R I P Evel Knievel

I must say, I grew up in a great time in the USA. In the early 70's, Saturday afternoons were full of cool stuff to do. If I wasn't working, riding my bike, going to the head shops or bowling I was watching "ABC's Wide World of Sports." Every six months or so would come on this flamboyant man dressed in a cape and he would jump over cars with his motorcycle. Sometimes he'd crash! Cool. If you were in your teens at that time, Evel was about as cool as it got. He had a beautiful wife and jumped junk for large sums of money, how great it would be to earn a living doing that, huh? Evel passed yesterday at the age on 69. My first response was how lucky he was to make it that far. My friends we are at a time in our lives when all of the people we followed in our youth (whether they are our "heroes" or just people we had a passing interest in) are leaving for the next life. My mother said that was her first inclination she was getting old.
Evel represented to me all the stuff I could never do (a future post will detail the time I tried to jump a motorcycle at Arrowhead Stadium) Thanks Evel for one of my most forgettable interviews, too. He came through KC in about 1984 and while he was at the studio, he hit on my girlfriend so mercilessly that she finally had to leave the room. He was a bit hammered, too. I am sure he had his share of painkillers (legal or not) in his life. For doing all the things I could never do, here's to you, Evel.

And now, a fine way to close this post....