DIG – Ender Ender: Nathan Williams

“Nathan had been scoping this gap for a while now. It’s en route to the skatepark so it got eyed all the time. Nathan was in destroy mode during this period while filming for TIU. James Cox would come to town here and there, and Nathan would ‘simply’ check bangers off the list. (This hasn’t changed). He had seen the timeline of TIU and was wanting to give 100% for his part, so on James’ last morning in town we planned to get this.

It could not be in a worse spot. The gap is at a junction of the two main interstate in downtown Nashville, and the city road below is a 4 lane haul-ass stretch of pavement with a hill obscuring the south side and a major four way intersection at the north. It was a crapshoot timing the cars coming over the hill, and also the intersection with random right hand turns throwing off any stoplight timing system we had.

We arrived at 6:30 AM Sunday morning. It was looking pretty good traffic wise, and the light was just about to allow for a good exposure throughout the scene. Media crew set up as quick as possible, and Nathan got his head straight. For the next half hour, Nathan jumped the gap every 10 minutes, which was the tempo for dodging traffic. On his fourth jump, he threw the bars and nut-rode out. He got back up, delaying any concerns for procreation for a later date, and had the gap dialed in and ready to go. He was over the squirrly feelers, already threw the bars once, and was just ready to knock it out and get it over with.

But right at that time Sunday morning traffic picked up considerably. For almost 25 minutes, we relayed signals for possible openings. Nathan didn’t have as much time as an hour before where he could get the Ok, turn around, compose for five seconds then do the gap. At this point Nathan was reared up at the end of the runway, front foot ready to drop the cranks at a moment’s notice. After an unreasonable amount of waiting, and Nathan becoming beyond iced up there, we all had a, ‘well shit, he had four tries, and it didn’t quite work out’ realization. The traffic was really just too unforgiving.

After a 25 minute waiting period there was a halfway window. The GO! message was relayed with the thought that it was possible to likely James would have to stop Nathan at the last minute. Fortunately, that was not necessary. Nathan caught the bars and rode out. We were ecstatic and shocked all at once.