 "One step at a time")
Two days from today, Nik Wallenda will venture on a death-defying act. He will walk over the Grand Canyon, more than 1,500 feet off the ground, on a tightrope without a safety harness. It's after years of practice that the 34-year-old American aerialist and high wire artist is attempting this feat. Wallenda has been walking the tightrope professionally since he was 13. Coming from a family of acrobats - he is the seventh generation member of highwire artists and stunt performers who came to be called 'The Flying Wallendas' - he became the first person to walk the tightrope directly over the Niagara Falls last year. But the Grand Canyon, he says, "is definitely the most dangerous. It's unpredictable, it's a long distance, and it's extremely high."
And it's just not the chasm below him that will bother Wallenda. Since this feat will be aired live in 219 countries, Wallenda will be weighed down by cameras on his body, two microphone packs, in-ear monitors and all sorts of batteries.
That is why his balancing bar will be extra important. It's the most crucial piece of his gear, that is, if you don't count his leather-soled shoes. The pole gives the tightrope walker more time to move his mass directly over the wire. A longer, drooping pole, weighed at the ends, works better by lowering the walker's centre of gravity - to the extent that if the weights are heavy enough, the centre of gravity of the tightrope walker can actually be beneath the rope, making balancing easier.
Thin, flexible, leather-soled shoes - or slippers - with the entire sole covered, are, without doubt, his best friend on the long, risky walk. It's possible to attempt the tightrope walk barefooted too, but that can cause abrasions on the feet if the rope is not soft enough.
The balancing bar and his shoes will aid him in his walk. But there is some physics involved in tight-rope walking. The sag of the rope, which changes as the person walks along it and is the greatest when he is halfway across, plays a critical role in balance. In the study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Harvard University researchers said that while a tight rope with little sag makes quicker vibrations, a loose rope with greater sag swings to a much greater degree. Between these tight and loose ropes lies the optimal sag, which is around 3 ft, at which point balancing is the easiet. Researchers call this the 'sweet spot'. The tightrope walker's aim should be to find this 'sweet spot'. Paolo Paoletti, an applied mathematician and the author of the study, writes: "The time that you need to react coincides with the time that the rope makes one swing … At the 'sweet spot', all your sensory control information can be tuned to the dynamics of the rope."
Practice makes perfection for high-wire artistes. "I try to be on the wire five days a week, two to three hours a day, whether I'm performing or not," says Wallenda. Every day in the last one month, Wallenda has imagined himself at the point at the Grand Canyon from where he will begin his walk. "I've pictured myself there, in the helicopter, making my way over, so that when it comes to that point, I've already lived this over and over again, so it becomes natural," he says.
A tightrope walker has to monitor his diet too. "I try not to eat very heavy before a performance," says Wallenda. He wakes up around 6.30 am, and has a "workout for about an hour-and-a-half or two, spend time in the gym, running, doing cardio, weight lifting" and then "spend a lot of time on the wire". Nik Wallenda's tightrope walk will be aired live on Discovery Channel on June 24 at 5.30 am, with a repeat at 8 pm
And it's just not the chasm below him that will bother Wallenda. Since this feat will be aired live in 219 countries, Wallenda will be weighed down by cameras on his body, two microphone packs, in-ear monitors and all sorts of batteries.
That is why his balancing bar will be extra important. It's the most crucial piece of his gear, that is, if you don't count his leather-soled shoes. The pole gives the tightrope walker more time to move his mass directly over the wire. A longer, drooping pole, weighed at the ends, works better by lowering the walker's centre of gravity - to the extent that if the weights are heavy enough, the centre of gravity of the tightrope walker can actually be beneath the rope, making balancing easier.
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The balancing bar and his shoes will aid him in his walk. But there is some physics involved in tight-rope walking. The sag of the rope, which changes as the person walks along it and is the greatest when he is halfway across, plays a critical role in balance. In the study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Harvard University researchers said that while a tight rope with little sag makes quicker vibrations, a loose rope with greater sag swings to a much greater degree. Between these tight and loose ropes lies the optimal sag, which is around 3 ft, at which point balancing is the easiet. Researchers call this the 'sweet spot'. The tightrope walker's aim should be to find this 'sweet spot'. Paolo Paoletti, an applied mathematician and the author of the study, writes: "The time that you need to react coincides with the time that the rope makes one swing … At the 'sweet spot', all your sensory control information can be tuned to the dynamics of the rope."
Practice makes perfection for high-wire artistes. "I try to be on the wire five days a week, two to three hours a day, whether I'm performing or not," says Wallenda. Every day in the last one month, Wallenda has imagined himself at the point at the Grand Canyon from where he will begin his walk. "I've pictured myself there, in the helicopter, making my way over, so that when it comes to that point, I've already lived this over and over again, so it becomes natural," he says.
A tightrope walker has to monitor his diet too. "I try not to eat very heavy before a performance," says Wallenda. He wakes up around 6.30 am, and has a "workout for about an hour-and-a-half or two, spend time in the gym, running, doing cardio, weight lifting" and then "spend a lot of time on the wire". Nik Wallenda's tightrope walk will be aired live on Discovery Channel on June 24 at 5.30 am, with a repeat at 8 pm