Bruce Cook was always extraordinary on wheels.
The motorcycle athlete from Kelowna was already an international star, as co-owner of Global FMX motocross entertainment company and the first Canadian to ever make it to the Best Trick finals at the X Games, when fate took a massive turn. Actually, it was an airborne turn he didn't quite complete - an attempt at a double front flip on his Kawasaki KX250F in front of a stadium of full fans at the Copps Coliseum in Hamilton - that changed his life.
Almost everything went correctly in that stunt, just as he'd done in training, but a slight problem with the landing caused a crash that did damage to his spine. He was made a paraplegic by that incident.
There was intensive surgery and staggering levels of rehabilitation that followed the crash, but in the end he simply integrated another wheelchair into his life. Now he gets around on his sporty four-wheel mobility chair by day and still blasts through the air on his Kawasaki by night. He is one of the amazing athletes in the spotlight tonight at PGARA Speedway for the Nitro Circus extravaganza featuring ringmaster Travis Pastrana. (Pastrana is to extreme sports what George St. Pierre is to mixed martial arts or Mario Andretti is to car racing.)
"We have a cast of about 30 athletes and 60 crew," he said. They travel with a fleet of 10 trucks plus other vehicles in the convoy.
"We are athletes, but we are also showmen at the end of the day, so it isn't just something people say: the louder the crowd, the bigger the jumps. It really does give you a boost to hear the roar and feel that energy."
Nitro Circus has been all over the world, in some of the biggest event venues ever.
When you have as many as 12 dirtbikes flying through the air at the same time, reaching heights of 40 feet, there is no way to fit that inside a small city's hockey rink or civic centre, but Prince George had an outdoor autosport facility perfect for their needs.
It was especially pleasing for Cook, because he has been to Prince George a number of times in the past on motocross and monster truck tours, and few dates on the Nitro Circus calendar ever get this close to his Kelowna home.
It's a home he hasn't seen in seven weeks, and after a brief respite following this leg of the Nitro Circus tour, he's off for the southern hemisphere where Pastrana is taking the team next.
He goes with the Nitro flow wherever it goes, and it's been that way for almost exactly a year. He rejoined the cast in October, 2015.
Nobody would have blamed him if he never wanted to attend the adrenaline circus again, never wanted to revisit the site of the crash, never wanted to touch a motorcycle. Instead, he and the Nitro Circus family wanted each other more than ever.
"Travis is clinically insane, I swear, but even he was hesitant, but I told him it was going to happen whether he liked it or not, he understood that about me, so he worked on the safety measures and I worked on getting back on a bike," Cook said.
"In the hospital, it took me more than a month to get my own socks on. Everything was a slow process. When I left, they said I was the fastest in and out of the hospital they'd ever seen, with my kind of injury. I like to break records of all sorts, I guess. So that set the tone for getting back on the bike."
A fabricator on the Nitro Circus staff, Billy Van Vugt, worked with Cook on experimental designs for the bike. Modifications had to be made, like a cage to protect his legs in the event of a fall, and sidebars to keep his butt from sliding left or right off the seat, and most importantly but dangerously, a seatbelt, "which is the scariest part," said Cook, "because I can't bail out if anything goes wrong. I have to go everywhere the bike goes."
There was also a foam pit built for training purposes, but that doesn't protect him from the 250-pound hunk of metal falling on top of him during backflip practice.
And fall, he does.
It even happened once during a show, where there is never any foam or overhead wires. Nitro Circus athletes always fly without a net, even if they happen to be paraplegic.
The one crash happened in Denver, and it was directly due to the thin air in the Mile High City. He is now forbidden by the boss to perform at altitudes higher than 4,500 feet. Thankfully for Prince George audiences, this city is only about 1,900 feet above sea level at PGARA.
The crowd is expected to give a bit of an extra roar for Cook, being an interior B.C. boy in a cast of athletes from all over the world.
It might feel a little bit like that first night he returned to the lineup after the injury. The comeback show was in Toronto and he got the sense about half the crowd was also in attendance at the Hamilton event where the fall occurred in January, 2014. They wanted to be there to see the next chapter begin.
"I didn't want my last show to be me going out on a stretcher," he said.
"I wanted to ride again, and if I was going to ride again I wanted to perform again, but when it happened the reaction from the audience was just so strong that it inspired me to do more and be the best performer on the bike that I can be, and that's what's happening now."
It's hard to call anyone disabled who can do the rare feats that Cook is capable of.
"It's not a word I've ever used," he said. With Rick Hansen also from central B.C., with Prince George's Trent Seymour now in the national consciousness, it is becoming clear - led by British Columbians - that there must be other words applied to people who live with spinal injuries. They are simply enabled in other ways to lead fulfilling, exciting lives and perhaps, like Cook does, bring thousands of people at a time to their feet in wild, breathless applause.
Cook will see Prince George tonight, upside down, at high speed, dozens of feet in the air, hurtling above the PGARA crowd.
Tickets are still available (from the Nitro Circus website or at the gate).
Showtime is 6 p.m.
