Honestly, I Didn't Want Him to Die (ok, maybe just a little)

The yin and the yang of watching a daredevil

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting last week! Especially Carissa for the movie rec, and Larry Urish and Sean from The Transom for the excellent book recs:

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Darla’s side-eye is her asking me to make Maverick shut up.

Honestly, I Didn’t Want Him to Die (ok, maybe just a little)

This past weekend, the world’s greatest rock climber climbed a skyscraper. Alex Honnold first came to worldwide fame with the 2018 release of the documentary Free Solo. The film documented his free solo climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

I didn’t take much notice of his documentary. To me, rock climbing is like skydiving or bungee jumping. I have no interest in participating in behaviors that cheat death, so I have no interest in watching other people participate. Whenever the topic comes up, I only feel one thing: that whoever is participating in such activities must be deathly afraid of life.

Anyway, last Saturday night, I found myself alone in bed next to our dogs. My wife and daughter were home, but last-minute plans had slightly disrupted our evening. So, I was looking for something to watch. (An aside: when was the last time you went channel-surfing for something to watch? I realized as I did this that I couldn’t remember the last time I had. Streaming TV has become so the norm for me that when I have the chance to watch something, I know exactly what it will be. Is that the same for you?)

After scrolling through YouTube TV and finding nothing, I opened Netflix. The first thing I saw was an ad for “Skyscraper, LIVE,” featuring a photo of Honnold. These days, there are very few things that stop me in my tracks in terms of content. This was one of them.

A dude climbing a 1,700-foot building with no ropes?¹ “Ok Netflix, ya got me.” I clicked on it and was immediately entranced. The first thing I noticed was Honnold’s hands. As he moved from section to section on the building, they looked to be twice the size of a normal person’s hands. It reminded me of this:

This is a real human being, holding a full-sized beer can. Bonus points if you can name him.

And it wasn’t just the size, it was the grip strength. You could tell how strong it was by the stillness of the rest of his body. One vestige of my coaching career is a habit of evaluating athleticism. Whether in person or on TV (though especially in person), I seem to be constantly evaluating talent.

Occasionally, I will be in a public workout facility and find myself doing it the entire time:

“Her gait sucks; she’s gonna have knee and ankle problems down the road.”

“That dude is on a full sprint and his head is as still as a statue. Wow.”

“Damn, look at her move that weight. Effortless.”

“Look at his back doing that exercise. Disc herniation waiting to happen.”

I found myself doing this with Honnold and being amazed. But there was also the voyeuristic part of it. Any second he could fall. One misplaced finger, one slip of a foot, an unexpected wind gust, and poof, no more Honnold.

It reminded me of the Evel Knievel-type stunts we used to see on the TV of yesteryear. And then I started to feel bad about watching. Because, wasn’t half the fun of watching Knievel the chance that he might fail? And fail spectacularly?

If you don’t remember Evel, how about Jackass? If you ever watched anything within that franchise, you remember, the entire point was to see them get hurt.

Three of these guys went to my high school. The fourth died in a car accident, walking distance from the house I grew up in.

Failure in this situation would mean Honnold’s death. Was a corner of my psyche actually silently rooting to see this? Like, in twenty years, when everyone remembers the time that dumbass fell to his death from a skyscraper, I could say, “Hey, I watched that LIVE!”

Or in twenty years, when humanity has elevated itself, and people have realized that doing stupid shit that can kill you only masks some deep-seated self-loathing or trauma, and things like free-solo-ing have gone the way of the flying wedge, I could say, “I knew it!”

Wedge blocking for kick returns is outlawed now as well. Not soon enough for me to not have participated in hundreds of them however.

When Honnold made it to the very top of the skyscraper, he was perched on a ball-like structure that couldn’t have been more than 3-5 feet in diameter. Bro even took a selfie.

Throughout the entire climb the commentators had talked about the wind, but it was hard to get a true sense of it. There was no mistaking it while he was perched on that ball. You could see the wind swaying his clothes, and even his body, with his gorilla-like feet glued to the ball as if fused by some subatomic force.

Again, this was a tremendous display of athleticism. I marveled at it, thinking:

“How in the world could another human being do such a thing?!”

But I have to admit, my next thought was,

“Well, it’s pretty windy up there, so there’s still a chance…😬”

🌇 🏙️ 🌇 🏙️ 🌇 🏙️ 🌇 🏙️ 🌇 🏙️ 🌇 🏙️

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1. Taipei 101 Tower in Taiwan