Wild Success by Amy Posey

Author:Amy Posey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Innovation

Big Dreams and Big Struggles

Rex Pemberton holds tightly to the grab bar above the helicopter cabin door. His feet are firmly planted on the skid below as the rotor blade screams just inches above his head. Beneath him, 10,000 feet of air to the sandy scrub of the Baja desert beckons below. The carbon-fiber wing attached to Rex’s back transforms him into a human rocket, and for all intents and purposes, he is. “I had to pinch myself a thousand times before I jumped out of the helicopter,” says Pemberton. “I asked myself, ‘What the hell are you about to do?’ It was ridiculous. It’s like you’re flying your own body.”

Rex is feeling good and he’s ready to go. His gut is telling him everything is OK. But he doesn’t always feel this way. A year ago, just as he was about to leap from his helicopter on another parachuting feat, he felt something was very wrong. “I was on the side of the helicopter, and I just had this feeling like something was going to go wrong,” he explains. “I’m not sure what it was. I had no idea what it could have been. I just had this wicked feeling that something was going to go wrong.” His mission was to jump from the helicopter with a surfboard by his side and transition to surfing when he hit the water. “No one had ever transitioned from parachuting to surfing before!” he exclaims enthusiastically, his energy contagious. But apart from the obvious complexities of the jump, he felt something else was wrong. Rex ignored his gut feeling and jumped anyway. He freefell with his board at his side, opened his canopy, attached his surfboard to his feet, lined up a wave, and descended upon it. Once he touched the water, he released his chute and began to surf, making wide, arcing turns across the waves. He would proceed to jump five more times to perfect the stunt and capture it on film. The first five jumps had gone very well, and on the next try, Rex spotted the perfect wave. As he was readying to jump, the boat filming his stunt flipped in heavy surf and the photographers and driver were left fighting for their lives. “There was a whole huge rescue operation going on below me,” he says. “I had no idea, but my gut told me something was wrong. I should have listened.” Fortunately, no one was seriously injured among the film team, but the whole ordeal gave Rex a greater appreciation for his intuition.

But at this moment, high above the Baja desert, Rex’s gut instinct is giving him the green light. He pushes away from the helicopter and drops into the yawning void of space below him. The feeling of freefall is overwhelming and induces a primal sensation of wanting to grab hold of anything to make it stop, but for Rex, this is a feeling he’s accustomed to. He has skydived over 4,000 times, with

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