November, 2018
You might not expect the Evel Knievel Museum to be in Topeka, Kansas.
Kansas
The museum shares the same building as Topeka Harley-Davidson, which has to
be one of the older HD dealerships around. It (the museum) is far more
extensive and comprehensive than I would have expected.
It's all here: the motorcycles, the outfits, the (mostly battered)helmets, thousands of photographs, videos, his Mack Truck that hauled the jumps and bikes around the country and thousands of artifacts from the life of a pretty remarkable man.
"I'd do it all the same...
except I'd go faster on a few jumps."
- Evel Knievel
It's your chance to have your picture taken next to Evel.
He used several different brands of motorcycles through his career. Some were better than others.
You can sit on an XR-750, put a VR headset on and make a jump in Topeka Kansas as was recorded by the rider who made the jump--constrained by camera equipment attached to his head! The museum guide is there to make sure you don't fling yourself off the motorcycle. It's pretty realistic, and that means your instincts might take over.
The projected screen (in the photograph) is just for
the onlookers; the VR headset gives you a full 360-degree view that is
little different from what the real jumper was seeing (and feeling).
Look up; look down; it’s you that’s making the jump.
There's small theater playing Evel Knievel movies (none good, but perhaps that's not the point).
The man broke some bones...
It wasn't just the jumps, of course; Evel was marketed everywhere.
The Snake River jump didn't go as planned, but I give him credit for doing it. There's nothing about any of this that could ever have been made safe.
