Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for February 10, 2018

Ask Eddie the Eagle.

I have wondered the same thing!

small jumps progressing to taller jumps w/ lots of wreckage, bodily harm, and occasional bruised ego in between, I’m thinking.

Agony of de feet comes to mind.

Myself, I would start with a five-foot ramp.

That and 10 meter platform diving…

Step 1: Buy a pair of skis and medical insurance.

Makes me wonder what he’s actually thinking of trying.

Ski jumping is easy—it’s the ski landing that’s difficult.

Same with learning to fly an airplane.

Same with learning to fly an airplane.

Janis, it is time to increase that life insurance on Arlo!

Learning to fly, you have an instructor sitting next to you. It seems to me that the prime requisite for ski-flying is the belief that you are immortal.

I have heard that in Norway at almost every grassy hill the locals have built a ski jump. That would be a good place to start…

How do you learn to ski jump?

With great difficulty.

Practice, hours and days and months and years of practice.

Natural selection – they grab 100 people, strap skis to their feet, push them down the ramp. Those that survive get another try, and so on until they have 1 or 2 that seem to have the right stuff. The survivors get to go the Olympics. (If the survivors are male and female they attempt to breed them to pass the skii jump gene to the next generation making the selection process easier.)

Actually, I suspect a good start would be a “Certificate of Insanity” from a reputable psychiatrist.

A friend of mine competed at ski jumping. One learns it by using a regular-sized jump, but starting at about 10% of the way up. Then increasing until one is doing the whole length, and then going faster and faster. Serious answer.