Jeff Bezos may bet stepping down asAmazon CEO, but it's highly unlikely he's slowing down.- The billionaire has long had a love of adventures, like long horseback trips and ocean exploration.
- His next voyage will be to the edge of space aboard a
Blue Origin rocket.
Jeff Bezos may be stepping aside as CEO of Amazon, but if history is any indication, he won't be slowing down anytime soon.
The 57-year-old Bezos has a penchant for unusual adventures, hobbies that take him on days-long horseback rides or to the bottom of the ocean. In fact, his next voyage will take him to the outer reaches of Earth's gravitational pull. On July 20, Bezos, his brother, and two other passengers will take an 11-minute trip to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket.
Read more: The leadership challenge that awaits Amazon's next CEO
But the space voyage is the latest - and arguably most extreme - way Bezos has spent his time and money over the years.
Bezos once went on a 50-mile horseback ride through West Texas
Accompanied by his father, Mike, and his brother Mark, Bezos rode for 50 miles on horseback.
"Three days, super fun, my butt hurt," Bezos said during an interview with Mark at a Summit leadership event in 2017.
Mark Bezos shared a photo of his brother sleeping in a sleeping bag on the ground during the trip, his pillow covered in a ring of frost.
"This is when you know it's good to be a mammal," Bezos said.
He traveled to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve pieces of Apollo 11
In 2013, Bezos, his brother, his brother-in-law, and his parents spent 30 days at sea recovering pieces of the engine of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, which took the first humans to the moon.
"We've seen an underwater wonderland - an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program," Bezos wrote of the experience.
Bezos has always been passionate about Apollo 11, and even timed his space journey to the iconic mission: July 20 is the same day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the moon in 1969.
He once climbed to the top of one of Amazon's wind turbines
In 2017, Bezos shared a video on Instagram to celebrate the opening of one of Amazon's wind farms. Equipped only with a harness and a hard hat, Bezos stood on top of a turbine and smashed a bottle of bubbly.
"Fun day christening Amazon's latest wind farm," he wrote.
He's gone cave-exploring
During Bezos' 2017 interview with his brother, Mark Bezos shared photos of Bezos rappelling hundreds of feet down into a cave.
Accompanied by their brother-in-law, Steve, Bezos' now ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, and a friend, the two brothers snapped a group photo at the bottom where they're surrounded by stalagmites.
"That was a great trip," Bezos said. "You don't have to worry about checking your phone there. No radio signals down there."
He went dog-sledding in the Arctic
To celebrate Earth Day in 2018, Bezos shared a video of himself being pulled behind six dogs through a snowy forest in the Arctic.
"Dog sledding above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway," Bezos wrote. "Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell says it's not that you go to heaven when you die, but 'you go to heaven when you're born.' Earth is the best planet in our solar system - by far. We go to space to save the Earth."
He's about to take his first trip to space
On July 20, Jeff Bezos will be among the first human passengers to fly aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft.
He'll be joined by his brother, an unnamed passenger who placed the winning bid of $28 million in an auction for the seat last month, and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviator who trained to go to space in the 1960s but was ultimately denied the opportunity because she was a woman.
"I want to go on this flight because it's a thing I wanted to do all my life," Bezos said in a video posted to Instagram. "It's an adventure - it's a big deal for me."