COLUMN: Around the world in 20 days

From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '99 From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '99Three days ago, Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist, and Brian Jones, his British companion, made history. Over the past few years, hot-air ballooning has become the new pastime for members of the rich and famous with nothing better to do. Richard Branson, former head of Virgin Records, has led the charge recently with several failed attempts at trans-global journeys. Before Piccard and Jones' Breitling Orbiter 3 completed its journey Sunday morning, eight teams had been jockeying to be the first around the world in a balloon. When I first read about these dare-devils flying across the globe in a balloon 30,000 feet above the ground, I openly wondered what they were trying to prove. It seemed to me that all these ballooning expeditions really amounted to little more than a thinly veiled pissing contest between a bunch of otherwise-bored men who had both money and time to burn. Reading about Piccard and Jones, however, I began to understand at least some of what these guys were after. For many people, the trip around the world in a balloon represented the last frontier for adventurers. Over the past 50 years, man has been to the moon and back, climbed Mount Everest and broken the sound barrier both in the air and on land. To the guys who were trying to float across the Earth, ballooning represented man's last grasp at immortality. For them, all of the other great adventures had gotten old. Breaking the sound barrier had become as simple as boarding your private jet and cranking the speed up to Mach One. And for $60,000 and an experienced guide, these men could have purchased a trip up Everest. No, Branson, Piccard and the rest of them were after something different. They wanted something to distinguish themselves as unique and courageous in their own right. What they found was ballooning. Perhaps spurred on like Piccard by Jules Verne's adventure novels, these men set out to do what no man had ever done before. My hat goes off to all of them. But where do we go now? OK, so man has done the impossible. Congratulations. But if this was the last great adventure, what does that make everything else? The denouement? Has mankind done everything we can possibly hope to accomplish? The answer, of course, is no. Imagine if -- instead of setting their sights on transglobal ballooning -- eight teams of billionaires had locked themselves into a pitched competition to end global hunger? My guess is that they would still be pretty busy. Or what if these same eight teams had financed eight separate efforts to solve the continuing crisis in Bosnia? My point is that if these men really wanted to engage themselves in "man's last great adventure," they could have set their sights a little higher. No, the X Games probably wouldn't name a special achievement award after them if they dedicated themselves to cleaning up Prince William Sound but at least the world would have been a better place the morning after. I admire these men for their accomplishments but the old Edmund Hillary "I climbed the mountain because it was there" excuse doesn't cut it in their case. Tooling around the Earth in a balloon doesn't say anything about the advancement of man and little about the human will. A far greater statement could have been made if they had invested time and money into curing cancer. Now that would have been an adventure. The bottom line is that these guys could have spent all their time and money doing something incredible and worthwhile but instead they decided to spend their time 30,000 feet in the air, oblivious to what was below them. Sounds like some corporate CEOs I know.

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