Meet Martyn Ashton, a multi-world mountain bike trial riding champion. Martyn decided to take a £10,000 carbon Pinarella Dogma 2 road bike used by Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins & Mark Cavendish for a different kind ride.

It would have been amazing if that video was filmed on a mountain bike like Danny Macaskill’s Industrial Revolutions but it is that much more impressive on a road bike, especially riding over the steel work arc of a bridge!

Alexander Polli is an extreme athlete who loves skydiving but is part of an elite group of skydivers who jump in either a wingsuit or a tracksuit.

Skydiving wingsuits have fabric between the arms and legs like a sugar glider and also between the legs, allowing the skydiver to easily control his or her movement in the air. Skydiving tracksuits are basically what they suggest, special tracksuits that fill with air and provide less control than a wingsuit but more than a standard skydiving outfit.

Of course human ‘flight’ in a wingsuit is all well and good but to keep the adrenalin pumping, this group of extreme athletes are doing something known as proximity flying (wingsuit) or tracking (tracksuit), where they fall with style very very very close to things with little room for error.

If you’ve never seen footage of proximity flying in a wingsuit before, the video below will blow your mind – especially where Alexandra is narrowly missing the tops of mountains, tracking just above a treeline over top of a road.

Prepare to be amazed!

Have you ever wondered why cats always land on their feet when they fall from a height?

It turns out that their ability to land on their feet is a result of a skill known as the cat righting reflex. It revolves around them having an unusually flexible back, no collar bone like a human does, along with precise timing with moving its front and back legs at a particular time.

A kitten begins developing this ability at about 4 weeks of age apparently and by 8 weeks of age it has it mastered. Our trusty feline friends can use their cat righting reflex to land on their feet from any height but it must be at least 30-40cm tall or it doesn’t allow them enough time to rotate in the air.

Below is a fantastic animation by Rufus Blacklock showing the evolution of Formula 1 cars since 1950. The shape for each year is the design associated to the car that won that particular years championship. I love that you can see the engine move from the front of the car to the rear of the car and the number of cylinders changing across time as the regulations have changed.

Watching this movie I was laughing so hard I snorted out loud and had tears running down my cheeks! I’m not sure what was more funny, the fact that an American was eating the Vegemite knowing full well that they don’t like it or that the notion of eating Vegemite by the spoonful is hard for me to deal with and I love the stuff.