At the edge : riding for my life

217 Pages·2016·23.98 MB·English

by  Danny MacAskill

Danny Macaskill

AT THE EDGE
Riding for My Life
Contents
Contents #2
1. Death is Not an Option
2. Way Back Home
3. Son of Anarchy
4. Ken and the Inverness Gang
5. The Rider’s Eye
6. An Accidental Viral
7. The Clan
8. Riding the Roofs
9. Danger of Death! Keep Off! (The Spiky Fence Story)
10. Outbreak
11. On the Boulevard of Broken Bones
12. Eat the Bigger Frog First
13. The Concrete Circus
14. Wrecked
15. No Limits
16. The Closest Shaves
17. Matadero
18. Pool Parties
19. The Inaccessible Pinnacle
20. The Viral Formula
21. Musical Interlude
22. It’s a Long Way Down
23. Reinventing the Wheelie
Rider’s Speak
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Contents #2
(A.K.A. Do not try this at home)
What I do is dangerous, and it’s taken years of practice. Unsurprisingly, there
have been plenty of bumps and breaks along the way. I’d hate to hear that
somebody has been gravely hurt trying to emulate a rider, especially if they’ve
done so after reading this book. Here is a go-to contents list of the injuries I’ve
sustained so far. Should you ever feel the urge to back-flip across a wide gap
between two buildings, please read the following pages before getting on your
bike …
1. Plough Skull Smash
2. The Molten Lead Incident
3. The Curious Tale of the Bruised Heel
4. Collarbone Injury #1
5. Collarbone Injury #2
6. Fish-tank Skin Infection
7. Collarbone Injury #3
8. The Perils of Slipping in Goose Crap
9. How to Rupture a Disc
10. Going under the Knife
11. Lost in Labyrinthitis
12. The Footjam Tailwhip Tank Smash

Scene One
FADE IN
(EXT.) The clifftops, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Street-trials rider and film-maker Danny MacAskill is preparing for his most dramatic stunt to date: a
front flip from a clifftop ramp, a nerve-shredding feat that should propel him past a series of boulders
fifty feet below and into the sea – if all goes to plan.
Danny approaches the jump, first by riding the rooftops of Las Palmas under a bright blue sky. He is
wearing his Drop And Roll tee and Red Bull helmet. A GoPro has been fixed to the top of it.
Through a POV viewfinder we see him hopping down from a ledge; he drops on to a tower of
scaffolding. A makeshift ramp has been built below. He lands at the top, pedalling as fast as he can,
the edge rushing into view. The horizon is at the end, plus those rocks and a plunge into the ocean
swell …
Cascadia, 2015

1
Death is Not an Option
Nothing was going to stop me from jumping off the cliff. Not the foaming water;
not the jagged rocks that bared their teeth with the retreating tide; not the drop –
all fifty feet of it. I was going over the edge, whether my bike liked it or not.
All around me were cameras to record this final banger. One was attached to
my helmet, another buzzed overhead on a drone. Each lens was capturing the
size and scale of what I was about to attempt: for the spectacular closing shot of
a 2015 video we were calling Cascadia, I was aiming to race as fast as I could
off a ramp. Made from scaffolding, it had been built in a small alley in Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria. The end took me off the side of a cliff, plunging me
down, down, down, in a sheer drop to the sea.
I’d been pretty confident when I’d first suggested the stunt a few weeks
earlier, but on the day I began to stress. I worried the speed in my run-up, or lack
thereof, wouldn’t take me over the rocks at the bottom. In some parts the water
was only fifteen feet deep, which made for a landing that was less than ideal in
my eyes. Meanwhile, the sea looked turbulent. Huge waves moved below,
exposing dozens of crabs clinging to previously unseen boulders. Maybe I
needed to rethink my trajectory? Will I have enough speed? At the very least I
was facing a painful slap to the body as I broke the surface from a great height.
And beyond that? Well, who knows.
That’s when it happened – the click. After an hour of deliberating, something
in my head told me to go. I hit the ramp and pedalled as fast as I could. The
buildings whizzed by. The only thing I could hear was the rattling of scaffolding
under my tyres.
Clang-a-lang!
Clang-a-lang!
Everything lurched towards me – the sunset, the horizon, the sea. I threw
myself over the edge. Wind brushed my face. And then …
Nothing.
Only silence.
And relief.
I’m not mad.
I’m not mad.
I’m sure my YouTube virals might lead you to think differently, but
everything I do is planned, calculated; on a bike I know exactly what I’m
capable of landing at the top end of my ability, and I only operate within those
limits. It might seem like I have a death wish, especially when I’m hurling
myself off a cliff face, or across a gap between two tall buildings, but I don’t
take many risks – not stupid ones, anyway.
Instead, all of my stunts begin with a great deal of preparation, and endless
hours of psychological torture: it takes me ages to get my head straight before
I’m racing up a ramp and into a bump front flip, or a tyre-tap tailwhip from a
huge drop. Most shooting days are spent beating myself up for the fact that I
can’t just rush headlong into a jump without fretting about it endlessly. I wish I
could deal with it better. Sometimes it’s a pain in the arse.
Luckily, I don’t have any phobias. I’m not afraid of heights, or speed, or even
spiders, and I have a weird relationship with pain – it doesn’t bother me, which
is handy in a lifestyle where spills and face-plants are a constant occupational
hazard. But when it comes to street trials – my style of riding, where I negotiate
everyday ‘furniture’ such as stairways, benches and railings, usually at fairly
high speeds, or over great heights – some challenges can put me on edge.
For those of you unsure of what trials riding is about, it started out as a
competitive event where a mountain biker had to get up and over obstacles as
quickly as they could. The catch? They’re not allowed to put their feet on the
ground. In a competition setting, this involves a rider negotiating a marked-out
route over logs, rocks, walls or old cars. As soon as they enter the start gate, the
clock starts ticking. Competitors have to make their way through the section;
every time their feet hit the floor it counts as one penalty mark, or ‘dab’, against
them. (The maximum number of dabs a competitor is allowed in one section
before being disqualified is five.) Whoever completes the course within the time
limit, and with the fewest dabs, is the winner.
Street trials became an extension of that style, but it wasn’t competitive.
Rather than navigating barricades within a set period, it involves a mountain
biker being creative on objects that people use every day. (For example, those
bus stops, phone boxes and railings you walk past on the way to work.) In more
recent years, these stunts have often been filmed and put out on VHS, or DVD,
and now they are placed on to social media, where, if the cyclist has been lucky,
they go viral.
Being a street-trials rider can be a risky business. For starters, there are tons of
bruises and breaks to endure. I’ve done it all my life, and made plenty of videos
along the way, but the fear of crashing never disappears, especially when it