Touch The Sky

I was a big fan of Evel Knievel. This was back in the days when a guy jumping a motorcycle over various inanimate objects qualified as a part of The Wide World Of Sports. Whenever Evel got it into his head that he might hurl himself and some substantial hunk of machinery over this or that group of buses or fountain or other, cameras would show up. This wasn't simply because they wanted to capture the ersatz "thrill of victory," but rather because they were interested in taking in the full measure of that "agony of defeat."
Even as a kid, I understood that Mister Knievel was not indestructible. On the contrary. Evel was as destructible as they came. He made it known that he had suffered more than four hundred fractures of various bones in his body over the course of his career, and the cane with which he walked was as much a necessity as a prop. It did help that in the movie that was made about his life in 1971 starred George Hamilton, who may have lacked some of the wild-eyed enthusiasm of his subject but oh that tan! The film helped normalize Evel's self-destructive tendencies and generated the mystique of a guy who thumbed his nose at the traditional laws of physics. Only to be proven wrong. Over and over again.
It wasn't the disregard for gravity that eventually caught up with Evel. That would be complications from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Not an allergy to the concrete that he slammed into so many times. Not a final crushing blow from the skies. Just a final white flag from a body that was used up far in advance of his sixty-nine years. 
Which brings me to Mike Hughes. "Mad" Mike Hughes, the daredevil who not only flaunted gravity by hurling himself into the air via various versions of homemade rockets, died last week at the age of sixty-four. "Mad" took his disregard for the laws of nature by going a few steps further than Evel. He insisted that the earth is flat and all his attempts to go every higher and farther were made in hopes of proving once and for all that we live on a pie plate, not a basketball. Or something like that. Mike used his flat-earth stance to help him fund his various tries at slipping the surly bounds. And finally Isaac Newton caught up to him. It was probably the math that got him, actually. 
Aloha, Mike. You ignored the Terra and preferred to stomp in the skies. The Science Channel will miss you.