Word: stapp
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...Sleigh Ride. As far as Stapp is concerned, his theory needs one final bit of proof: a practical demonstration. He is waiting impatiently for the morning when he will get up, as usual, at 4:30 (after working till midnight), breakfast on coffee and an orange, and drive to the track...
...high wail of a siren announces: 60 seconds to go. Stapp begins to tense his muscles, stares at the long white ditch of the track bed below him. He concentrates on the cord in his hand; he must remember to pull it when the countdown reaches five. One last breath to last him for the ride, then he is off. "It's like being assaulted in the rear by a fast freight train...
...does it feel? By the time the sled hit the water brakes, wrote Stapp about one of his recent rides, "vision became a shimmering salmon-colored field with no images ... It felt as though my eyes were being pulled out of my head, about the same sort of sensation as when a molar is yanked . . . When the sled stopped, the salmon-colored blur was still there ... I lifted my eyelids with my fingers, but I couldn't see a thing. It was as though I was looking directly at the sun through closed eyelids...
Hope of Immortality. Not long ago a friend asked Colonel Stapp what he thought about as he sat there strapped in his sled, waiting for the countdown. The reply: "First I look around at the mountains and at the bright skies and I don't think about anything. Then I say to myself, 'Paul, it's been a good life...
Professorially absent-minded about most other things, Stapp at work is a man possessed. Hand, mind and eye move with tireless precision. His energy is a constant challenge to subordinates, for he is a man who knows what he wants to do and prefers to do it himself. He may well be the only happy "light" colonel in uniform. "A light colonel," he argues, "can work with his hands. A full colonel gets carried around too much...