Evel Knievel has died

[kschilk 0]

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No one will ever be quite as good as the original. Evel Knievel has passed away.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22045287/

It's scary that he caught Hep C from a blood transfusion after an accident. I'm sure blood banks are more careful nowadays, but ya never know.

Nobody'll ever do it, the way he did. Stone stock machines with almost 3 1/2 full inches of suspension travel....float like a butterfly, land like a concrete truck!

Watching him jump bikes was what got me started in MX. As the jumps got higher and farther apart, I began landing shorter and harder....I guess skydiving was a natural progression.

"T'was ever thus."

[NickDG 23]

Here's another view of the Snake River jump from locals in Twin Falls . . .

NickD
http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2007/12/01/news/top_story/125868.txt

>>Locals Recall Evel's Circus of '74

Times-News staff

Evel Knievel made Twin Falls the center of the universe for just one day.

In the boldest act of a life built upon audacious stunts, Knievel rocketed across the Snake River Canyon at the edge of a sleepy farm town, which exploded overnight into a media-frenzied cesspool of daredevil super fans and Hell's Angels.

Then, to the chagrin of those left behind, he ditched town without paying all the bills.

Knievel's death on Friday at age 69 offered those who witnessed the Snake River Canyon jump another opportunity to recollect the circus events of Sept. 8, 1974.

"People say, 'Where's Twin Falls?' and he did put us on the map," said Rex Lytle, owner of Lytle Signs in Twin Falls, who had a closer look at the jump than anyone. ABC Sports hired him to operate the crane truck and remove the cameras right after Knievel's jump.

Ray Barsness also remembers Knievel. More precisely, he remembers that the daredevil still owes him money.

Barsness, now 83, helped build 200 plywood portable toilets - "real nice ones," he said, with good-looking coats of paint. The toilets were placed on the 200 acres reserved for bikers who were camping out during the jump. But bikers will be bikers, he said. During the inevitable riot those fine new toilets were smashed to pieces and burned, along with a wooden cross that once adorned Shoshone Falls Park, a beer truck (after unloading the 2,600 cases of cold beer, which were never seen again) and virtually everything else at hand.

Knievel was supposed to make four payments of $25,000 for the toilets, but Barsness saw only three checks.

"(He was) always likable, but he's sure a con person," Barsness said.

The 'zoo'

Providing security for 15,000 ��" and some say it was more like 40,000 marauding bikers, thrill-seekers and assorted wanderers on Sept. 8, 1974 was a blur to the cops, who until then spent their slow summer days regulating the "good souls and true" who "mostly minded their business," as Steve Crump wrote in the Times-News on the 20th anniversary of the event.

"It was a zoo," said Dave Randall, a former Jerome County Sheriff's deputy who spent the day guarding the Perrine Bridge.

A Time magazine correspondent called the Twin Falls scene "a bizarre spectacle, garnished with machismo and the threat of death: the ultimate expression of the motorcycle culture â€- Fans from every state in the union formed a camper city that was soon awash in beer, dope, cocaine and false rumors of savage beatings and rapes."

Randall said deputies tried to keep the raging crowds from crossing into the desert on the north rim of the canyon ��" where spectators didn't have to buy tickets. But they started running so fast that the deputies gave up.

A portion of the 106-foot dirt ramp built for his launch pad still marks the south edge of the canyon, within view of the bridge. It's one of the city's most-sought after tourist attractions, though it remains inaccessible on private land. The City of Twin Falls, however, has negotiated a deal to trade land for the site. Officials plan to complete a canyon rim trail that would make it more accessible for visitors.

Eye on the canyon

Knievel never doubted his ability to blast himself across the 1,800 canyon at the controls of his "skycycle" ��" in reality a large steam-power rocket.

"I was there and know that it took a lot of fortitude to make a jump into the unknown," said James J. May, a retired judge and attorney, who defended Knievel against many damage claims. "His theme for life was a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt suggesting that we become involved in the excitement of the events that spring up around each of us on a daily basis."

But he never made it to the north side. In fact, he barely cleared the rim before his parachute deployed, pulling him back like a giant hand and gently lowering him to the canyon floor as millions watched on live TV.

Knievel, already a famous motorcycle airman, settled on Twin Falls after the U.S. Interior Department told him he couldn't jump the Grand Canyon. He already knew the area from previous travels between his home in Butte, Mont., and Las Vegas, in addition to other memorable experiences.

"When my son, Robbie, was born in Butte, I was here - in jail," Knievel told a Twin Falls crowd in 1999, during a commemoration of the jump. "I had been in California, and when I heard Linda was in labor, I borrowed a little Ford from a guy and they caught me going 106 (mph) through that speed trap down there (Hollister). I had a (revoked) license, so the old judge threw my ass in jail for five days.

"I got back at him, though," he added. "I didn't have a pilot's license either when I flew over that canyon."

Keith Qualls, 73, and now a resident of Filer, remembers meeting the daredevil several times as Knievel pursued a spot of private property for his jump.

"He was wanting to jump the canyon, and I didn't know what to think," said Qualls, who along with his father and brother Tim, then the Twin Falls police chief, jointly leased the land to Knievel for three years.

