If you don’t know me, you probably think I’m the stupidest person in the world. Balancing on skinny railings on the edge of deathly tall drop offs is one thing that some people don’t understand why I do. Now you get to read about why I do this.

The first thing I want to say is that I only do what I am capable of, and I always stick to what is in my comfort zone when death is the consequence of a mistake. I really want to make it known that I am not your normal kid looking for an adrenaline rush. I have trained for years to get to the level I am at, I didn’t just go out and do it one day. You can read about how I trained and my progression here.

So a lot of people understand that this is actually very easy for me, but they still don’t get why. There is a chance that I could mess up, and in the end, it wouldn’t be worth it if I fell. Lots of people come to the conclusion that I am now just trying to show off or look cool in front of my friends, and they couldn’t be more wrong.

To make it easier for you to understand, I’ll take a dangerous skill that you probably have so you can relate better. The dangerous activity I am talking about is driving a car. I think driving a car is actually very similar to what I do when I am balancing on skinny rails. When you are driving, you are in a sense just balancing the car between the two lines on each side. If you make one small wrong turn of the steering wheel, the mistake could be fatal. Even though there are over 3 thousand deaths every single day because of car crashes, no one thinks twice about risking their life getting in a car to go to their friends house. I think I could actually make the claim that driving a car is more dangerous than what I do, and here are some reasons why I think that:

First, when you are driving a car on the highway, you are probably going about 70 miles an hour, and most likely are driving with many other cars around you. If something were to happen, there is way less time to react. If something happens to me while I am balancing on a railing, I can slow down or stop, rebalance, and then continue to walk again. Another very important thing is that I am in 100% concentration mode when I am balancing high up. I guarantee that you have dazed off or zoned out when driving before. Even on a 30 minute drive, I feel like I can’t stay fully concentrated the entire time like I can for the 30 seconds when I am balancing on a pole. Also there are so many distractions when driving: If a bad song comes on, you take your eyes off the road to change the radio, if you have to look at a map to see where you are going, or your friend in the back seat is telling a funny story and he’s stealing some of your concentration that should be on the road. There are also people that text and drive, people that drive drunk, or I know all of us have had to wake up early in the morning and drive somewhere when it is almost impossible to focus. When I am doing what I do, I make sure that I am fully alert, and there are no distractions. If I find myself in a less than ideal situation, I won’t balance and save it for another time because I know it is not worth it.

So you might think “Oh I don’t do any of those things you said, I am the perfect driver.” You might be the perfect driver, but that also doesn’t stop someone that is texting behind the wheel to run into you and end up killing you. I would like to think I am pretty safe when it comes to driving, but that doesn’t stop the fact that I have had to go into an emergency lane 2 different times when a semi truck didn’t check his blind spot and entered into my lane where I was. If there was not an emergency lane, or if there was a car in the lane I was trying to go into, that could have been the end of “Ben Schneider,” but no one questions why I still get in a car on the highway even after those two near death experiences. I remember trying to tell my parents this logic, and they didn’t believe me. The very next day I tried explaining this to them, my sister was driving my brother on the highway, and a driver who wasn’t paying attention rear ended them. She ended up spinning out crossing 4 lanes of traffic where another car hit her in a head on collision throwing her off the highway. Thankfully no other cars hit her but my brother and sister could have easily just died in that situation if things were a little differently. This confuses me why no one will question why they will go back to driving, back to the situation that almost killed them, but everyone will question why I go back to balancing on a rail, a situation where I was never even close to dying.

This is my reasoning for why I think just driving a car is more dangerous than what I do. If you look up the statistics, well over 3 thousand people die every single day from car wrecks, so driving is dangerous, and you are risking your life every time you get behind the wheel.

The last point I have regarding the safety of what I do is this: When someone that has no slackline experience and is judging me on what I do based on the skill they have, of course they are going to think I am crazy. For them, they would probably die, so they assume that because they will die, I will die. A 4 year old could think that driving a car is the most dangerous thing in the world, and that is true for the 4 year old because they don’t have the skills required to drive a car. The thing these people forget is that I am a top slackliner who can control myself on extremely long and loose lengths on 1″ wide slacklines.

Balancing on a stable metal bar is about the equivalent of telling a body builder to curl a 20 lb weight. The body builder has the skills to curl probably a hundred lbs, so when you ask him to curl a 20 lb weight, there is no way he is going to drop it, especially if his life is on the line. I feel like this example is especially relevant to me when I hang from tall structures. First off, I have been rock climbing for about 7 years, I can do 15 muscle ups in a row, and can do 3 legit full one arm pull ups in a row. I have the strength to be able to hold myself at dangerous heights with one arm. I know my body well enough that if I feel as if I am slipping or loosing strength, I will realize that way before I will actually let go and fall. The thing is, is that it only takes a second for me to get my other arm on what I am hanging on and pull myself up if I realize that I am slipping or loosing strength. Because of this, it should be theoretically impossible for me to fall.

So now I know exactly what you are thinking. I get that it is relatively safe for you, but I still don’t understand why you would risk your life for something so stupid. This is where most people figure I’m trying to be a dare devil, or am just trying to show off for my friends. Here is where I would like to disagree. Daredevils do “stunts” for an audience where they do a “dangerous” activity and try to get an audience reaction. Their incentive or reason for doing the “stunt” is to become famous or to please an audience. When I am walking on a ledge or

doing something that could kill me, I am usually there with myself and usually just one other friend. I have no audience to please, the only person I am doing it for is myself. You could say I post some pictures or videos online but I don’t do that to show off. If you actually look deep or follow what I do, I show what I am doing to try to inspire other people. I try to send the message that things that seem impossible can be possible if you work hard enough. I’m not encouraging anyone to do what I am doing, but maybe there is something else that seems impossible at the moment to them. Maybe its getting an ‘A’ on a test in a class they’re failing, or maybe its loosing 20 lbs of fat in a month. For me, heights was my biggest fear as a kid, so balancing on a tall structure on a skinny beam is one thing I never thought I would be able to do and something I thought would always be impossible for me.

Also, a Dare Devil’s thought process going into the stunt is “I hope I can do this, and if I can do this, I will look really cool.” When I am about to do one of my stunts, I am thinking “I am doing this because I know I can do this because of how much training I’ve put into this.” That is why I hate the word “stunt” so much. I don’t see the things I do as stunts. Instead, I do it to grow mentally. In the back of my head, I know I am 100 percent safe, but when I am 300 feet up surrounded by literally nothing, your mind doesn’t think that. Balancing at these heights lets me know what I am comfortable and uncomfortable with, so I can better train myself on the ground. I believe that to become a better person, you need to do something that scares or pushes you. That is the final answer that everything in this post has been leading up to, and is the main reason that I do what I do. I know some of you might not be satisfied with this answer, and still think what I do isn’t worth the risk. That is why I say what I do isn’t for most people. I also have to reply and say I don’t think it is worth it that you risk your life getting in a car to go to a friends house or the movies. At least what I do has a deeper meaning and helps me become a better person.

This is my view of what I see when I am doing this. There is nothing to reference off of, just relying on pure balance to stay up.