Reporter: Chicago really embraced you. Could you hear all that noise from the crowd below?
Nik Wallenda: Oh my goodness, it was amazing! I was born in an entertainment family and started in front of a live audience at two. The 75,000 to 100,000 underneath cheering me on – there is no way to describe that. When I first stepped out at the top of the show and they saw me up there with the orange jacket, I felt like I was floating it was so loud.
~Interview from Forbes magazine, November 5, 2014
I was one of the thousands down on the ground cheering, adding my voice to the swell in hopes that the sound would carry up
to that tiny orange-jacket speck in the sky. I was in Chicago watching when Nik Wallenda set two highwire records. This was my first time seeing a skywalk in person and it did not disappoint.
Chicago has been on my list of cities to visit for a while, and I’d talked with a friend about doing a girls' getaway sometime this fall. When Nik Wallenda announced his Chicago skywalk I jumped at the chance and quickly convinced my friend that the first weekend in November would be a great time to do our trip.
It wasn’t until after I’d purchased non-refundable plane tickets and reserved hotels that the possibility of his falling crossed my mind. That gave me pause: the “live” televised broadcasts are actually streamed with a 10-second delay, so they can cut out in case of an accident. In person there would be no such system in place to protect me from the trauma of witnessing his falling to his death—except for covering my eyes myself of course. I want Nik to have a long and healthy life for the sake of himself and his family…and, selfishly, him dying, especially in front of my eyes, would put a serious damper on my dreams.
The qualms passed quickly—I have a lot of faith in Nik’s abilities. What he attempts would be a certain death sentence for 99.99% of us, so it’s hard to gauge how big of a risk it is for Nik Wallenda. Yes highwire is dangerous, but for Nik it’s a calculated risk, and he makes sure that the math stacks up in his favor: 30 years of experience, tens of thousands of hours of practice, extensive rigging experience, and a world class training, rigging, and safety support crew.
Think of it this way: taking a 5-year old’s training wheels off a little street bike and giving him a nudge down an aggressive mountain biking trail wouldn’t end well either. Bikers build up to those kind of things, they gain skill over time through practice and training. Because most of us learned how to ride a bike as children, we can relate better to mountain bikers. Many of us certainly couldn’t tackle an extreme mountain bike trail, but we understand in theory what it takes to get there. The more I experience and learn about highwire, the better I understand what kind of training, skill, and support it takes for highwire and the less scary it seems.
The skywalk took place in the heart of Chicago where the river cuts through downtown. I’d wondered why Nik chose to walk it at night, but approaching the walk site, the artist in me fully appreciated the setting: with a pitch black backdrop of the sky, there was nothing to detract from the glowing silver strand of wire and the tiny speck that was the daring man, Nik Wallenda.
Just wending my way through the crowd did my heart good. It was a fantastic feeling to be in this huge crowd of people, surrounded by people interested enough in tightwire to brave the November breezes in the windy city. Some of them came just because it was a cool event and just because they happened to be in Chicago. A few though came, like I did, for this. As I passed people in the crowd I was delighted to overhear a woman recounting Nik's career and family history for a less knowledgeable spectator. She sounded like me!
My friend and I ended up finding space to watch close to a set of guy wires1 attached to a cement barricade. It was incredible to me how far those slender wires stretched to reach up to the main wire to hold it steady.
It took a long time for the walks to start. For those of us without access to the televised broadcast (my phone battery unexpectedly hit empty just as I tried to take my first picture of the wire) the first hour and a half was an exercise in patience. We'd been told the event would start at 6pm. It wasn't until well after 6 that Nik Wallenda looked over the edge of the building. We all cheered thinking the walk was about to happen. Fifteen minutes or so later he looked over again...and again we cheered. He got up on the wire and stood backwards, balanced, squatted...and then he disappeared again. We weren’t sure what was going on, if something had gone wrong, if the walk would actually happen. After an hour and a half of waiting and wondering I was a little cold, but still happily admiring the silver strand of wire in the air above me.
