Crazyrebel(l)s ist umgezogen! » he air - like in Mohali on a wintry morn

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- Hes made 18,000 parachute jumps, helped train some of the worlds most elite skydivers, done some of the stunts for Ironman 3. But the plunge Luke Aikins knows hell be remembered for is the one hes making without a parachute. Or a wingsuit.Or anything, really, other than the clothes hell be wearing when he jumps out of an airplane at 25,000 feet this weekend, attempting to become the first person to land safely on the ground in a net.The Fox network will broadcast the two-minute jump live at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. PDT) Saturday as part of an hour-long TV special called Heaven Sent.And, no, you dont have to tell Aikins it sounds crazy. He knows that.He said as much to his wife after a couple Hollywood guys looking to create the all-time-greatest reality TV stunt floated the idea by him a couple years ago.I said, `You wont believe these guys, the affable skydiver recalls with a robust laugh. They want me to jump out without a parachute. She said, `Oh, with a wingsuit. I said, `No, they want me to do it with nothing. We both had a good laugh about that.But in the weeks that followed he couldnt shake one persistent thought: Could anybody actually do this and live to tell the tale?Because if anyone could, Aikins wanted to be that guy.After all, the 42-year-old daredevil has practically lived his life in the sky. He made his first tandem jump when he was 12, following with his first solo leap four years later. Hes been racking them up at about 800 a year ever since.He took his wife, Monica, on her first jump when they were dating and shes up to 2,000 now. The couple lives with a 4-year-old son, Logan, in Washington, where Aikins family owns Skydive Kapowsin near Tacoma.Over the years Aikins has taught skydiving, taught others to teach skydiving, even participated in world-record stacking events, those exercises where skydivers line up atop one another as they fly their open chutes across the sky.He tells of having his chute tangle with others on a couple of those efforts and having to come down under his reserve parachute. In all, hes used his reserve 30 times, not a bad number for 18,000 jumps.This time, though, he wont have any parachute.If I wasnt nervous I would be stupid, the compact, muscular athlete says with a grin as he sits under a canopy near Saturdays drop zone.Were talking about jumping without a parachute, and I take that very seriously. Its not a joke, he adds.Nearby, a pair of huge cranes defines the boundaries where the net in which Aikins expects to land is being erected. It will be about one-third the size of a football field and 20 stories high, providing enough space to cushion his fall, he says, without allowing him to bounce out of it. The landing target, which has been described as similar to a fishing trawler net, has been tested repeatedly using dummies.One of those 200-pound (91-kilogram) dummies didnt bounce out. It crashed right through.That was not a good thing to see, recalled Jimmy Smith, the veteran Hollywood public relations man who, with his partner Bobby Ware, came up with the idea of having someone skydive without a parachute.Chris Talley, who had worked with Aikins on other projects and helped train him for this one, recommended the skydiver to the two Amusement Park Entertainment executives. He told them Aikins was arguably the only guy not only good enough but also smart enough and careful enough to survive this.Smith recalled how the three men gazed at each other with a look of foreboding after that dummy crashed through the net. Then they looked over at Aikins.Luke just said, `No biggie, thats why we test.Fox has had little to say about the stunt other than it will be broadcast on a tape delay, as is the case with all its live broadcasts, says network spokesman Les Eisner. It contains a warning not to try this at home.That would seemingly be difficult, as Smith and Ware had to scour a good part of the world, from Arizona Indian land to Dubai real estate, before they found what everyone agreed was the best place for Aikins to land.Hell come down in a dry, dusty, desolate-looking section of an old movie ranch north of Los Angeles where not that long ago Shia LaBeouf was battling Transformers.The drop zone, surrounded by rolling hills, presents some challenges, Aikins said, noting hell be constantly fighting shifting winds as he falls 120 mph (193 kph).Other skydivers have jumped from planes without parachutes and had someone hand them one in midair. But Aikins wont even have that.Why?To me, Im proving that we can do stuff that we dont think we can do if we approach it the right way, he answers.Ive got 18,000 jumps with a parachute, so why not wear one this time? he muses almost to himself. But Im trying to show that it can be done. Kieran OHara Jersey . He just needed to be his best twisting, turning acrobatic self. "I didnt need to be anybody else, I just needed to be myself and be aggressive," said Burks, who scored a career-high 34 points to spark the Utah Jazz to a 118-103 victory over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night. Blank Manchester United Jersey .S. -- Nikolaj Ehlers registered a hat trick for the third straight game and Jonathan Drouin had a goal and five assists as the Halifax Mooseheads hammered the host Cape Breton Screaming Eagles 10-1 on Tuesday in Quebec Major Junior Hockey League action. http://www.jerseymanchesterunitedsoccer.com/womens-michael-carrick-manchester-united-jersey/ . -- Bobby Ryan helped the U. 