Friday, 03 July, 2009

1. By . Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @11:35am:

   The photo makes my stomach all mooshie feeling. I don't think I will be having the experience.
2. By Dave Kelly. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @01:19pm:

   What ever happened to the cantilevered ramp over the Grand Canyon that some indian tribe was going to build and promote?\
3. By . Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @01:41pm:

   They built it and they charge $30 to walk out on it. This Sears Tower "Ledge" attracts 25,000 visitors a day on clear days and each pays $15 for the elevator ride and the chance to stand out on the ledge; that's $375,000 - is that even possible???
   
   In the particular photo above, I noticed something I've picked up on before when flying into a city in an airplane: notice how much it looks like a circuit board. I think that's really cool and I love the idea of how our planet would look from space (to aliens, I guess) if it could be viewed at that level all the way around at the same time - it would look like a charged-up and running piece of electronics just covered with circuit boards.
   
   The photos are great and, again, kids are so amazing, aren't they?
4. By Bisbonian. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @01:59pm:

   I think I'll pass. Makes my head spin.
5. By Totally Inappropriate. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @02:21pm:

   Gives new meaning to the term upskirt.
6. By bundukundu. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @02:44pm:

   I think I'll pass. Makes my head spin.
   Bisboan, I seem to recall that you are a pilot. Are you really uncomfortable of heights or did I miss your sarcasm?
7. By Snag. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @02:47pm:

   Coincidentally, I have looked down an elevator shaft of that height into T1 underground Hydro Power Station in the Snowy Mts of SE Australia. I had no glass ledge. The elevator ride takes over five minutes. The plant room and winder at the top had to be rebuilt in recent years after a bushfire gutted it.
   
   The elevator in question is one of the longest in the world. It is uncommon for elevators in towers to do that height in a single drop. I would be interested in any information available on the one in the tower.
8. By Bisbonian. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @02:51pm:

   Not really sarcastic, but it is ironic. Many pilots are very uncomfortable with heights. Ledges, cliffs, towers, even ladders. (I really don't like ladders). Somehow being in an airplane is entirely different (to us).
9. By Bisbonian. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @02:54pm:

   This is from a pilot's forum online:
   
   

   Commander
   9th October 2000, 15:35
   I read somewhere that fear of heights is more common amongst pilots than non-pilots. I wanted to get some opinion on that. For instance I knew a 747-driver that was extremely afraid of heights, but when asked how come he flies he said it was a totally different thing. Is the world we fly in seperate from the one we climb ladders in?
   
   Best,
   
   Capt Claret
   9th October 2000, 16:47
   Absolutely Commander. I have no problems looking out of the flight deck or cabin from the cocoon but take away the enclosure and it's a different story.
   
   ------------------
   bottums up !

10. By Bisbonian. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @02:55pm:

    Puritan
    9th October 2000, 17:21
    Weird, I was thinking about the exact same thing the other day - as I was driving over the Queen Elizabeth II bridge (at Dartford, see: Dartford Bridge (http://members.aol.com/dwestbs/bridge.htm)) and espied some the bridge's maintenance team going about their work right at the very top of one of the upright pylons (137 meters, or in 'old money', 450 feet above the Thames)
    
    I remember looking up at them and feeling almost nauseous with vertigo - and yet one hour before I'd been up in the FL300+'s - as Claret says, it's different (sort of).
    Honest Frank
    9th October 2000, 17:44
    Put me up a tree and things start twitching.
    Put me in a cockpit and everything is OK.
    Bird Strike
    9th October 2000, 17:50
    Same for me!

    
    
    It goes on and on...you get the idea.
11. By Bisbonian. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @03:00pm:

    Here's a link...it gets better, but I don't want to keep posting quotes of it: http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-35912.html
12. By Snag. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @03:31pm:

    Strange how human perceptions work. My wife won't climb a ladder, but always requests a window seat on aircraft.
13. By mmmark. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @03:47pm:

    Snag, the Sears Tower observation deck is not reached by a single elevator. If I recall, it is either two or three separate trips. A friend of mine used to work on the (i think) 83rd floor in a corner office. Great view.
14. By Daniel FR. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @03:52pm:

    I think it has to do with connection. The most people experience real, physical fear of heights only when their position is perceptibly connected to the ground.
15. By Pamn. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @05:41pm:

    Bisbonian
    
    That makes my b--- pucker, and there is absolutely NO WAY you would ever catch me standing on a glass shelf looking many stories down. Planes, no problem. But this? Yikes!
16. By Wendy!. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @06:56pm:

    I walked on a suspended foot bridge that was very safe and sturdy, but it was several hundred feet up over a gorge. I was so scared I had to hold my kids hand... and I was a paratrooper! I can't explain it, but I kept having this feeling I would accidentally fall through the sides, which really would have been impossible to do.
17. By Michael C. Comment posted 03-Jul-2009 @09:51pm:

    There's a glass floor up in the observation deck at the top of the CN tower in Toronto. I couldn't get any further than having one foot on the edge of it. No matter how much I told myself that it was perfectly safe, the bits of my brain that actually control my body didn't agree.
    
    There's also a glass box at the top of the Eureka building in Melbourne. Paying customers enter it in groups, then the building operators play the sounds of glass cracking through the speakers just in case people aren't terrified enough.
18. By . Comment posted 04-Jul-2009 @01:02pm:

    Michael C: Those people in Melbourne are delightful sadists, what with their glass-breaking noises in the elevator.
    
    I went to the Calgary Tower (Calgary, Alberta) last year and it has an observation deck at the top. One does get the "clench factor", that's for sure. It was fun people watching, though. There was a older woman who took to the thing like you wouldn't believe; she was quite a site flapping her arms and laughing! Most kids seemed pretty good with it, too.
    
    It would be a lot more fun if there were sound effects triggered, though:)
19. By . Comment posted 06-Jul-2009 @07:22am:

    OK, I guessing that photo is a shot from the NORTH side of the tower. (I left Chicago about 12 years ago, but used to walk by the Sears Tower twice a day on the SOUTH side.)
20. By LJW. Comment posted 06-Jul-2009 @05:00pm:

    I've been to the glass floor in the CN Tower and while I wasn't afraid, it was still an awkward experience. You walk differently on the glass floor.

Original content © 2009, John Walkenbach