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September 24, 2012 by admin

SKI | October 2012

Your Brain on Skis Download PDF

What happens in that six feet between the couloir walls depends on what happens in the six inches between your ears.

I’m at Silverton Mountain, Colo., crippled with fear. Standing on the lip of a heinously steep couloir known as Meatball — a six-foot-wide chute hemmed with serrated crags sharp enough to disembowel an SUV — I try contemplating a line but soon sit down in the snow. My guide has toured me through some of Silverton’s most formidable terrain and I never flinched. Now I’m paralyzed.

Fear arises in the brain from tiny, almond-shaped bundles of neurons called amygdala. Ignited by an external trigger — a precipitous couloir will do — the amygdala dumps adrenaline into the bloodstream and jacks up the pulse. It fires without permission, a subconscious hijacker channeling primal instincts: fight or flight. I choose flight, but my guide offers an alternative. “I’ll go first,” he instructs. “Then you follow, making your turns exactly where I do.” I reluctantly agree, and the demanding cognitive effort it takes to mimic his every move quells my anxiety.   Continue reading →

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September 24, 2012 by admin

Virtuoso Life | September/October 2012

The Great Space Coaster Download PDF

Climb aboard NASTAR Center’s flight simulator for an out-of-this-world experience.

On a drizzly summer morning in a leafy Philadelphia suburb‚ I commence my journey into space. The adventure begins at the National Aerospace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center‚ a 20‚000-square-foot complex of prosaic training bays and low-slung offices in Southampton‚ Pennsylvania‚ where astronauts and fighter pilots get schooled on how to cope with the rigors of high-performance flight. At the moment, I’m inside the cockpit of a $30 million centrifuge called Phoenix—the world’s most sophisticated flight simulator—strapped into the pilot seat with a five-point safety harness, a contraption that keeps passengers anchored during maneuvers such as the one I’m about to attempt.

Greg Kennedy, NASTAR Center’s director of education, sits at a panel in the mission control room. When he addresses me through speakers embedded in the backrest, it’s as if his mouth is inches from my ear. “Today, Michael, we are flying out of Mojave,” he announces in a soothing voice. “At 360,000 feet, you’ll be able to see the California coastline.” The centrifuge begins to spin with me perched at the end of its 25-foot-long rotating arm, gradually at first, and then, with a sudden jolt, it accelerates fast enough to generate more than 3.5 g’s—or about three and a half times the force of Earth’s gravity. This, my fellow students and I are told, is what it feels like to sit inside a spacecraft that zooms from zero to Mach 3 (roughly 2,300 miles per hour) in less than a minute. Continue reading →

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September 1, 2012 by admin

The Atlantic | September 2012

Burning Question Download PDF

Why are wildfires defying long-standing computer models? 

Clint Dawson’s bloodshot eyes evince his 14th straight day at the High Park fire’s Incident Command Post, in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is late June, and the fire has already charred 70,000 acres. Dawson’s job is to guess what it will do next. As a fire-behavior analyst, or FBAN, he runs modeling software that predicts where a fire might be headed. When fires behave themselves, such models work well. But wildfires are getting bigger: their average size has tripled since the 1980s. And bigger fires are more complex than smaller ones, presenting more challenges for forecasting software. “We are definitely tweaking our models more on this fire than usual,” Dawson tells me.

Since the 1970s, modeling programs such as Farsite, FlamMap, and FSPro have become an essential part of fighting wildfires. The models, which are calibrated against how past fires have typically progressed, consider vegetation type; topography (flames prefer to travel uphill); a fire’s perimeter; and air temperature, wind, and humidity. They then predict where a fire will go, and when. Continue reading →

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August 31, 2012 by admin

Virtuoso Life | July/August 2012

Birth of a Spaceliner Download PDF

Virgin Galactic, Spaceport America, and Scaled Composites bring astrotourism to reality. The view from the Upham Hills, a lowly cluster of wind-scoured knolls protruding about 500 feet from New Mexico’s high desert, encompasses mostly hardscrabble flats. Three years ago, had you looked north a dozen miles, you’d have seen nothing—ranchland and perhaps a few roaming cattle. Today, however, a humongous orb about the size of a Costco punctuates the bleakness. What looks like an alien saucer is, in fact, Virgin Galactic’s new terminal and facilities at Spaceport America, the world’s first commercial spaceport.

