He’s retired now, but he continues to burnish his reputation as a risk-taker. Last month the 57-year-old founder of Chicago-based Lakota Trading set the record for the longest solo balloon flight: 12 days and 13 hours. He was less successful in his fifth attempt to be the first person to circumnavigate the globe alone in a hot-air balloon; bad weather forced him to land in southern Brazil halfway through his journey, which had started in Australia. He returned to the U.S. a few days later, stopping briefly at home in Chicago, then jetting off to New York to begin a catamaran sailing expedition. In 1985 Fossett swam the English Channel; in 1992 he completed the grueling Iditarod dogsled race across Alaska; his other leisure pursuits include auto racing and mountain climbing. Earlier this year he sold Lakota, a move that will give him more time for his many adventures. “He doesn’t spend too much time in Chicago anymore,” says former Chicago Board of Trade chairman Patrick Arbor, a mountain-climbing buddy of Fossett’s who received an e-mail from him last month while Fossett was crossing the international date line in the Pacific Ocean. “He’s off from one adventure to another.”
