Extreme Adventure Dude

On a Sunday morning in early April, crowds of tourists are milling around the base of the massive 500-foot marble art-covered spire which towers into a hazy peach sky. The 200-step winding staircase to the observation platform offers a bald eagle-eye view of the city’s streets and parks awash in a sea of pink and white cherry blossoms celebrating the arrival of spring.

At the viewing platform, the tourists are not pointing at the stunningly beautiful cherry blossoms, but at the 100-foot concrete pillar at a nearby construction site. A disheveled man stands by the pillar’s lightning rods posing for a flying selfie camera drone. Hearing thunder in the distance, he looks up at the sky, no longer smiling, and rapidly texts pals for help.

Taking an aerial selfie to a new insane level to up the game, the extreme adventure dude and pals are clueless. Even with rooftop lightning rods, lightning can strike the same structure twice. Case in point, Seattle’s iconic landmark, the Space Needle, has 24 lightning rods on its roof and has caught sizzling lightning strikes twice during a thunder-snowstorm.