Mo went down by about 10:00, so me and Em toasted the New Year. Her with sparkling grape juice, me with a bottle of very good beer I'd been saving for an occasion.
We watched a guy I thought was Robbie Knievel do a stunt in Vegas on a motorcycle. But it wasn't quite right. Robbie was supposed to jump the volcano at the Mirage, and this guy jumped up on the Arc de Triomphe. Not the real Arc de Triomphe, a replica in Vegas. Then he jumped back down. Very impressive, but his was some kid from Australia, Robbie Maddison. He's the same guy I saw jump last New Years at a bar, but lacking the audio for the TV I was not disabused of the notion it was Robbie Knievel until now.
I had to hunt. Knievel's jump wasn't nearly as spectacular as Maddison's.
Well, the first half of Maddison's stunt was about equivalent. But the jumping back down part, damn.
Neither one of them is Evel Knievel even if they've broken all his records. These are jocks, even the young Knievel (who's seven years older than me), and they seem to use a lot more in the way of scientific calculations. My impression growing up, and my favorite toy was my Evel Knievel motorcycle set, a truly stout bike I wore completely out, was that Evel's calculations were based more on whether he had the guts to try it. Maybe that was just showmanship, but Evel put the dare in daredevil.
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