INFERNAL VARANNE’S MEGA GLOBE OF DEATH
Spinning in circles
Sitting dead center in the Palace of Wonder is the Globe of Death, an mesh ball with only one entrance but a whole lot of craziness going on. As many as seven, count them, seven damn motorcyclists get into the globe and start riding in different directions. It’s like tossing a hornets nest in a blender and seeing beautiful yellow and green juice explode all over the glass. Watching these motorbikes rev and zoom is so damn cool and scary and nuts that the bile is starting to rise up in my throat.
I kept starting at this ball of craziness until the smoke from the mufflers was making my eyes tear up. Briefly I wanted to run away and join this group and learn how to ride like a real man and escape all the pettiness and web surfing that was part of my everyday life. Riding around in that ball would give my life some real damn meaning.
I mean look at that damn thing with all them crazy stunt bikers spinning up and down and all around. I got to asking people a few questions about how they ride in this damn thing, and the only answer I get is that they all ride full throttle in the same gear, and their start/stop timing or coordination has to be spot on otherwise its a huge gosh darn pile up in the middle. I know they don’t go full throttle cuz I ride a darn motorbike myself and I can hear the difference between acceleration and deceleration, but yeah, they are definitely all in the same gear fer sure.
Actually, being a stunt rider used to be a good profession a popular circus and carnival stunt since the early 1900’s, it is slowly becoming more of a rarity, kept alive only at festivals such as Fuji Rock. The challenge of riding in such tight quarters cannot be underestimated as the skill and precision on the throttle make it quite risky if one makes a false move. Fortunately, only three known deaths are thought to have ever been on record.
The Infernal Varanne team holds the official Guinness World Record Globe of Death record with six riders riding continuously with one person in the center. This was set in 2011, but I guess at Fuji Rock they did one better.
