In person, Travis Pastrana is one of the most chill, friendly people you’ll ever meet. If he’s got the time to, he will stick around and chat with you and make you feel like you’re feel like you’re hanging with a friend. You almost forget that this guy has been doing things that would scare the ever-loving hell out of 99% of most adrenaline junkies since he was middle-school age. Back when I was playing with dirt bikes, Pastrana was someone to emulate…we’re the same age, and seeing him fly a dirt bike made me think I could do it too. My calling was more about speed than it was stunts…whenever I tried to play X Games contestant, I’d wind up with the wind knocked out of me if I was lucky. Pastrana, on the other hand, has kept going and has spent his career successfully flipping off death and danger while having a ball with anything motorized…and some stuff that shouldn’t even have wheels, let alone an engine. Today he is the ringmaster of the Nitro Circus, an accomplished rally and rallycross driver, former NASCAR driver and father, but in 2000 he was the kid that dropped jaws on a dirt bike by doing things that the human brain is hard-wired not to do when riding a dirt bike. The announcers might have been on at least five bottles of Jolt cola each, but Pastrana had more energy in him than the three mouths put together!
