For all of you Evel Knieval fans, I thought you might enjoy this. THere are a few videos on his jumps.

I grew up watching him and thought he was awesome! I even had one of the wind up Evel Knieval motor cycles and action figures!

Evel Knieval

gary

 

I had an "Evel Kneival" when I was a kid too. Mine had a blue winder, my friend across the street had a red winder..

 

A few years ago I am sitting in a bar in Clearwater, fl and an old guy with a cane, white hair, huge rocks on his fingers sits down next to me and orders up a few shots of wild turkey.
He didn't say a word, just drank his shots, got up and left.
When he was gone, the bartender told me that he was
Evel Knievel.

Long live Evel !

 

Guilty. I've never been big on hero worship; but, of the few heros I've had in my life, Evel was one of them. It led to many childhood injuries, too. I jumped a 20 ft. creek bed, from bank to bank, on a ten speed bicycle after Evel went into the Snake River Canyon. I had to drag my bike home bleeding from multiple injuries including a dislocated growth plate in my wrist. I was grinning the whole way though. It was almost a full mile walk through the woods. You see...





I made the jump...









... before crashing into a tree on the other side.

 

Like all kids growing up in the seventies I was a big Evil fan.

 

we had a jump in the woods too...go down the path..turn off where the tree was cut down..and fly!..we used to keep putting a log out further and further..i did it!..my buddy said "no way"..so i said i d "do it again" i did and this time rear wheel hits log..i go over the bars..face first into a stump...i ended up in the hospital for a week and even now i still have a plastic eye socket(right eye)..the wind bugs the crap out of it CONSTANTLY...oh well ...zap! (this crash happend 16 months after the dually incident)

 

Evel was a pioneer, he rode Harley's before they were cool.

Of course, 2 inches of suspension travel could have contributed to his many injuries...

I had an Evel action figure as well. My childhood friend who I still hate had the Snake River set with a jet car of some sort. B@stard.

 

I too was an Evil fan. I still have some original newspaper clips with a write-up, pictures, and stories of the jump in the rocket…

 

I never jumped a 10-speed (I guess I had brains back then)

But, my 20" BMX Western-Flyer, that's another story. We used to set ramps up (If you want to call a sheet or strip of plywood sitting on one or two 5-gallon paint buckets a ramp) and jump, and jump, and jump. When we got real bold (stupid) we'd put another ramp on the other side to land on..

It's true, God takes care of little children, fools and ships named "Enterprise"..

 

I think god's blessing wore off a bit. Wasn't the last Trekkie show recently cancelled? First time no Enterprise on TV in like 20 years or something like that?

 

I've jumped over cars in a junkyard on homemade chopper bikes; but, when I was a kid, nobody in Southwest Virginia had even heard of BMX yet. Let alone owned a BMX bike. We're talking mid 70s here.


My parents heard a comedian say once that a rednecks last words would be, "Hey y'all, watch this." They called me up and told be about it right away. They had been sure that those would be my last words for years before they were made famous. My antics as a youngster made other show-offs cringe. I'm surprised I survived puberty. The Army straightened me out though. Well, some anyway.