Epilogue - "The Great Pyramid Trampoline Caper"

"Epilogue"

Following our return to Cedar Rapids, George and I once again shared stories and photos with the Nissen staff and friends. Soon, the excitement of the whole adventure faded into a wonderful memory. That is, until three months later, in February, 1978, when George received the following letter:

Included with Jean Pratte’s letter was a copy of “Perespectives,” a Sunday insert in the French edition of Montreal’s weekly newspaper. 

Gracing the front cover was a familiar picture of me; turning a somersault on the trampoline, on the very top of the Great Pyramid of Khufu! Inside the publication there was a full page article about that fateful morning in Egypt, written by Henri Colombani.  Even though we couldn’t read the article, George and I were surprised and delighted that our adventure had actually received some notoriety.

          

















So, I carefully stored the newspaper article in a file, and there it remained for the next 36 years.

In writing this blog however, I came across the article and decided to finally get it translated once and for all.

(The full article is reprinted below*)

Imagine my surprise to learn that the French Canadians never knew who George was, and referred to him as the famous French comedian, “Louis de Funés.”

Maybe… there IS a similarity?!

You be the judge!  

     Louis de Funés, 1914-1983                 George Nissen, 1914 - 2010   

It’s too bad George never got to read the article from the newspaper, but I’d like to think that perhaps now he and Louis de Funés are together sharing a chuckle over the entire “Caper”

“Thank you George for all the wonderful memories!”

______________________________________________________

*Che~ops!

By Henri Colombani

Six o’clock in the evening, 25 C, night begins to fall on Giza on this May 23, 1977. Dressed in their perpetual nightshirts, crowned with tuques stiffened with dirt and proudly armed with antique muskets, a dozen Egyptians patrol the feet of the pyramids, as they do every evening, to prevent tomb raiders or other marauders from penetrating the mausoleums.

The old pyramid of Cheops, immutable witness of numerous human storms, is about to experience one of the most eccentric events of its history.

My buddy André Labelle, a long-necked traveller stuck with a long nose, nomadic Quebecois released from Montreal into Amsterdam, arrives in Cairo after short hops through Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia and Greece. André, a.k.a. Picolo, a.k.a. Pic, accompanied on his pilgrimages by his faithful companion Robert Lagendyk, decides, then, to go pay homage to the pyramids. No sooner said than done. When, around six o’clock, the foot of the Great Pyramid is reached, an irrepressible desire takes hold of them: to sleep on the summit. Completely absurd and formally prohibited, of course. Obviously an idea of the infidels. Spending the night at the top of this 150-metre giant is in itself a rare performance, which would have made Napoleon Bonaparte say: “Soldiers, from the top of these pyramids, 40 centuries and two Quebecois look down upon you!”

A game of hide-and-seek with the guards, two of them bribed for $1.50, and Pic and Robert begin climbing the huge blocks which form monstrous stairs a metre high. An hour of effort and there they are, ready to admire the daily sound and light spectacle from a highly privileged vantage point. Once covered by a veneer of polished stone, the pyramid’s point has disappeared, leaving in its place a square platform of around five metres by five metres made of irregularly eroded blocks.

While Cairo sleeps far away, unexpected hosts are waking up at the top of the pyramid. The Nile basin had seemed to be exempt from mosquitoes. The surprise is especially great for our Canadians who find themselves assaulted by hundreds of these voracious bugs. Though swaddled in their sleeping bags, they awaken at sunrise, at 5 in the morning, devoured from head to toe. Restaurants being rather rare at 150 metres above the desert, breakfast consists of a good hookah pipe while admiring the awakening of an entire country and its capital.

And thus begins the astonishment: four ants, two of which are blue, white and red, are climbing one of the faces of the pyramid. The two others are schlepping some rather voluminous gear. As they gradually ascend, the ants take form, become human, two Egyptians and what turns out to be two Americans in tracksuits, highly astonished to see our Canadians at the summit.

The first, Ron Munn, blond and athletic; the second, a “Louis de Funès” astray in the country of the sarcophagi. The gear: aluminum tubing, canvas, resources that, once assembled, reveal themselves to be a trampoline. The trampoline is wedged into the edge of the platform and there is Ron jumping, bouncing, spinning, at each jump risking the fall of 150 metres and certain death, the feet of the trampoline resting on a decayed stone that could crumble at any moment. And Ron jumps, turns, bounces: the incongruity of the situation fascinates the five spectators who, transfixed, are waiting for an accident that will not take place. Pic and Robert decline the invitation to admire the desert and the Sphinx upside down, three metres above the pyramid’s summit and 153 metres above the sand. For fifteen minutes, Ron abandons himself with euphoria to his exercises. The bet is won. The duo will become heroes in their distant Iowa. It is time to go back down because, at the foot of the monument, Jeeps and alerted Egyptian soldiers now make up a troubling welcome committee.

A dozen guns pointed at their chests instantly mark the end of the descent for the two Americans, the two Egyptian guides and their Canadian accomplices, who begin to seriously envision a stint in an Egyptian jail.

For, after all, it is a sacrilege, a desecration that cannot be tolerated.

Happily for Picolo and Robert, the “Louis de Funès” from Iowa parleys with the soldiers, who end up letting our friends and the two Egyptians go. What happened to Ron and his buddy? We don’t know, but with the relationship between the United States and Egypt being in good shape, we can imagine that the American embassy was able to intervene.

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