I stumbled onto Bob Maddox the way we stumble onto many of the best things these days: completely by accident. One minute I was wandering around YouTube. The next I was watching a man about my age strap himself onto something that appeared to have been designed jointly by NASA, Wile E. Coyote, and a committee with no adult supervision.
Then he fired it up.
Flames shot out the back, the machine screamed, and Maddox took off across the desert. He was laughing. That was the moment I fell in love with the guy.
Not because I suddenly developed an interest in pulse-jet propulsion. I have enough hobbies capable of injuring me. What caught me was the expression on his face. It was pure joy, but not dignified, reflective, age-appropriate joy. It was kid joy.
Bob Maddox, better known online as Crazy Rocketman, has spent decades building pulse-jet engines and attaching them to things that sensible people generally leave unpowered: bicycles, skateboards, motorcycles, go-karts, and other assorted vehicles that apparently seemed insufficiently dangerous in their original form.
A profile in Road & Track described Maddox as a self-taught builder who spent years experimenting with pulse jets despite having no formal engineering education. He has also been a cabinetmaker, painter, and serious skydiver. According to his own biography, he completed more than 2,000 jumps.
His fascination goes back much further. As a boy, Maddox was captivated by rockets, airplanes, the space race, and Wile E. Coyote’s endlessly unsuccessful attempts to propel himself toward the Road Runner. Most of us watched those cartoons and laughed. Bob apparently took notes.
There is something beautifully rich in that.
We talk a great deal about what disappears as we grow older. Strength declines. Faces wrinkle. Friends disappear. Careers end. Our bodies begin sending invoices for things we did thirty years ago. But aging is also a process of deciding what we refuse to surrender.
Curiosity can survive. Wonder can survive. Play can survive. The child survives.
It’s a mindset.
Psychologists sometimes speak about the “inner child,” a phrase that can become a little precious if we are not careful. But watching Maddox tear across the desert with fire shooting several feet behind him, I understood the idea instantly. The child is not always some wounded little creature hiding inside us. Sometimes he is having the time of his life.
One of the great mistakes we make about aging is confusing maturity with seriousness. We assume a mature person should become more restrained, predictable, and respectable. Maybe. But there is another possibility. Maybe maturity means becoming sufficiently comfortable with yourself that you no longer care whether everyone understands why you are having so much fun.
Maddox spent years quietly mastering something almost nobody else was doing. Much of his early experimentation failed—eventually, experience accumulated. Skill followed curiosity. His strange machines began attracting attention, YouTube arrived, and the audience found him.
Suddenly, this wonderfully eccentric older man had hundreds of thousands of people watching him play.
There is a lesson buried beneath all that noise and fire. We spend the first part of life trying to become somebody. We build careers, reputations, families, and identities. We learn what responsible adults are supposed to do. Then, if we are fortunate, something changes. We begin asking a different question: What still makes me feel alive?
For Bob Maddox, apparently, the answer involves jet fuel.
Yours may be quieter. It might be painting, gardening, teaching, writing, playing guitar, riding a bicycle, sitting on the floor with a grandchild, or learning something simply because you want to know it. The activity is almost beside the point. What matters is recognizing that small spark when it appears and giving it oxygen.
I am 65 now, and I increasingly suspect that one of the privileges of getting older is realizing we do not have to extinguish the boy or girl we once were. We can invite them along.
Preferably, in my case, without strapping a pulse jet to anything. Instead, I imagine I’m exercising my inner child when I’m pedaling my bicycle several times each week. It all started with a blue Schwinn Stingray back in the day.
But watching Bob Maddox race across the desert, laughing like a kid while flames pour out behind him, I cannot help thinking he may have figured something out.
Growing older is unavoidable, but it’s clearly negotiable.
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I love this story about Bob and needed to hear it today. I am going to seek the excited boy inside me and enjoy the ride. Thanks Cliff!