130,000 feet. It will require a pressurized suit to keep his blood from boiling and a temperature-control device to prevent his freezing in space or burning up on re-entry to the atmosphere. Weston and Keeling are already at work on the designs.

"What Kirke had his eye on was nothing less than the world's highest suspension bridge."