The courage of an engineer
: Just watched the press conference from the hiker who had to cut off his own arm to escape a bolder, Aron Ralston.
This guy is unbelievable.
He’s an engineer, he explained, and so he reduces things to problems to solve — even living, even dying.
He tried all kinds of engineering tricks to try to get the boulder off his arm (I never did do well with pulleys on those damned Iowa standardized tests).
He carefully got ready for cutting off his arm, putting everything out: “I got my surgical table ready.”
His knife was so dull he couldn’t even get through the skin at first. So he had to regroup and figure out how to get through the bone. He used strenth, torque, angles, and broke his own bones.
And he did it with the cold calculation of an engineer.
