2011-12-10 - Upon a December full moon...

There are few people I know as ridiculous as Marc-Andre Tarte.Take this past weekend for example.

Traveling to Fresno, California to perform in a never-before-attempted extreme thrill show had never sounded like a good idea, but my roommate Jon “Bomb” Cole and I both eagerly volunteered our services and our safety in the cause.  It was like a return to the good ol’ days of ramp and tramp shows… except this time we wouldn’t be getting paid.  Pro bono baby.

Once landed in Fresno, we were reunited with our old time carnie friends Brent Steffensen and Marc Abou “the Swan”.  Me and the Bomb hadn’t seen Brent in over 5 years and he’d gone on to become a stunt samurai for the American Ninja Warrior television.  On the other hand, the Swan had spread his little wings and fled for obscurity as an engineer in Quebec.

The reason this cast of characters had been gathered was to perform the first ever AcroBag tow-in winch ski, snowboard, mountain bike, rollerblade, trampoline, and high dive show for the “Downtown Fresno Winterfest Extreme Sports Exhibition and DJ Afterparty.”  Fuck yeah.

We would be jumping onto a never-before-tested freshly shipped direct from the sweatshop 10 meter by 10 meter air-inflated Acrobag.  I had jumped on Acrobags before and put faith in my friend Marc Tarte for producing a quality product that would protect the lives of his precious friends. Ideally.

Before we get any further, let me tell you about my favorite part of the whole trip – free 24 hours a day food from the wonderfully hospital Club One Casino.  Us acrobats are real hungry boys and we took good advantage of this opportunity to consume many calories and put on some fat for our natural winter insulation.

Now it being his company and his show, naturally Marc Tarte had wanted to do the announcing.  He was quickly overruled by us other show veterans who decided that Tarte was being demoted to winch duty and that Jon Bomb would do the announcing.  It being his equipment, Tarte had the most experience operating the winch to swiftly tow jumpers into the jump at high speed.  Tarte’s skills were best utilized behind the scenes.

There was a lot of rad tricks, and plenty of me sucking, but the show worked out great and there was only one broken bone.   After successfully scaring off the entire dance floor at the afterparty, we decided that we should go eat yet again.  It was delicious.

The end.