Motorcyclist Has More Bravery Than Brains
Rex Phelps was up late one night, going over his greatest hits.
There’s the Ford Bronco he T-boned in Montana, the 138-foot tumble into Long Lake, the near-fatal backflip in Oakland. …
“We figured I’d broke 53 bones,” says Phelps, 40, who once jumped over 14 cars with an 80-pound pit bull on the front of his motorcycle.
They don’t call him “Reckless Rex” for nothing.
They definitely don’t call him Wreck-less, which makes the daredevil’s comeback attempt hard to understand.
Once one of America’s most amazing stunt riders, Phelps paid an excruciating price for his brief taste of fame. The former Spokane man, who now lives in Pomeroy, Wash., spent weeks in hospital beds, wheelchairs and casts.
He was on the fast track to becoming the next Evel Knievel when a hideous 1987 crash all but took his life and his left leg.
Yet Phelps, who has performed only once in the last nine years, is back in Spokane trying to drum up support for another senseless foray into the fangs of death.
This time he wants to take a high-speed ride for charity through three blazing wood walls in early November. Er, did I mention he’ll be riding backward?
Phelps calls his stunt Blind Faith, “because you can’t see where you’re going, but you have faith you’re going to make it through.”
He tried the same thing last year in Hamilton, Mont., where he grew up. His faith wavered. Phelps’ bike slid sideways into the last burning barrier. He says he took a lengthy tumble, narrowly escaping injury.
“I get scared, sure,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll think, ‘This can’t work.’ But you tell yourself it does work. You have to remember if you chicken out, you’re gone.”
I met Reckless Rex in a Spokane hospital room in the winter of 1987. His left leg was held together by enough pins and screws to set off a metal detector. A huge, gaping hole on his mangled foot was angry red and oozing. For years, doctors wanted to cut off the ruined limb. Phelps stubbornly refused, battling recurring infections with antibiotics pumped into him through intravenous tubes.
The injuries came in a gruesomely spectacular way.
Performing in an October 1987 thrill show at the Oakland Coliseum, Phelps gunned the throttle and headed up a steep 22-foot ramp.
The idea was to blast off and, at an altitude of 60 feet, turn a back flip and ride the bike safely down into a pool filled with 80,000 gallons of water. It took months of practice and about $150,000 from wealthy backers to perfect.
This time Phelps knew he was in trouble. The bike slid sideways halfway up, sending him off target as he went airborne. Trying to spot the pool below, Phelps pushed off his bike and dropped feet first to the water.
He made it. Almost.
Coming down, his left foot hit the pool’s hard edge. The force jammed his heel up into his calf, shattering bones. Mashing flesh.
An ESPN film crew captured the horrific spectacle, which was replayed for weeks. “It’s not what I want to be remembered for,” says Phelps. “Someday I want to do that backflip again.”
The years after his injury included some of the lowest moments of his life. The accident left him broke and disabled. He sold his bikes to pay staggering medical bills.
Slowly, by pedaling an exercise bike, he made liars out of those who said he would never again ride or walk without a brace or a cane. But as courageous as his recovery is, Phelps’ return to death-defying ways is also cruel.
For 17 years, Lori Phelps stood by her man as he hobbled back from one gut-churning injury after another.
“I’ve tried to get him to stop, but it’s something inside of him,” says Lori, who is in Pomeroy raising the couple’s five children. “I don’t even try any more. Why fight it?”
While Rex worked on his comeback, Lori pursued her own dream: to become a trauma nurse. The wife of Reckless Rex laughs. “It could come in handy,” she adds, “couldn’t it?”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo