Dan's Papers - March 21, 2008

There was a picture of a man dressed up as a flying squirrel on the front page of the New York Times recently. I thought it odd.

At least at first I thought he was supposed to be a flying squirrel. Upon closer inspection, I thought, he must have been head of a religious cult. He stood in a field, facing the camera - a handsome, tall man of about twenty-five, with his legs spread, his arms outstretched and a very serious look on his face.

The black outfit he wore had fabric that connected the inner sides of his legs from his groin to his heels. And there was more fabric that connected the undersides of his arms to his sides. When he raised the arms and spread his legs, he got the flying squirrel look.

According to the article, this unusual costume had nothing to do with either squirrels or religion, however. This man, whose name is Loic Jean-Albert, was wearing this outfit because he believed, as did a whole bunch of others who dress up in these squirrel suits, that with it you could jump out of an airplane and survive.

"The outfit is made of nylon, very tightly woven together so that it catches the air," Jean-Albert said. "If you do it right, and I am working on it, you can soar down to the ground and make a perfect landing just fine, no broken bones, no fractured skull, no nothing. The physics is there. It's just a matter of doing it right."

Apparently, there are more than a dozen people around the world - in New Zealand, France, South Africa, The United States and Russia - who have begun, ever since these gliding suits were designed (in New Zealand in 1997), trying to soar in them. From thirty thousand feet, it's a thirty-second drop straight down to the ground. So these courageous (idiotic), pioneering (stupid) people leap out of planes, do the flying squirrel thing for twenty seconds to work on the ins and outs of their technique, and then they pull a rip cord to deploy a parachute for the rest of the boring way down.

"The big problem with perfecting your technique," said Jean-Albert, "is that you might do it right the first time, making a wonderful landing on the side of a hill - the preferred spot for a landing - but the next time, you might do it wrong. Whoops. The thing is, you don't get to a third time. This is a drawback in learning about this." He paused. "It's not like with skydiving."

The side of the hill landing - that's how you have to land because that's how flying squirrels have to land - has actually never been done yet. In fact, no unassisted landing has been done yet. But Jean-Albert says that, with time, and more than two dozen people actively trying to perfect this mode of transportation and its various techniques around the world - flap flap up, kick kick down - that barrier will soon be overcome.

What this article made me think about was wearing one whenever I fly today. Years ago, when I first flew, I remember it made me really angry that it was against the rules to bring a parachute on a commercial airliner. What if the plane got in trouble up there? I didn't know what went on in the cockpit, but back here in economy, if we didn't have parachutes and we crashed we were dead. Hey, we paid for these tickets, didn't we?

I believed then, and I still believe now, that the seatbelt business is just a big joke. Tell me, when has there ever been a time when a plane weighing 100,000 pounds lifted itself off a runway - something that is completely impossible and absurd as we all know - climbed up to thirty thousand feet, ran out of gas, and everybody was just fine when the plane crashed because they wore their seatbelts?

I felt it a personal affront that they would not let me take a parachute on the plane. They allow carry-ons. But if you pack up a parachute into a small suitcase-like case that fits in the overhead luggage they say, sorry, if it's a parachute it's against the rules. What are they thinking? That someone with a parachute would scare the other passengers? That the FAA would require that they give everybody parachutes? Are they out of their minds?

I once talked to a stewardess about this. You know what she said? She said that she wasn't wearing a parachute. She said the pilot was not wearing a parachute.

I said that on ocean liners they have lifeboats. It's the law that they have lifeboats. She said that they have life jackets. They were right under the seat.

Which brings us to the flying squirrel suit. 100% nylon. Will not shrink. Rip resistant. Wash in cold water. Fluff dry on cool. Read the entire instruction manual before use.

You know what? If you took small steps and if you kept your hands at your sides, you could easily wear it unnoticed right through both security and the lady at the gate check who takes your boarding pass.

My mother wore a special suit when she flew. It was a gray Givenchy two-piece wool suit and she had it on maybe 200 times, flying successfully in turboprop Stratocruisers in the 1950s and the Airbuses of the twenty-first century to visit her children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren in San Francisco, Florida, New York and Boston.

It was the only piece of clothing on the planet, I believe, that was worn by a single passenger every time she got on an airplane for an entire half century. And no stewardess or security agent ever stopped her. And when she died at 94 this past summer, it had nothing to do with flying.

(We were sad that she left us. And we buried her in her flying suit. She's completed that journey now and she's up there looking down today I am quite sure.)

So I get through security and I get through the boarding pass lady, and I get to my seat and the flight attendant in the aisle gives a little lecture about everything you need to know in order to buckle your seat belt, something I've forgotten again since the last time I've flown, gosh darn it.

I'll be sitting there, smiling and cackling quietly. Later, at 30,000 feet, when they give us the bad news, I'll be up and dancing around in the aisle, flapping my arms, trying to find the cabin door.