I have a soft spot for the 1971 George Hamilton movie. It's available for rent at Scarecrow.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067069/?ref…

In fourth grade my best friend Glen who hailed from Pennsylvania was an Evel fan. He used to wear a jumpsuit while riding his 3-speed Orange Crate bicycle (and no, I didn't just see that on "Hot Rod" or "Napoleon Dynamite" and get a false memory...my life was like that...) and go over makeshift jump ramps made with cinderblocks and boards from the empty lot.

His Dad worked in airplane maintenance and had a blue with white trim 1966 Chevy Impala with a Hurtz shifter that he installed himself. It gets no cooler, my friends.

@2: Did we live in the same SE PA neighborhood, or was there a guy in a jumpsuit doing Evel things all over Pennsylvania?

@3, no, there were loads of kids doing the same thing all over the country. I lived a thousand miles from PA, and kids in my neighborhood jumped our banana-seat bikes over little ramps made from plywood and cinder blocks, too. We all wanted to be Evel Knievel. He was the coolest thing ever, when I was about 9.

No jump suits though. That was too much.

@4: Thats what I thought. Banana-seat bikes and dreaming of being Evel Knievel is how I spent the 70's.

edit: should have been "some of the 70's"

@5 what was incorrect? I'm from Absarokee MT and that's pretty damn accurate to Butte.