He stood on the peak and felt the rising sun warm his left cheek. Stretched out over the surface of the world, from horizon to horizon, a glorious sunrise bathed the waking mountains. The pre-dawn ascent had been exhilarating and difficult. Yet it was only a minor preamble to the purpose of the trip. Angled down before him was the task that called to him.
Out of all the peaks he and his team had surveyed, only this had exactly the build they required. For starters, it had a flat top, minuscule as it may be. It fit him and the bike, and that was all that was required. The angle of the descent fit the parameters for setting the record. Most importantly, this peak alone among all those surveyed offered a legitimate path from tip to tail. And at its base, the path smoothly leveled off, giving the rider a reasonable place to slow and eventually stop.
A laborious process had been run using hundreds of high-res photos to pick out exactly the right path. Both geological and mountain bike experts had been consulted. Simulations had been run, and all of it gave the rider some measure of confidence. Yet it was all impossible without the spell.
Tucked into the small pack on his back, the rider held a strange conglomeration of items. To his eyes, it was refuse. To the practiced eye of the Voodoo queen, these items in aggregate represented his only real safety line on the trip down.
Under her careful guidance, the items had been assembled and enacted. And now that he stood at the mountain’s peak, her spells had put a protective bubble around his body and his bike. With great care, he reached his hand out into the clear air above his handle bars. Just before his arm fully extended, his gloved fingertips pressed against something springy and unseen. That the spell had worked to create the bubble he had never had any doubt. It had worked in every practice run on less daunting slopes. That it would be powerful enough to preserve his life should something go horribly wrong was entirely unknown.
The Voodoo queen had insisted it would hold. But then again, wouldn’t she? It was her spell, after all. And she wasn’t the one standing on the top of this spire looking down at either history or tragedy.
It would have to hold. He had no reason to believe it would not, and to doubt its integrity would prove a distraction all too likely to become self-fulfilling. It would have to hold, and he left it at that.
On a nearby peak to the west, the project’s videographer finished setting up his tripod on the moss-painted rocks. With hurried movements, he checked and double-checked all the settings.
“He won’t go until you give the signal, right?” A reporter had joined the expedition, thinking there was a story here regardless of the attempt’s outcome.
“Yes, but I don’t want to take too long. One big gust of wind…” the videographer answered, trailing off when he wouldn’t put words to the threat that wind presented to the rider’s precarious position.
Soon enough, the equipment was ready. The videographer dug two clip-on ear pieces from his bag. He handed one to the reporter and slipped the other into his right ear.
“You good?” he asked.
“Ready when you are,” the rider answered from the opposite peak. From their vantage, he was a silhouette against a pristine sky. Beneath him, the world fell away at an angle that made the reporter queasy even from the safety of his own wide, flat, sturdy perch.
The videographer clicked the red button on the side of his tripod-mounted camera. He pulled out his phone, flicked a few buttons on an app. With a beep, it announced a success.
“Alright, steady cam is on. I’ve activated the helmet mount and…” on his phone screen, a POV view from the rider popped up. The reporter looked at the screen, mouth agape. From the rider’s view, the downward angle of the spire existed in a category well beyond terrifying.
“I’m going to take a second to meditate,” the rider said. His voice was calm, the reporter noted. Whatever nerves rattled around inside him, the rider did not let them show.
The reporter lifted a finger to his earpiece and clicked the button he thought would mute his microphone.
“Why would he do this? Where is the value? What’s the accomplishment at the end of the day?” he asked the videographer.
“No one has ever done it before.”
“Well of course not. It’s idiotic.”
The videographer ignored the reporter’s tone. “It would be a tremendous feat.”
“I can’t argue that, but it would also be a pointless feat,” the reporter said. “There’s nothing to be gained from this endeavor. It’s high risk, low reward.”
“It will push our limits, our collective limits. It will show that we can always do something new, something more, something previously assumed to be impossible.” The videographer did not preach, and he did not sound like the stoned dreamer the stereotype might suggest. He did sound convinced of his rightness.
“I can see the value of that in engineering, in science, in medical research,” the reported conceded. “Mountain biking down a vertical cliff is none of that.”
“No, it is not.”
“So why is the risk worth the endeavor?”
“It’s what’s next. It’s something we can do, so we’re going to do it,” the videographer answered.
The reporter shook his head. It was logic he could not comprehend. “And that’s enough motivation?”
His ear crackled, and the man on the bike flipped down the visor on his helmet. “It is the only motivation,” he said. Then he pushed forward, his feet on the pedals, and he smiled as the bike began to roll downhill with the front wheel tilted lower and lower and lower….
The Tall Tale Year 