Nik Wallenda is trying to cross a gorge near the Grand Canyon on a tight rope right now:
Daredevil Nik Wallenda is using the Navajo Nation as a backdrop to one of
his most ambitious feats yet — crossing a tightrope 1,500 feet above
the Little Colorado River Gorge near the Grand Canyon. The 34-year-old Sarasota, Fla., resident will set out Sunday on a
quarter-mile cable stretched over the gorge that was eyed by another
high-wire performer decades ago. The stunt comes a year after he
traversed Niagara Falls earning a seventh Guinness world record. He'll
be using the same 2-inch-thick cable he used to cross the falls, only
this time he won't be wearing a safety harness.
Wallendas have been falling, and dying, for generations. In 1962, while
performing their token seven-person pyramid ("the Seven") at Detroit's
State Fair Coliseum, Nik's cousin Deiter lost his footing and the
pyramid collapsed, killing two Wallendas, paralyzing another, and
sending Karl to the hospital with a broken pelvis. The very next year,
Rietta Wallenda, Karl's sister-in-law, died after falling off of a
swaying pole in Omaha. A decade later Chico Guzman, another of Nik's
uncles, fell to his death after brushing up against an electric clamp
while handing Karl a balance pole in preparation for a 480-foot skywalk.
The patriarch himself died in 1978, a year before Nik was born. By then
he was 73 years old and round in the middle. "He was God in our family.
There was no questioning him," remembers Nik's dad, Terry Troffer, a
retired wire walker who married into the Wallenda clan and who now works
as Nik's safety coordinator. "He had no intention of dying in a nursing
home. He wanted to die on the wire."
Anytime I hear the name mentioned, I think of the Pontiac Grand Prix "Wider is Better" ad campaign. Then I think of the eskimo with the snow shoes. I couldn't find the high wire ad, but this one made me laugh:
No comments:
Post a Comment