What you see above is Jerry in the first stage of one of the most difficult and spectacular motorcycle stunts you'll ever encounter.  I apologize for the blurriness of the picture.  I was expecting to take a picture of Jerry slowly riding his bike up two steps and through a gate.  I did not expect him to come flying up the steps, and beyond, with his bike in a monster wheelie.  Neither did Jerry.  I actually have no memory of taking this picture or getting out of the way of Jerry's flying bike, but the evidence says I did both.

We had just taken a room in the Amon Hotel in Luxor (its lush gardens and air-conditioned rooms an oasis from the heat and constant harrassment we had been experiencing in Egypt).  The owner had offered us a safe place for us to park our motorcycles inside the garden surrounding his hotel.  We had to ride up two steps through a gate, ride about 10 feet down a sidewalk, and turn left onto another sidewalk immediately before another two steps leading up to the narrow entranceway into the lobby of the hotel.  I went first, enjoying the feeling of riding up the stairs and through a gateway into a lush garden.  Tom followed.  After I parked my bike, I took out my camera to get a picture of Jerry coming through the gate.  I thought it would be an interesting shot.  I certainly didn't think it would be an action shot.

I was standing on the sidewalk on the hotel side of the gate waiting for Jerry to come through, my camera at the ready.  He seemed a bit hesitant, obviously concerned about the possibility of dropping his bike on the steps and aggravating the injury to his knee.  Jerry asked me if he should "just gun it".  There was a good 10 feet of sidewalk at the top of the steps before the next two steps that led to doorway of the hotel.  I thought that even if he did come a bit too fast, the worst case scenario would be that his front tire would nudge the first step as the bike came to a stop.  I told him "yeah, but not too much", assuming that Jerry realized that this was no more difficult from the high curb he had hoped just the previous evening with no problems whatsoever.  In hindsight either Tom or I should have ridden Jerry's bike through the gate.

As Jerry came towards the steps, I could hear the roar of his throttle as he accelerated.  I was stunned, barely believing my eyes, when he came flying through the gate with the front end so high I thought he might fall off the back of his bike (the picture does not capture the full height of his wheelie).  He flew up the steps with such speed and power that when he cleared the top step, both wheels were off the ground.  He was literally flying towards me.  He maintained the wheelie for the length of the sidewalk.  His front tire didn't even touch the second set of steps.  He flew through the narrow doorway leading to the hotel lobby on one wheel.  I saw him disappear into the darkness of the hotel.  Several seconds later I heard an agonizing smash - a sound made by Jerry's bike crashing into a brick wall on the far side of the hotel lobby.

How had he managed to get his bike through that narrow doorway?  I'm not sure a stunt rider could have pulled that off.  Later, when we were backing Jerry's damaged bike out of the lobby, we bumped the doorframe on both sides.  What a feat to have threaded the needle on a spooked mule. 

When I got to the doorway, I saw Jerry's bike on its side beneath a damaged wall.  He had somehow missed a potted plant and a small statue.  Jerry was on his feet in a heartbeat.  He was incredibly lucky and managed to escape completely unhurt.  He didn't even aggravate the injury to his knee (sustained when he crashed his bike 5 days prior).  Also lucky was the fact that no one had been in the lobby between his bike and the back wall.  His bike was immediately surrounded by dumbfounded hotel staff.  They wanted to make sure Jerry was alright, but their reaction to the whole incident was surprisingly muted.  I had read in the guidebook that if you commit a gaffe in social contexts, Arabic etiquette is such that you will not be made aware of it.  Maybe the same concept was being applied here.  The owner refused our offers of paying for the damage to the wall.


Jerry's bike finally came to rest against the far wall of the lobby.  There are chuncks missing from the the wall (made of brick underneath a layer of plaster) where it forms a corner behind the guy bending over in the white shirt.

Jerry's bike would require some work to fix.  The impact had bent the bracket holding his headlight in place to such an extent that the right side of this headlight as well as the front fairing where pushed way back (almost to the front fork) so his headlight was now aimed to the left at a 45 degree angle.  His gas tank was dented on the right side as well, but luckily the tank guards had taken the brunt of the impact and there were no leaks.  The tank guard bars themselves were bent and pushed up against the tank.  Later that night, with the help of a mechanic with a vise, we were able to bend everything back into shape.  His front fairing, being made of tough flexible plastic, even regained its shape (more or less) and could be put back on the bike.  We had initially thought it was toast and that Jerry would be riding Mad Max style from that point forward.

In the aftermath of Jerry's unintended heroics, we pondered how such a stunt was even possible.  I could not pull it off even if I had the cojones (which I don't).  For those of you wanting to try such a stunt at home (not recommended), here is what you must do: Give her lots of throttle with just enough clutch to start accelerating as you get to bottom of the steps.  Now instantaneously release the clutch completely.  As the front wheel lifts up, pin the throttle.  When the bike launches through the doorway in a wheelie and flies off the top step, don't touch the rear brake and keep the throttle all the way open as you land on the sidewalk to maintain the wheelie.  This way your front tire will clear the steps leading to the hotel entrance.  Make sure you hit the open doorway in the exact centre as it is almost exactly the same width as the span of your handlebars.  Use your body weight to avoid a potted plant and a statue once inside the lobby.  Instead of hitting a brick wall as Jerry did to end the stunt, you might try edging the bike around a pillar, through a hallway, down some stairs, and safely out into the back garden.  Are you up for the challenge?
 
We could have left the next morning, but we wanted to explore Luxor.  We hiked through the Valley of the Kings in the morning and the Temple of Karnak in the afternoon.  Tom, being the Kid that he is, was especially impressed by Karnak because he recognized it from a shoot-out scene in a James Bond movie - "The Spy Who Loved Me".  The Kid likes his 007.

The highlight of the day for me was when we entered our first tomb in the Valley of Kings, that of Thutmosis IV.  We descended through a long shaft that pierced thousands of years to the eerily unfinished sarcophagus room.  At that moment all the hassles of Egypt - the constant harrassment by touts, the seering heat, the never-ending police checkpoints - all became worthwhile.  I was standing in a 3,500 year old tomb that defied imagination in the Valley of the Kings.