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If there’s one thing you are almost always guaranteed from a few days spent on the set of Nitro Circus it’s a hot shit animated flash photo of the day. This one I’m particularly fond of because it inadvertently stars me. How does one get run over by a runaway snowmobile? Well, it’s like this: Whenever I get the opportunity to tag along on a Nitro Circus shoot, I always try to shadow Donny Anderson. He’s the main cameraman on the production and he almost always knows the best “money shot” angle to get on a stunt (which is nice because it takes out half the guesswork on my part). However, because of this, Donny’s also almost always dick-deep in the action where collateral damage is almost always a possibility—especially with six idiots that have a tough love relationship with motor-powered vehicles.

On this cold and snowy Utah afternoon, the aforementioned idiots were let loose in an open space to film a soon to be unused “Snow Chariots” segment for the first season. There were no real boundaries to speak of, so it was pretty much a free for all—crew included. I should have know better than to enter such a Nitro Circus scenario because Street Bike Tommy and I have a very “special” relationship. You see, the first time I ever met Tommy, he nearly took me out by crashing his motorbike into an area of fence that I was squatted behind taking photos. Luckily he hit the post just to my right instead. Knowing that Tommy was “in control” of a snowmobile should have tipped off my survival instincts, lackluster though they may be, but I guess I was instilled with a false sense of security standing behind Donny, a/k/a “my human shield.” Donny, however, has considerably more tours of duty under his belt, so when Tommy lost his snowmobile he simply picked up his tripod and stepped to the right. This left me, the idiot looking through the long lens of his camera, as the next probable target. Fortunately, Tommy’s aim was true to slightly-off form and I was able to twist my marshmallow-hampered body just enough so that the snowmobile skipped off my leg and ran over my camera bag instead.

None of this was really caught on film, of course, since Donny was primarily focused on averting a multi-thousand dollar camera tragedy. In fact, the only person to catch it was Nate Christenson, the other on-set photographer from DC Shoes who graciously supplied me with this sequential souvenir. Thanks, Nate!

(photos by Nate Christenson; Utah; 2009)

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