Friday, March 16, 2012
Bar staff shaken, not stirred
It’s the kind of thing that you think of as the apogee of cool when you’re still young enough to be in primary school – four business-suited men go into a 55th floor cocktail bar, order some flashy £14 drinks then step onto the balcony.
Although that in itself might sound suave and upwardly mobile, it’s what the young men did next that is exceptional.Yes, they downed their drinks, but once they’d done that they then shocked horrified bar staff by flinging themselves from the balcony.
But this was no morbid suicide pact – instead, the men were base jumpers in disguise who had a getaway car waiting for them on the ground below.
After making their vertigo-defying jump they engaged their parachutes and gracefully descended to the ground where one brave or foolhardy (I’ll let you be the judge) young driver waited to help them make a quick escape.
But spare a though for the staff at the cocktail bar. It must have been quite a shock, traumatic even, for them to, however briefly, think they had been helpless witnesses to a suicide. "I ran from the kitchen into the room and I just saw a flash of them jumping over, and at that stage none of us knew what the hell was going on," said one.
"They had cameras on their helmets so I'm sure we'll all see it on YouTube soon. I hope they are caught – they need to pay their bill,” he added.
I hate to sound like a grown-up but this kind of thing has all kinds of implications in the insurance world, too. For example, the bar may have more difficulty finding cover next time they want it if it is thought that there is a risk of the same kind of thing happening again. And what of the young getaway driver, maybe his car insurance company would not be best pleased to know that his vehicle was being used for to aid a daredevil stunt that stretches the bounds of safety and legality.
Photo © mountainhiker via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: base jumpers, car insurance company, getaway car, men, young driver
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posted by Fuse @ 2:56 AM 
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