Live Out Loud
This past week we lost another legendary showman from the 60's/70's Evel Knievel. Evel died on Friday, December 7, 2007, unlike he lived: helpless and frail.
As a young boy in 1969 I was just learning to ride a bicycle when who else appeared on the scene, that’s right! Evel Knievel. Wow! I was mesmerized simple by his name... I wanted to do what he did; and, wham, I was hooked.
This past week we lost another legendary showman from the 60's/70's Evel Knievel. Evel died on Friday, December 7, 2007, unlike he lived: helpless and frail.
As a young boy in 1969 I was just learning to ride a bicycle when who else appeared on the scene, that’s right! Evel Knievel. Wow! I was mesmerized simple by his name... I wanted to do what he did; and, wham, I was hooked.
The adventure, thrills, and spills of jumping my bike over any and everything we could find was addictive. As I grew, the jumps grew, higher and more dangerous until we pretty much ran out of ideas. Then, one hot summer day my best friend Jim Sinkler and I figured out a way to eclipse all of our other jumps.
We used this excavation site as the arena for our exploits. It came fully equipped with a dirt plateau that had an incline of about five feet at a 45 degree angle. This was a perfect jumping ramp where we would swoop down from the adjacent hillside picking up maximum peddle speed and whoosh up through the air we would fly.
This ramp was to be the site of our most famous jump of all, the tire jump. We found four old abandoned tires left in the undeveloped area behind our subdivision, and we were set. We placed two twin mattresses end to end and then stacked up the four tire tower. We rode, we jumped, we flew, and that was great; but it still lacked one thing, real danger.
So, like all bright and clear-minded twelve year old boys, we decided that the missing ingredient was fire. Yes, fire was the ingredient that would put this jump over the top! We kicked the tires and lite the fires (all twelve year old boys with a Minor in Pyrotechnics have matches) and voom up in flames they went. Big, beautiful, orange, hot, thirteen foot flames leaping towards the sky followed by billowing black clouds of smoke. Away we flew down the hillside peddling as fast as we could, gripping the ape hanger handlebars with all of our strength. We approached the jump and then that feeling, yes, the feeling of being airborne with the wind in your hair effortlessly sailing through the air. We landed with cheers and outbursts, "All right! That was so cool!" We were now legends in our own minds.
This was the jump of all jumps, that day or any other day as far as we were concerned. We had cheated the melting, flaming, black smoke belching, rubber tires beneath us with only singed hair to remind us of the real danger that lied below.
Well, I am many years removed from that day but the news of Evel Knievel's death brought back those wonderful childhood memories. Days full of exciting times and daring thoughts yet to be experienced. You may say, "That's crazy!" and I won't argue the point.
However, I did learn way back then that life is to be lived in the first person and not as a spectator. I say we need to think about Evel Knievel's example and “Live Out Loud.” What do you say? How 'bout finding something daring, courageous, and needed? Then take the leap of faith towards something great!
