Just Like Evel

I was a sensitive kid. I always felt like I wasn’t good enough... or that it was lame to be me. 

I heard a saying later in life that summed it up perfectly. I judged my insides by other people's outsides. It always seemed the other kids had it going on more than I did. When I was a kid in the suburbs of Nashville, sports seemed to be the thing by which coolness was measured. This was way before any thought of being a musician entered the picture. Although I would become a decent baseball player later, I was not very good at any particular sport and I always felt inferior in that arena.

Enter the bicycle.

One of the best things about growing up in Edge-O-Lake was all the bike trails. Riding bikes was the shit man. Paulie and I, our friends Rob and Steve, and a few others were always out riding the trails and causing trouble. There were some serious trails around the lake. There were big hills, jumps, and makeshift bicycle motocross tracks we made ourselves. There were no X games back then.

I became really good on a bicycle. Eventually, I became obsessed with jumping bikes. I saw Evel Knievel for the first time on the Wide World of Sports when I was nine and I was hooked! I collected motorcycle magazines and cut out his pictures and plastered the wall in my room. Dad took me to see the Evel Knievel movie starring George Hamilton in the theatre and seeing the crash at Caesar's Palace in slow motion solidified his superhuman persona. How could any normal person live through that? I loved Evel and he was definitely my first hero. I knew all of his jumps and read anything about him that ever came out. I never missed a jump on TV and Paulie and I even attended the live closed-circuit broadcast at Nashville Municipal Auditorium when he jumped the Snake River Canyon in the rocket cycle.

I had the toy Evel motorcycle with the rip cord and little ramps, but the fun with toys wore off quickly, and I soon began emulating my hero in real life. There were a couple of local boys who were a few years older than me that also jumped bikes. Johnny Swack and Tuck Henderson were superstars among the grade schoolers around Edge-O-Lake. Tuck even had some stories written about him in the Tennessean newspaper and had a little career jumping bikes back then.

There was always construction going on around the neighborhood. Paulie and I were always raiding scrap wood piles for our forts with our friends. This time we went on a raid to build a ramp. I think I was ten years old when I built my first real Evel-inspired ramp. We went for the gusto right off the bat with two 4’x8’ pieces of plywood connected and reinforced with 2’x4’s on the bottom. I then nailed together a conglomeration of mismatched scrap wood underneath that would have made M.C. Escher proud. By the time it was done it rose about five and a half feet off the ground. It had a sweet sloping curve upward that later proved to be perfect for launching my skinny ass skyward like a wheeled tetradactyl.

I did a few somewhat daring jumps on the dirt mounds and trails but this beast that stood before me was a whole new deal. We built it at the end of the cul-de-sac between our house and Tatum our grumpy next-door neighbor’s house. It would be a straight shot down our street, Clearwater Drive, up and over the front yard, then land somewhere between the houses and roll on into the backyard.

My heart was pounding as I rolled up the ramp and stopped at the top. (Just Like Evel.) I already did a couple of practice runs where I got up to full speed and then veered off at the last second. (Just like Evel.) It was just me, Paulie, and a few other kids. I think Mikee and Davey from across the creek and maybe Jamie and his buddy David Lambert were there. I don’t think they thought I would really do it. This ramp was huge! This whole operation had come together quickly and I knew we would be shut down soon. I’m sure the neighbors had already called Mom. By this time we were kind of known as the little hellions at the end of the street. If there had been neighborhood associations back then the Simmons boys would have been the hot topic of discussion at many a meeting. I had already gotten the “Michael Andrew Simmons! What are you doing? You had better have all of that crap put up before your dad gets home!” from Mom. She didn't know it was a ramp.

My little green Schwinn rattled and shook as I backed down the ramp. It was a girl's bike I heavily modified for jumping and riding wheelies. Any little shithead that wanted to laugh at me because I had a girl's bike was quickly silenced when I would circle them riding a wheelie, like a rodeo rider circling a calf, never putting it down until I chose to. That bike was a piece of shit but it was my piece of shit and I knew every nut and bolt on that thing.

I pedaled up a wheelie to the top of our street and the cross street. I could see my path straight to the ramp. My heart was really pounding now! I didn't say fuck yet, but I thought the equivalent of "Fuck it... I'm going!" I pushed off... I flew down that street. Time slowed down as I hit the ramp and heard the sound of the tires changing from asphalt to wood. I had to be going at least thirty miles per hour. Suddenly it was quiet. The ramp literally flung the bike and me into the air. I went very high and was going to go very far. I felt totally weightless... I was flying! What an amazing rush! I looked to my left, I was as high as the gutters on the house and was coming down in a wide arc. The bike was starting to cross up on me, fading backward as I descended. I had to lean into it and hope it didn’t come all the way backward. Luckily I didn't lose control and I brought it straight. I must have jumped sixty feet and I came down hard in the sideyard. BAM! The forks on the little green bike bent forward like pipe cleaners. I felt my body compress like an accordion and my teeth crunched together. Miraculously, I did not go down! I rolled all the way into the backyard and came to a stop, breathing heavily, heart pounding.

Paulie came bounding towards me. He shouted “Mannnn! You went really high Mike! DID YOU SEE HOW FAR YOU WENT, MAN? That has to be a world record!” My small audience was cheering, laughing, and jumping up and down as it began to rain lightly.

My little bike was toast. Not only had the forks bent forward, but the frame had broken in the center and the pedals were bent downward. I didn’t care, I had just defied death! I was a daredevil!

Just. Like. Evel. 

(I wonder if Evel’s mom came out and made him tear his ramps down after he defied death.)

There were times after that I did other “big” jumps. There was even a time that I tried to jump the creek when a huge crowd showed up. I didn't make it. Luckily the only injury was my 10-year-old ego.

I will never forget the exhilaration I felt that first time. That one was the best. It didn’t matter who was there or if it was a record or not. I knew Evel would have been proud.

I was a born adrenaline junkie and that would be a key component in my path to Metal.

Evel and bike jumping were most definitely Metal.