Many posts ago (this is number 105 OMG!) I wrote about some of the other feats and skills that other artists working with us in the Circus brought to the shows. I never wrote here about the wire-walkers, although I did refer to our good friends KJJ in the books – we were fortunate to work with their family touring circus in Australia, and they also toured with us in USA and Canada. Kevin, his twin sister Julie, and their mutual friend Jen. Kevin could do a free-head balance on his slack wire, for goodness sake. Sadly, I seem to have mislaid the pictures of them that I had on a previous computer that died, and we haven’t heard from them in ages.

This came to mind when I read about a remarkable guy called Michael (‘Mich’) Kemeter who recently walked a wire in Yosemite National Park some 3000 feet (!) above the ground and, after apparently stopping to offer a little prayer, unhitched his safety rope and performed the feat again without it:

Notice that he, like Kevin and the gils, performs barefoot.

Here’s a couple of him on a slack rope in Austria: I like the barechested approach in the snow!

Looks a bit like ‘journey into space’ in that mist: here he is leaping off at the end of the return journey:

Yes: whilst we admire this stuff, there’s no way you’de get Dave or I trying it at that height! Actually, we were pretty crap just a few feet off the floor. I managed a few steps, but we decided to stick with what we’re good at. I like this picture of a different guy thought, who seems to like training it naked as well as barefoot:

Actually, he’s on a pole and still looks rather precarious. Just like us in fact. in fact, as far as ropes go, I think that we’ll just enjoy ourselves climbing them!