It’s the culmination, some say, of New Mexico’s manifest destiny, set forth in the 1930s when Robert Goddard, the preeminent patriarch of rocketry, developed the first guided missiles at a secret site in nearby Roswell. Since then, aerospace has played an integral role in the state’s economy and identity, chiefly through projects at White Sands Missile Range, the largest U.S. military complex, which abuts Spaceport America’s property. Continue reading →

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August 23, 2012 by admin

OnEarth | Summer 2012

Dreamboat Download PDF

Royal Caribbean wants to clean up a notoriously dirty industry. Can it be done?

It’s dawn in early December, and I’m standing barefoot on a deserted beach that overlooks Falmouth, a colonial-era port, population 7,800, on Jamaica’s breezy northern coast, about 90 miles from the capital, Kingston. The air is deliciously cool and silky. Seabirds are pecking in the sand, scavenging for mole crabs at low tide. On the opposite side of the harbor, across shimmering blue water, there is a new $220 million port development for cruise ships. Royal Caribbean International and the Port Authority of Jamaica partnered to pay for its construction. Opened in March 2011, it was built to accommodate the largest passenger ships in the world, Allure of the Seas and Oasis of the Seas. Owned by Royal Caribbean and costing $1.4 billion apiece, they are sister ships—identical twins—five times the size of the Titanic, each carrying up to 6,300 passengers and 2,400 crew members.

When I first spot her, Allure is a pearly flyspeck on the horizon. But steaming toward Falmouth at 22 knots puts her on top of me in minutes. The ship, a skyscraper in repose, soars 213 feet above the waterline. Her port side, closest to shore, is near enough that I can make out sleepy-eyed passengers clutching coffee mugs on stateroom balconies. They’re snapping photos, too, with cameras flashing like glitter in the twilight. Continue reading →

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May 12, 2012 by admin

Hemispheres | May 2012

Big Fish, Little Boat Download PDF

An intrepid angler heads to the remote Pacific island of Kiritimati to become one of the first to capture a fearsome ocean predator from a kayak. Repeat: a kayak.

From the deck of a large wooden outrigger with a sputtering motor, I carefully slide my kayak into the Pacific Ocean. Setting yourself adrift at midday, nearly smack on the equator, in a 13-foot-long plastic kayak more than 1,000 feet above the sea floor is, by any reckoning of seamanship, an act of profound foolishness. And yet, having bid my mother ship farewell, here I am, ripening like a hothouse tomato beneath the high-noon sun while trade winds buffet my 56-pound polyethylene tub. There is an island nearby, Kiritimati (or Christmas, a phonetic deduction from Gilbertese, the regional language, which pronounces “ti” as “s”), but even if I made the hour-long paddle to shore, landing would be impossible. A fringe of reef rings Kiritimati, its coral heads protruding like pitchforks through foaming 10-foot surf. Attempting to pass this gauntlet would shred any vessel and its occupants. I try not to consider such a fate as I cast a lure bigger than my foot and wait with trepidation. Whatever swallows this, I presume, is going to be enormous. Continue reading →

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April 24, 2012 by admin

Runner’s World | April 2012

The Shoe Believer Download PDF

Long before the barefoot-running craze, Danny Abshire was promoting a better way to run—and building a better shoe to run in. Now his revolutionary Newton shoes have the attention of runners and the competition.

“Okay, gang, follow me!” And with that simple command, Danny Abshire—all five feet, six inches of running-shoe showmanship—takes off through the streets of Boulder, Colorado, with 40 or so runners of all sizes and shapes and PRs following behind. Most of them don’t know each other, or the man they’re trying to keep up with. The only thing they have in common is the shoes on their feet, and for that they can thank this fast-moving salesman.