"He was really kind of a nice guy, but he was kind of like Muhammad Ali - the more you talk, the more publicity you get," Qualls said.

As for the business deal, which Knievel described as being done over a handshake, Qualls didn't any complaints.

"He paid us what we asked and what we agreed on."

Flight and flop

Once the day of the jump finally arrived, state Rep. Leon Smith, R-Twin Falls, then a member of the City Council, watched directly from behind the ramp as a crowd of hundreds stood watch.

What happened next has been a matter of controversy for decades.

"I stood right at the back of the ramp when he climbed into his little mobile, and I watched his hands on the controls as he ignited it," Smith said. "As it started up the ramp, I watched his hand reach forward and pull something. Immediately after that a drogue shoot pulls out. It deployed and his parachute deployed with it, and so he just barely made it over the ramp and made it over on the south side of the canyon.

"It looked to me like he panicked, but he insisted that he didn't."

Qualls has a different take. Like Knievel, who blamed the botched jump on his cycle engineer, he believes the skycycle malfunctioned and in the process, probably saved the stuntman's life.

"If that parachute hadn't got come off right off that ramp he might have gone all the way to the interstate," Qualls said. "Anybody who thinks he pulled that on purpose, they're crazy. If that (chute) had whipped around that ramp and jerked off there, he would have been a goner."

Knievel left town one day later with minor injuries - and a host of disgruntled locals. Many claimed he never paid his contracted debts. But in a return visit to the city in 1999, he claimed otherwise.

"I had $3 million in a checking account in a bank in Butte, and I paid every bill that was presented to me," Knievel said.

The claim didn't take. Days after celebrating in Twin Falls for the anniversary, Knievel was given a summons by a Twin Falls resident, and a bill for $ $9,591.71 ��" plus interest for 25 years.

Staff writers Cass Friedman, David Cooper and Nate Poppino contributed to this report.

[hookitt 0]

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[NickDG 23]

My GF cracked me up over dinner last night.

I casually said, "Evel Knievel died today."

"Oh yeah," she said, "doing what?"

NickD

[ZigZagMarquis 8]

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Not much of a matter though, he had the cobs to climb into that thing and let them fire it . . .

Yeah, aint that the truth. I think it was on the Jim Rome (sp?) show once where Jim was interviewing Evel and they were talking about the Snake River canyon "rocket bike" jump. Evel made the comment that he figured he had a 50/50 shot of living or being killed doing that jump. Jim asked something like, "Why would you get in that thing then?" After a bit of a pause... Evel exclaimed, "Do you know who I am!!??!"


When I was a little kid, I remember watching his stunts on The Wide World of Sports and thinking it was the coolest. In his later years I understand he had a traveling road show of sorts where he had a trailer full of his memorabilia, including a skeleton that had been set-up to show all the bones he had broken and metal bits he wound up with over the years, and he'd talk to his career, sign autographs, etc. I always figured I'd take that show in if I ever had the chance, guess now I won't.

They'll never be another one like him.

[Rick 67]

http://www.theflyinghellfish.com/evel.htm

and he was a Hellfish

You can't be drunk all day if you don't start early!

[PLFXpert 0]

I knot believe it!

Paint me in a corner, but my color comes back.

[Skydivesg 6]

I ran a night club in Sioux City for my folks. We catered the grand opening of a Mack Truck dealership in the early 70s. This was in the fall of the year prior to his canyon jump.
Evel was there for most of the week and we got to know him quite well. My brother and I took him pheasant hunting. (he was an amazing shot) He even preferred that we call him Bob.
The dealership brought him back several times after that and he came to our club almost every night he was in town.
We got to know him quite well and I've got some great stories about him including pics.

He told me that his rocket bike had a start/stop kill switch on it. It was basically a clutch handle that when pulled in would engage the rocket and when let go would deploy the chute. (I guess that's the dead man switch referred to earlier)
He said that there were more G forces than he could handle and it simply pulled him backwards and pulled his hand off the handle resulting in a premature opening.
After talking with him many times over a few years I simply do not believe he would have intentionally ditched out early. This man was all about PR and he would have preferred to die than to have people think he chickened out.

He was crazy and radical but very likeable and man could he drink.
He would have fit into skydiving quite well (though I'm not sure he would have lasted long)

Be the canopy pilot you want that other guy to be.

[BillyVance 34]

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He would have fit into skydiving quite well (though I'm not sure he would have lasted long)

No shit, I can see it now, he'd be staring the Grim Reaper in the face seeing how low he could pull and live on every jump!

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[airtwardo 6]

He would have fit into skydiving quite well...

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I met him once in Vegas in the bar at the Riviera about 20 years ago.

Yes... he liked to talk about himself, but he was also genuinely interested in the people he met too.

I remember him asking...so you skydive huh, how long you been doing that?

~Not the normal 'how many jumps do you have', but instead how long.

When I told him he kinda chuckled, looked toward the bartender and said 'watch this'..."DEAD ANTS!"


...Fucker STILL owes me a beer!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~