Tribute to the last true stud of my lifetime..Evel Kneivel died, age 69. Beat up, beat down, broke, spent, and in a hella lot o' pain. Maybe 6-9 months ago, USA Today did about a full page story on him. They listed the number of broken bones, successful and unsuccessful jumps, operations, and the fact that he was piss-poor now. He's also found Jesus through it all.
I saw this guy as an icon as a kid. His insane jumps televised on live network television. Crashes were as frequent as successes so you never knew if he could pull a jump off. The distances seemed ridiculous, the obstacles - too numerous. Cars, vans, trucks, lions, crates of rattlesnakes. Even at the end of his career he tried to jump the Snake River Canyon in a rocket.
There are a lot of young dudes doing incredible things on their motocross bikes these days. Backflips, crazy aerials, you name it. These are conditioned athletes on machines built for stunts. Kneivel? Rode a stock motorcycle with a reinforced frame which of course, severed at the welds several times. His suspension often kicked him up over the front end on a landing, and I would have to imagine that the vertebrae in his back were really what 'suspended' his landings. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Truly crazy. Look up his crashes and successful jumps on youtube and you'll see just how ridiculous this guy was.
Fortunately, I'm a pussy and I couldn't bring myself to the point of wrecking myself just to 'pull it off'. Kneivel was the guy I could never be - so even today I ride my bike vicariously through him, and when I see the next 6 foot drop in the slickrock.....I step off, walk down, and think "damn, Kneivel would ride this with a trike". There is nobody who had his stones, and there is nobody now who would even consider doing what he did for the money he made which by today's standards would amount to squat.
Mr. Kneivel - rest in peace
Another one of your fans
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