These past few years I've always looked forward to seeing the New Year's Eve stunts from Las Vegas. I watch Travis Pastrana's "Nitro Circus" show on MTV all the time. I love it!!! 

It's crazy what Pastrana attempts, along with, I forget the other guy's name now, the one who jumped the motorcycle last year up on the arch in Sin City. That was iNsAnE!!!!!!!!

I'll be tuned in New Year's Eve night watching the stunts. With Pastrana attempting his jump in Long Beach, Calif., does anyone know if the other guy's going to be attempting a stunt this year in Las Vegas?
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“It looks absolutely ridiculous,” Pastrana said with a laugh during a telephone interview while he was inspecting the ramps he’ll take off from and hopefully land on. “It’s going to be spectacular. Definitely scarier in person than on paper, but I’m looking forward to it for sure.”

Pastrana is scheduled to take off at midnight EST, live on ESPN.

The current record is 171 feet set by Pastrana’s Subaru teammate, Ken Block, in a rally car in November 2006. Pastrana wants to break that mark by more than 100 feet. To do so, he’ll have to clear at least 230 feet of water between the pier and barge.

“If I land where the current world record is, I’m landing in the water. I’m not even getting to the barge, let alone the landing,” Pastrana said. “I don’t really have a choice there.”

The latest installment in Red Bull’s New Year, No Limits series could be spectacular or disastrous.

That’s part of the challenge for Pastrana.

“I actually get a lot more pleasure out of the whole process of what goes into making these things work,” he said. “At the same time, that’s why you love to bring it to the masses. Red Bull has been just awesome every year in kind of letting their athletes pick some stuff they want to do and make the impossible possible.

“No one’s really flown a car, and just figuring out the dynamics of that thing, you’ve got to look outside the box again. That’s how our sports progress, is you keep innovating.”

Pastrana was the first to do a double backflip on a motorcycle. As part of his Nitro Circus TV show, he rode dirt bikes off a ramp into the Grand Canyon, parachuting the rest of the way down. He also jumped out of a plane without a parachute, confident that a fellow skydiver with a parachute who jumped out at the same time would catch up to him and guide him to earth.

Pastrana, remember, is the guy who announced himself to the action sports world when at age 15 he celebrated an X Games gold medal by jumping his motorcycle into San Francisco Bay in 1999. That stunt got him into a fair bit of trouble, and he lost his prize money and medal.

While his stunts seem crazy, Pastrana said he’s not reckless, especially in his approach to the New Year’s Eve stunt.

“Safety is the No. 1 priority,” he said. “I’ve never actually been involved with anything that they’ve taken as seriously because there are so many people watching and definitely we want everything to come across well and help the sport progress, as opposed to saying, ‘We’re just idiots doing stunts.’ We’re professionals and we’re all working together to make sure it’s safe and as fun as possible.”

Pastrana will have a 1,000-foot run-in to get the car up to about 100 mph before hitting the takeoff ramp.

“There’s kind of sweet spot on the backside of the jump,” he said in describing the best-case scenario. “If I hit that, be able to stop, no problem, in time before I hit the end of the barge, then I can do some doughnuts and then celebrate.”

A lot can go wrong, including a malfunction with his car, overshooting the landing ramp or going short.

“You can knock yourself out, then land in the water and drown, I guess,” he said. “That is something that’s a very, very small chance and something that we understand what we’re doing.”

The toughest part, he said, is that there’s only 100 feet from the end of the landing ramp to the end of the barge.

“So I land all the way at the end of the base, I’ve got to take the Subaru from 90 mph probably to zero, within 100 feet, which is a difficult task. But as long as the car sits down well and doesn’t bounce too much it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Action sports athletes often are over-enthusiastic and under-prepared, Pastrana said.

“But on this one we really are prepared. It’s a live event, which always makes it tough. The weather is a huge factor. The more calm the weather is, the better I’ll feel about it.”

I just read this other article about Pastrana's planned New Year's Eve jump, too.

I've always been fascinated with motorcycle daredevils dating back to my youth when the legendary Evil Knievel was breaking bones. My first trip ever to Las Vegas with three buddies of mine in 1983, our first visit on The Strip was Caesar's Palace, which was about a quarter-mile down the street from where we were staying. I wanted to check the grounds out, standing around the fountains and just imagining Knievel making his fountain jump, and crashing. I loved the exhibit inside Caesar's Palace about Knievel.
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http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/news?slug=ap-pastrana-carjump&prov=ap&type=lgns

“There’s still a lot to learn, but you don’t want to take all the fun out of the jump,” Pastrana said in a phone interview. “So we’ll be learning a little bit on jump day.

“I really think we can put on a great show either way. I’m really hoping to make it look easy, but I think there’s a lot of people hoping I don’t,” he added with a laugh. “Either way, it’s kind of a win-win. I hate to look at it like that. I’m really hoping for the perfect landing. We’ll see.”

Pastrana said he made several test jumps at a site east of Temecula in Riverside County, including four at approximately the distance he’ll be attempting to jump. While he had some hard landings and one end-over-end wipeout, Pastrana is confident he can complete the jump without ending up in the water.

Pastrana, remember, is the guy who announced himself to the action sports world when at age 15 he celebrated an X Games gold medal by jumping his motorcycle into San Francisco Bay in 1999. That stunt got him into a fair bit of trouble, and he lost his prize money and medal.

He’d prefer to stay out of the water this time.

The distance changed a little bit from jump to jump in practice, but Pastrana anticipates the front of the barge will be about 230 feet from the pier. “So obviously under 230 I hit the water, over 300 and I land flat and probably and break my back,” he said. “So somewhere in that range will probably be OK.”

The hardest part of practice was dealing with headwinds, which reduce the distance the car will fly, and crosswinds, which make aiming for the landing ramp difficult.

He said a 5 mph headwind makes the car go 40 feet less over 200 feet.

“That’s significant,” he said. “Hopefully it’s not windy. But if it is windy, it’ll be a Hail Mary. Unless it’s a hurricane or something, I’m going to try to fly the car.”

He started with two cars and is down to one after wiping out on one jump.

“As it turns out, it’s very difficult to jump a car,” said Pastrana, who’s usually flying through the air on a motorcycle. “If it goes well, it goes really well. If it goes bad, it goes really bad.”

The good news, he said, was even after the wipeout and some hard landings, he was still on line to land on the barge and not in the water.

Pastrana said he’s gone through a safety course, and will have scuba gear in his car.

“As long as I’m not knocked out I think I’ll be all right,” he said.

Pastrana realizes a lot of people think he’s crazy. But everything has been well-calculated, from the construction of the ramps to mathematicians figuring out angles and weight.

“It’s not perfect, but it gets you close,” he said. “Then it’s just fine-tuning, to figure out how a car really does fly.”

He found that the rear spoiler he uses in rally racing caused the back of the car to drop in the air, so that had to be changed.

“I actually found that I can hit the brakes in the air and bring the front end down or keep on the gas and bring the front end up. I can really control the car through the air, which is nice,” he said.

The jump will be the latest in Red Bull’s New Year, No Limits series.

Just as Australian freestyle motocross star Robbie Maddison pulled off death-defying jumps in Las Vegas on the last two New Year’s Eves, Pastrana said he’s confident he can do this.

“I get asked, ‘Do you really want to go this far? The world record is 171 feet. Why do you want to go 250? ’ I want to push it. I want to be the best that I can. I don’t want to just do something a little better. If we can do it a lot better, let’s do it. Let’s push the limits.”