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Speech given at Gulf Breeze Toastmasters, July 2018.
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The year was 1979, I was about 11 years old and I sat at the top of the hill on Tacoma Drive. Tacoma Drive the neighborhood in which I grew up was a small middle-class neighborhood full of starter homes with young adults and children and retirees. It was a dead-end street and I’m sure for many that live there it felt like a dead end. However, for me and my friends, it was a wonderland. At the end of the dead-end street was over 130 acres of a wooded area where me and my friends lived like The Lost boys. And in the 70s there was only one rule for kids be home before the streetlight turned on, before dark.
I sat at the top of the hill on a hand-painted blue Schwinn bicycle. Wide handlebars, banana seat, and bent rims. This wasn’t my bicycle, I’d already destroyed it, so I was borrowing my friend Chad’s bicycle. We decided the world record for the long jump on a bicycle was the equivalent of 13 folding lawn chairs, the reclining kind. And with my palms sweating and my friends overlooking with their palms sweating I was going to break the world record and definitely break the neighborhood record.
I’ve done some calculations thanks to Google in the modern-day Internet there is actually a bike jump calculator on the Internet. And by my estimation I would have to reach 28 mph, a height of 8 feet, and airtime of one and 1/2 seconds, in order to clear a distance of 60 feet.
So you may be wondering at this point why a young child would be so brave, so daring, so stupid as to risk his life to jump 13 lawn chairs. I have to attribute that to at the time my hero, my inspiration, the one and only Evel Knievel.
Evil Knievel was a daredevil, a stuntman, who pulled off daring feats. He would jump school buses, the fountain at Ceasars Palace, which did not go well, and the snake River. I had an Evel Knievel action doll complete with a motorcycle and a rocket car. This inspirational person once was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Johnny asked him, “is there a bone in your body you have not broken yet?” Evel replied, (held up his left pinky), “Just this one.”
So down the hill I go peddling my friend’s Schwinn as fast as I could. His rims were warped, so the bike shimmied almost uncontrollably. Undeterred I rounded the bend on the hill in a full lean, possibly going faster than I ever had before. My friends' eyes were as big as saucers.
I hit the final straight stretch and gain the last bit of speed and when the bike hit the wooden ramp it made a loud snapping noise. And in the air I flew.
There is something special in a young boy’s life when he gets that first thrill seeking adrenaline rush. You never forget it and you’ll never outmatch it. Time slows down and it might be the happiest moment you ever feel. That burst of adrenaline, the feeling of the air across my face, how the blood felt coursing through my body, the tight grip on the handlebars, how blue the sky was, I remember it perfectly to this day. It was beautiful.
As I mentioned before that moment couldn’t of lasted more than one and 1/2 seconds but it felt much much much longer. But like all things what goes up must come crashing down. The landing I took can only be explained by the visual of Evel Knievel crashing at Caesar’s Palace. I landed hard on my back wheel and then flipped landing square on my back, well bouncing square on my back a couple of times. I can also remember to this day how it felt to have the blacktop remove the skin from my back and how it knocked the air completely out of my lungs, and how it felt to hyperventilate. Then seeing all my friends hover over me and instead of trying to help me were cheering my conquest as I gasped for air.
I thought about how I would close the speech. I thought I’d reiterate the title, for the record don’t be evil. To tie-in the dangers of having a hero as a stuntman. I also thought perhaps I close this relating how I hope my kids don’t do the crazy things I did. However, I have to leave that just for the record. Truth be told as I look across my life I’ve made many leaps metaphorically, physically, emotionally, and mostly stupidly. And the truth is I don’t regret a single one of them.
I’ve made some very huge mistakes but it was always in payment to the greatest moments of my life. So for the record, don’t be Evel, but between me and you the prudent never see the exhilaration of this wonderful, breath-taking life, so between me and you, enjoy your flight.
