Friday, February 15, 2008

Cold Hard Cash

Or
Wiley Post-humous
Steve Fossett, who had more dollars than sense, has had his death wish granted, as he was declared dead 5 months after disappearing in the Nevada desert at the age of 63. One his last flight, he had been scouting locations to set a new land speed record. Previous attempts had always been attempted horizontally, Fossett, ever the adventurer, chose to break it vertically. While other moguls attempted great things with their wealth, either by curing disease, like Bill Gates, protecting the environment, like Ted Turner, or building a cool hollowed out volcano lair, like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the billionaire soybean trader with an apparently tiny bit of manhood treated the The Guinness Book of World Records as his personal bucket list. He couldn’t even be bothered to hold a clinic explaining the climax of Trading Places. He swam the English Channel, raced in the Iditarod, drove in the Le Mans 24-hour sports car race and skied from Aspen to Vail. He set more than 100 aviation and sailing records, including being the first to fly around the world solo in a hot air balloon, which he achieved after a dozen abortive and near disastrous attempts, including a crash into shark-infested waters and a violation of Chinese air space, with rescues at taxpayer expense. He was the first to fly solo around the world without refueling and set the nonstop distance flight record at 25,766 miles and 76 hours, 42 minutes and 55 seconds. He set an altitude record in a glider and set a record for circumnavigating the globe in a catamaran. On his last flight he failed to file a flight plan, which made rescue efforts difficult and even more expensive, and if he survived the crash, probably sealed his fate. At least his final act, feeding coyotes and vultures, allowed him to do some good in this world.

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