Sunday, March 15, 2009

Evel's Da Bomb!

Last fall, whilst perusing my old home-town newspapers on microfilm at the nearby provincial archives, I ran across this AP photo and caption that ran in late 1977 in the Nanaimo Daily Free Press. I knew Mr. Knievel was a little loopy (earlier that year he had assaulted the author of an unauthorized book* on him with an aluminum baseball bat!), but this harebrained scheme would have taken the cake. Needless-to-say the stunt never occurred, Evil's spleen remained intact (or at least wasn't removed due to haystack-related planning), and within four years Robert Craig Knievel had retired from the motorcycle jumping business.

Yet... until his last days he continued to profess that this ill-considered act of daredevilry would eventually be accomplished. History awaits his learned prediction.

I don't.

Here's the video of E.K. reminiscing about this stunt / promotional put-on. You have to sit through a commercial to get to it unfortunately... but what else have you got to do right now? If you're wasting precious minutes of your life reading my blog you ain't likely in the middle of brain surgery or a marathon!

*$17,000 for a beat-up paperback!? Even if Evel's spleen was used as a bookmark I don't think I'd pay this much.

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