Jumping off RenCen isn't the breeze it used to be by The Detroit News
detnews.com October 3, 2009
Jumping off RenCen isn't the breeze it used to be
NEAL RUBIN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCD0TExFBg8
Lots of little things can go wrong when you jump off a tall building, and most of them end with a big splat. So unless you know what you're doing, which you don't, do not hurl yourself from atop the Renaissance Center -- which, these days, you probably can't.
Dan Pushies of Howell and two buddies threw themselves from the roof of Tower 300 back in 2000. He's the one holding the camera. He says the video has been widely watched in the worldwide BASE jumping community -- a community maybe the size of Lathrup Village, population 4,236 -- but it only surfaced for the rest of us a month ago.
The folks who run the RenCen have seen it, and congenial GM spokesman Dan Flores reports that "I have no interest at all in jumping off buildings." He also says that "as the building owner, GM certainly wouldn't condone this kind of behavior."
Again: Neither would Pushies, at least not until you've made your first 500 or so regular skydives. That's the point where the few companies that make BASE jumping equipment might consider selling you the special canopy that you can steer toward your getaway truck on a nearby road, carefully avoiding hazards like power lines, light poles and police officers.
When someone decides to plunge from a major landmark, though, it makes for great footage.
Video is a contest winner
Pushies' clip essentially tells us two things we already know: Some people thrive on adrenaline, and once something hits YouTube, there's no controlling it.
It had been seen, briefly, a few years back when Pushies' wife used it to win backstage concert passes in a wild-and-wacky-video contest put on by the Mojo in the Morning show at WKQI-FM (95.5).
He and Michele have been together since high school, before an eight-year stint with the Marines in which he learned to appreciate jumping out of airplanes. Now he's 36 and still leaping for fun and profit, the profit part being what he earns as an instructor.
Michelle jumps, too, though only from aircraft and not as avidly as Pushies, whose tally reads 6,000-plus skydives and more than 470 BASE jumps.
BASE stands for the four types of launch points: buildings, antennas, spans and earth, as in cliffs and waterfalls and such. Each comes with its own challenges, although at least with cliffs, you don't have to evade security guards.
Pushies won't say how he reached the top of the easternmost RenCen tower. Flores says security is tighter now, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that yeah, GM would at least consider prosecuting an apprehended BASE jumper.
No problem, Pushies says; typically, the worst penalty is a trespassing citation. That's a small price to pay for an intoxicating mix of fun and terror, captured on a video you can toss onto YouTube for your out-of-state cousins that gets discovered by tens of thousands of other people, most of whom now think you're the coolest thing since motorized hang gliders.
Wind cut height of jump
Pushies and friends had hoped to jump from atop the hotel tower, 73 stories above Detroit, but wind conditions forced them down to the 39-story Tower 300.
He has also set sail from the Michigan Central Depot, the 29-story 1300 Lafayette East co-op and Cadillac Tower, better known as the 40-story building that used to have Barry Sanders on the side.
If he hasn't jumped from it, Pushies says, it shouldn't be jumped from. He's eliminated the Fisher and Guardian buildings, for instance, for reasons ranging from unsuitable landing areas to unstable breezes.
"There are multiple things that could stem from not making the right decision," he says, and again, most of them wind up with that unpleasant splat.
His next big project is a trip to Switzerland next year for a leap from a chunk of the Eiger, a 13,025-foot peak in the Bernese Alps.
He ranks the RenCen among his favorite adventures, but has no plans to repeat the experience. As far as he and Flores know, no one else has copied it, either.
At least, "I've never seen anyone go by my window with a parachute on," Flores says, and that's the sort of thing he'd probably notice.
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