At first glance, the shoes look like any ordinary trainers, except for the flashy neon color schemes. But those attending this Saturday-morning running clinic soon realize that the Newton— as the shoe is called, and which Abshire first started developing 20 years ago—is nothing like what they’ve previously worn. It weighs about a third less than a conventional running shoe but is not—as Abshire likes to point out—a so-called “minimal” shoe, the kind with the barely there sole. While Newton’s heel-to-toe pitch is more level than that of most name-brand models, what makes this shoe so unorthodox is the plump and springy cushioning in the forefoot. The odd design promotes something Abshire calls “natural running,” which the inventor is about to demonstrate with all the avuncular charm of a young Mel Brooks, the comic he vaguely resembles. Continue reading →

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February 15, 2012 by admin

Skiing | February 2012

Screw the Lifts Download PDF

First Chair? Whatever. With snowkitng, the wind is the lift. Your next run? Just about anywhere you’d like to ski. Better yet, you can pick it up in a day. How does a four-hour powder run sound?

A ferocious blizzard put me in a foul mood yesterday, as I navigated snowy roads and dodged flatland drivers crawling through Utah’s Wasatch Mountains toward Park City. But when I wake up this morning and see the after- math—29 inches in 24 hours—I know I’m in store for a very good day. The late-February sun is already signaling its bluebird intentions through clearing skies. Three world-class mountains beckon within a short drive.

Sure, it’s god-awful President’s Day weekend, and hordes of dawdling boobies will track up the hill before lunchtime. Even so, with more than two feet of fluff, there should be ample to poach if you know where to look. And I do. Yet after receiving a wake- up text from a friend (“the wind is on”), I can’t help pondering the blasphemous alternative: forsaking a powder day for a new sport I am only just beginning to grasp proficiently. Continue reading →

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February 1, 2012 by admin

Kiteboarding | February 2012

Playa Encuentro, Dominican Republic Download PDF

Head a scant three miles downwind of Cabarete’s renowned Kite Beach to ride the uncrowded breaks at one of the Caribbean’s premier surf spots.

Playa Encuentro is a miraculous kite spot I discovered almost by accident. Three years ago, I had arrived in Cabarete, the famed kite mecca of the Dominican Republic, with a spanking-new directional board and no clue how to ride it. A local kite instructor, whose name is Francis Gil and teaches at Laurel Eastman Kiteboarding, had watched me struggle my entire session to stay upwind in waist-high surf.

Cabarete is situated on the verdant North Coast of the Dominican Republic, where easterly trades blow year-round but peak in summer, when blistering thermals convect off the country’s interior mountains, boosting wind speeds by 10-plus knots. The mountains also shield the North Coast from the brunt of hurricanes that, once offshore, deliver world-class swell to Cabarete and neighboring surf spots. Continue reading →

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October 25, 2011 by admin

Air & Space | October/November 2011

Lost in America Download PDF

Airplanes that go missing are often untraceable. Why is effective tracking technology being ignored? 

The morning of December 9, 2009, began cool and clear. In Dorrigo, an Australian town about 300 miles north of Sydney, the pilot of a Bell 206L-1 LongRanger helicopter took off on his second flight of the day. The 29-year-old (officials did not release his name) was under contract with the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service to aid crews fighting bushfires. Also aboard was Aaron Harber, a 41-year-old park ranger being ferried to Cathedral Rock National Park, where he would help battle a blaze.

At 11:20 a.m., a few minutes after takeoff, the pilot flew into a thick fog. He immediately lost all visual reference points. For a split second he glimpsed a ridgeline and a cluster of trees, then nothing. He knew he was perilously close to the ground—perhaps just 20 feet above it—but had no idea what direction he was traveling in. “This is not good,” he told Harber. “I’m going to try to land.” When the pilot yanked the cyclic to flare the chopper and slow its speed, there was a loud bang, and the LongRanger went into a flat spin. The main rotor snapped and sliced through the cockpit canopy just as the aircraft slammed into the ground. In the impact, Harber’s seatbelt shoulder harness was severed. Continue reading →

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