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Somewhere between taking off from Visakhapatnam and touching down in Mohali, England would have run into a dear old friend.Winter.Its set quite nicely in the north and although the temperatures would not dip as low as they do at home for them, Alastair Cook and his men would know they have one less thing to fight against in India. The heat.They are also likely to notice a drop in the crowd. The PCA IS Bindra Stadium had hummed to Virat Kohli the last time he was here - an ODI against New Zealand - and could not believe what he was doing to Australia the time before that - at the World T20. There is hope that they would be just as interested in watching him perform as Indias Test captain, but it is not the strongest.There are other potential pick-me-ups for England, assuming they have looked at the data.M Vijay averages 43 when in the first Test of a series but it dips to 25.50 by the time the fourth arrives. Cheteshwar Pujara has a similar downward trend - 70.55 slips to 36.50. They have played only one five-match series before - against England in 2014 - and the sample is too small to indicate a trend. For the record though, Vijay averages 10 and Pujara 7.50 in the fifth Test of a series.Both men scored near-flawless hundreds in Rajkot. But in the first innings in Visakhapatnam, Vijay was bounced out in the fifth over. The surprise that had been in Englands eyes for the longest time had barged into his own as the new ball leapt up to take the glove and loop over to gully.A delivery at his throat would not be the first thing on a batsmans mind when the game is barely into its first half hour. Further still if the bowler was James Anderson, a man known to take his wickets with swing, seam and guile. But Vijay just wasnt ready for the ball that bested him even though it had pitched halfway down the pitch. While its line - right on off stump - was perfect, there is an argument that had Vijay been more alert to the length he might have dropped his wrists and swayed away. Instead, he tried to defend and the ball thudded into his top which was up around head height.This could well be reading too much into a batsman uundone by a good un before he could get set and Vijay has had his share of them in the recent past against New Zealand - two in the Kolkata Test and a rip-roaring catch at short leg in Indore - along with incidents like the second innings at Holkar Stadium where he did not put in a dive to prevent himself getting run-out.dddddddddddd A player of his caliber - the gift of timing, endless reserves of patience and shots all around the park - should have had a much better series by now. Culling out the minor carelessness in his game may well be the key.Pujara is a tad less easy to categorise as lax. He is, however, a nervous starter, especially against deliveries moving into him and it was Anderson again who exploited this weakness with a superb display of reverse swing in the second innings in Visakhapatnam. Twenty-six of his 62 dismissals are either bowled or lbw. Oppositions tend to take note of that and if conditions are such that there may be swing in the air - like in Mohali on a wintry morning - Pujara will have his work cut out. He probably would not have it any other way. Vijay too. Theyve beaten tough odds before.India do not often play lengthy Test series. Touring South Africa in 2013, their bowlers could not handle back-to-back Tests. The first they drew. The second and final they lost. In 2016, though, they outpaced West Indies quite handsomely over four matches. Well three, considering the rain and outfield in Trinidad. They held New Zealand off superbly at home and are living up to the standards they have set for themselves.Kohli is at the centre of this revolution. He thrives on any kind of pressure, whether it is making sure he scores because there are only five batsmen in the side or showing that pitches dont matter when you have intent or keeping his performances up. The Indian captain averages 51, 44, 50 and 56 in the first, second, third and fourth Tests of a series. He is the one England are most worried about so he is the one his team-mates will do well to follow. ' ' '