The strangest tech to come out of Utah: January edition: On VR base jumping, caffeine-less cafes, and the Stretch Armstrong of foam rollers.

• Author: Stone, Zara

HAPPY new year, beautiful people! Here's to new adventures, new gizmos, and looking fabulous while doing it--au naturel, obviously. You didn't hear it from me that beehive state baes get a little extra help from someone special, but there's one ASPS plastic surgeon per 30,000 of y'all. For reference, the land of milk and honey has more surgeons per capita than California's city of angels. For real.

Let's hope the stars shine brightly on us all over the coming year. According to Salt Lake County Health's zodiac readouts, it looks like January's Aquarius babies are off to a head start. Seriously, the county dug into their data to discover that Aquarius residents are second only to Leos in terms of achieving fully vaxxed status. It must be that independent progressive streak gifted to ya, or maybe it's just some old-fashioned common sense, mmkay? By the time this column is live, perhaps the crafty Capricorns will have taken the lead.

Now, let's take a look at what stories have been making the rounds--and no, VC Scott Paul's come-hither Jesus hair did not make the shortlist. That's what happens when you ask people to call you the "great king."

JUMP INTO FAUX FLYING ... MAYBE

Ever since Utah's resident virtual reality evangelist James Jensen exited VR playground The Void, he's been crafting the "future of entertainment"--flying. Hyper-real flying, that is, courtesy of his new startup, JUMP. JUMPers will pull on a wingsuit, slap on an Iron-Man-esque virtual reality helmet, and launch themselves into something involving "wind systems" and a 360-degree VR landscape. This vagueness conjures up some kind of tethered wind tunnel, which sounds both exhilarating and terrifying to experience inside a VR helmeted space. "It enables people to experience the extreme thrill of jumping off cliffs and skyscrapers without the danger," Jensen explains on LinkedIn.

On paper--and in the various electrified promo videos--this looks awesome; a heart-in-your-chest kind of experience for the not-ready-to-actually-wingsuit daredevils (fair enough, given the one-in-500 fatality rate). But JUMP has been in the works ... forever. Despite the social media hype and "early passes" they've been flogging for the past year, their opening has been delayed multiple times.

Anywho, as of November 2020, JUMP'S promised people will get to faux-fly IRL in Salt Lake City (and maybe New Jersey?) this January. They've completed their VR footage capture (via helicopter rigs, GIS systems...