seriously, bionic boots

I have a new project which I've decided to start up in addition to and alongside the hang glider project (which I've estimated will cost - the hang glider, not the new project - around $150.00, that is, $60.00 for the plastic sheeting, a 10' x 100' roll, $60.00 for 8 bundles of 1" wide x 8' long bamboo poles, 25 poles to a bundle, making 200 feet total ((unless I can find some wild bamboo just growing someplace in town which is suitable, and I've already got one guy who has given me permission to go all up on his land which is situated on Oak St., just a hundred yards or so past the church and on the right, in that recessed area where there's a big house kind of tucked back in there, and chop down as much bamboo as I want because he says there's a lot growing there and because he digs the hang glider idea, plus my sister Cheyenne said that she knows where to find some bamboo, although I hope she's not talking about that spot across the street and a couple of houses down from her house going toward Bell, because all of that got cleared out recently. Which would bring the cost down by about $60.00)) plus about $30.00 for duct tape, screws, nuts, bolts, wing nuts and washers).

This new project is almost as kick-ass as building a hang glider, because the next best thing to flying, I figure, is running very fast and jumping, because I frequently have dreams of doing that, and it's always awesome. I also dream about flying pretty regularly, which is even more awesome. Anywho, I'm talking about building some bionic boots.

Yup, that's right. bionic boots. Just like Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man (if you're old enough to remember that TV show from the mid-seventies, which I am and do... heck, I even had a Six Million Dollar Man action figure that you could open the access panel on his arm and see all the electronic and mechanical greeblies inside), except that you don't have to be a man barely alive as a result of crashing a space shuttle with no choice but to have your mangled body parts chopped off and replaced with bionic ones just to get a pair of super cool robot boots.

This time I'll need an assortment of springs, to start with. I'm thinking maybe about 6 or 8 of those springs made for trampolines... 3 or 4 for each boot. I'll also need some smaller springs. I'm trying to imagine where I've seen some suitable springs like the ones I'll need, and I'm thinking of the kind they use in air rifles - heck, I dunno. I'll have to do some research - two for each ankle. Then it's just some long, flat and narrow steel supports, the kind with holes all in them to make them light, for the structure. I've seen 'em used for homemade shelves. And a bunch of screws, bolts, nuts, machine oil, and an assortment of cylindrical, one axis pivot joints. Similar to a door hinge, but way stronger and more awesome. And some kind of tough, possibly plastic boot sort of structure to strap onto the top of each one of those spring-loaded person flingers, for the purpose of connecting the person to the flingers.

So, with a hang glider strapped to my back, and bionic robot boots strapped to my feet, I'll be pretty much unstoppable.