The actual walks went quickly. The first walk, the one across the river at an uphill angle of 19°—setting a record for highest inclined walk—took over six minutes to complete. The second, shorter walk between the twin Marina City Towers was done blindfolded and took one minute sixteen seconds. This walk also was record setting for the height at which it was conducted. From where I was he was just a steadily moving speck, an orange jacket and a long balance pole.
It wasn’t until after I’d purchased non-refundable plane tickets and reserved hotels that the possibility of his falling crossed my mind. That gave me pause: the “live” televised broadcasts are actually streamed with a 10-second delay, so they can cut out in case of an accident. In person there would be no such system in place to protect me from the trauma of witnessing his falling to his death—except for covering my eyes myself of course. I want Nik to have a long and healthy life for the sake of himself and his family…and, selfishly, him dying, especially in front of my eyes, would put a serious damper on my dreams.
The qualms passed quickly—I have a lot of faith in Nik’s abilities. What he attempts would be a certain death sentence for 99.99% of us, so it’s hard to gauge how big of a risk it is for Nik Wallenda. Yes highwire is dangerous, but for Nik it’s a calculated risk, and he makes sure that the math stacks up in his favor: 30 years of experience, tens of thousands of hours of practice, extensive rigging experience, and a world class training, rigging, and safety support crew.
Think of it this way: taking a 5-year old’s training wheels off a little street bike and giving him a nudge down an aggressive mountain biking trail wouldn’t end well either. Bikers build up to those kind of things, they gain skill over time through practice and training. Because most of us learned how to ride a bike as children, we can relate better to mountain bikers. Many of us certainly couldn’t tackle an extreme mountain bike trail, but we understand in theory what it takes to get there. The more I experience and learn about highwire, the better I understand what kind of training, skill, and support it takes for highwire and the less scary it seems.
Just wending my way through the crowd did my heart good. It was a fantastic feeling to be in this huge crowd of people, surrounded by people interested enough in tightwire to brave the November breezes in the windy city. Some of them came just because it was a cool event and just because they happened to be in Chicago. A few though came, like I did, for this. As I passed people in the crowd I was delighted to overhear a woman recounting Nik's career and family history for a less knowledgeable spectator. She sounded like me!
My friend and I ended up finding space to watch close to a set of guy wires1 attached to a cement barricade. It was incredible to me how far those slender wires stretched to reach up to the main wire to hold it steady.
It took a long time for the walks to start. For those of us without access to the televised broadcast (my phone battery unexpectedly hit empty just as I tried to take my first picture of the wire) the first hour and a half was an exercise in patience. We'd been told the event would start at 6pm. It wasn't until well after 6 that Nik Wallenda looked over the edge of the building. We all cheered thinking the walk was about to happen. Fifteen minutes or so later he looked over again...and again we cheered. He got up on the wire and stood backwards, balanced, squatted...and then he disappeared again. We weren’t sure what was going on, if something had gone wrong, if the walk would actually happen. After an hour and a half of waiting and wondering I was a little cold, but still happily admiring the silver strand of wire in the air above me.
The actual walks went quickly. The first walk, the one across the river at an uphill angle of 19°—setting a record for highest inclined walk—took over six minutes to complete. The second, shorter walk between the twin Marina City Towers was done blindfolded and took one minute sixteen seconds. This walk also was record setting for the height at which it was conducted. From where I was he was just a steadily moving speck, an orange jacket and a long balance pole.
He didn’t waver, stumble, or pause, which wasn’t very…dramatic or heart-stopping—no eye-covering necessary. I don’t wish he’d faked a trip or fallen for real for the thrill of it. The fact that he made it look easy, look doable, was exactly what I wanted to see. For me the lure of tightwire—and highwire—is not about craving near-death experiences but is all about the skill to do something so well that I could be confident enough to conquer fear.
No one should be surprised that I got in the spirit of and celebrated the skywalk by balancing on a Chicago handrail.
I'm not quite ready for a skywalk, but I'm definitely working on it.
1 Tensioned cable designed to add stability to a free-standing structure. (Wikipedia)
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