You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy?™
A guy walking across Niagra Falls on a 2 inch wire.
That man is Nik Wallenda. The great grandson of Carl Wallenda of the famous Wallenda family.
Walenda has crazy surging through his blood. Cheating death is coded into his DNA.
The Wallendas are a circus family that has mesmorized audiences for years with their death defying high wire acts. The grainy news images of the entire family sitting on chairs, balancing poles, moving as one over a wire, are still spell binding.
Patriarch Carl Wallenda died on the wire, at the age of 72 in Peurto Rico, when he fell 10 stories while crossing between two buildings.
7 other family members have also given their life for the family business so they say.
Niagra Falls? No one in history had ever tried this. A four hundred yard walk across the massive horse shoe falls that connect the USA and Canada.
People have gone over the falls in barrels. Some lived but most died. No one has walked above the water.
Perhaps it has never been done because the technology to accomplish it is mind boggling. A 2 inch wire hoisted across the falls and secured to either side of two countries. The manpower, the logistics, the expense; it’s overwhelming. The training needed to battle winds and mist and spray is incalculable. And then there is the uncharted region of heart and courage and fortitude to pull it all off.
And ABC News is there, embracing it like Rosie O’Donnel embraces a greasy lamb chop.
The news organization suspended it’s buttoned up stoicism and got all carnival huxster on our asses. The television network built this up as the 2nd coming of Christ.
They were hawking it all week and had a prime time special with all their big guns in position.
Sam Champion was sopping wet reporting on meterological conditions from inside the vapor cloud.
Hannah Storm and Josh Elliott were hosting the event up top as if it were the pre game to the NBA playoffs.
Bill Weir was on a riser, so close to the wire, he could touch it.
The broadcasters were breathless like Amway salesmen trying to convince me to buy a facial cream that would make me look years younger.
The pregame show included a segment on the top dare devils of all time. This was pretty cool.
I saw the daredevil of my childhood; Evel Knievel. Grainy video showed him jumping over the fountains at Caesars Palace, his body coming off the bike in slow motion, and then each bone in his body breaking in a horiffically memorable explosion of pain.
The segment also showed guys who scale mountains with no safety lines, and a guy soaring through the clouds wearing a jet pack on his back. You know I love that crazy son of a bitch, having written a crazy story all about him.
The piece featured modern X game crazies like Travis Pastrana doing a double back flip on a motor cycle. That is still hard to fathom.
And then coming in near the top, My all time favorite stunt:
Dec 31st 2008: Robbie Madison gunning his motoricycle up the ramp and litterally propelling himself up the side of the Paris Hotel, 10 stories high. He rose, like a helium balloon into the night sky, floating on a crazy updraft of horsepower and daring.
Then he landed like a feather on the famous arch. Wow.
I was amazed, but he was only half done.
He manuevered to the edge, waved to the crowd, and then dropped off the edge, 10 stories, landing his back wheel onto the ramp.
Oh my God. Did he just do that? I think he broke his wrist on the landing.
It was the most spectacular thing I have ever seen.
ABC News says this will be the feat to top all of them. I’m not convinced, but I’m willing to watch. I sure know it’s better than the slow motion sleep-a-thon of David Blane sitting in an ice cube for a day and a half.
It’s such a complicated stunt, filled with so much red tape and bureacratic BS, Nik Wallenda has his passport in his back pocket.
ABC doesn’t fail in its coverage. Cameras are on the wire, on the man’s 40 pound pole, in the air and on the ground.
The visual is spectacular, over the top, like a fireworks display under a microscope.
The visage shows this tiny crazy human walking across the great divide with the insanity of 700,000 gallons of water per second pouring all around him. He is an ant in the middle of a volcanic explosion of water. It is hard not to watch the grandeur of this moment.
This is spectacle at its best, sort of like a Filipino Cock Figth on steroids.
The abc crew interviewed the walking Wallenda while he traversed the wire.
Here is some of what he casusally said as he inched his way across the great chasm.
“That mist was thick making it hard to see at times. It’s a challenge. It’s so important to see and my vision, at times, it was to focus. There was so much movement and the wind going one way and the then another and the mist, well it was not pretty.”
He talked about his hands going numb and half way over the falls said he was growing weary.
He says his endurance and the cheers of the crowd will carry him to the finish.
The only thing I don’t like is that he is tethered to a safety harness. Evel never had a harness. Robbie Maddison was flying onto a building by the seat of his pants. If the stunt went bad, they die. That’s all she wrote.
And isn’t that kind of why sick bastards like us watch this type of spectacle. It’s the reason we watch NASCAR. we don’t care about an interminable left turn. We are waiting for the big one at Talledega.
Wallenda says he didn’t want to wear the harness, but they told him wear it or no walk for you.
So he wore it, reluctantly.
In the end it didn’t matter
Bill Weir said the 33 year old with ice water in his veins said “thanks for all your help i’ll see ya on the other side.”
What else would a 7th generation wire walker who has fearlessness in his blood say.
When he arrived on the other side, covered with mist and history, the Canadian officials asked him what his business in Canada was. It was a funny moment.
Wallenda says he all ready has the permits to walk a cable across the grand canon.
Not sure if the Arizona officials will ask him for his DL on the other side.
Maybe he will wear a parachute like Evel did over the Snake River.
And that is crazy.™