GIVE HIM A HAND
Radio jock’s 365 days of upside down
Jeff Ayliffe is well balanced … which is a good thing because he’s embarked on a mission to defy gravity. Ayliffe, aka The Handstand Guy, is spending part of each day of 2019 balancing on his hands. He has stood on his hands in the Western Cape’s provincial legislature and at the iconic Noon Gun on Signal Hill as a gunpowder charge and puff of smoke signalled noon. He has swayed on his arms on Lion’s Head under a full moon and gone upside down in icy rain and gale-force winds at the Fransmanshoek Conservancy near Mossel Bay (not even 60km/h gusts could topple him). He’s performed a handstand in a shop window as a mannequin, and at his local supermarket. He’s been inverted in support of Plastic-Free July, in solidarity with people going through tough times and in memory of friends who have lost their lives. He’s balanced upside down on a surfboard, a motorbike, a bicycle, a plane and a pizza oven. And last week, wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt, the 57-year-old radio sports presenter took a deep breath and performed what is hands-down one of the most daring attempts in handstand history: he stood on top of a Table Mountain aerial cableway car, placed his hands on a narrow beam and flicked his feet skywards. In those teeth-rattling five seconds he achieved a lifelong dream.
So why does Ayliffe want to spend a portion of each day upside down? Is it to show
how South Africans can survive all the madness in our topsy-turvy world and still stay standing, even if we’re upside down? Ayliffe laughs. There are a number of reasons and surviving life’s chaos is just one of them. He’s doing it to feed his handstand addiction, nurture his passion for being creative, showcase cool spots in the Western Cape, and, most important, for a good cause.
His project started by chance. On January 1 he popped a handstand on the river bank on the Seven Passes Road in the Wilderness. He has been doing handstands since he was six when he joined a gymnastics club in Pietermaritzburg.
“There’s something about the act of balancing on my hands that I enjoy. I love the feeling of being in control when you hit a handstand’s sweet spot.” The “sweet spot” is when the elements fall into place, his body stacks up perfectly, and balancing on his hands feels effortless.
He stopped gymnastics when he was 16 to focus on paragliding, skydiving and rock climbing but his love affair with handstands continued. When Ayliffe performed his New Year’s Day handstand his son Taylan took a photo and suggested that his father do a handstand every day of 2019.
“It sounded like a cool idea so that night I posted the picture on Facebook and announced the Handstand365 project,” says Ayliffe. “A week in, with sore shoulders, I thought: ‘What was I thinking?’ ”
What followed has been a series of photos featuring Ayliffe on his hands with dramatic backdrops, dazzling sunrises, striking sunsets, and spectacular silhouettes in various places dotted around the country (but mostly Cape Town). In the meantime, he has become handstand fit and confident enough to pop one just about anywhere and in any conditions.
Ayliffe had decided to make Handstand365 part of his day, so many have been spontaneous. He was driving from George to Cape Town when he saw a canola field. The result was a remarkable photo of just his legs sticking out of a magical carpet of bright yellow flowers against a bright blue sky.
He was covering the Wines2Whales mountain bike race when the Springboks thumped England to become rugby’s world champions. After the game — and to the amazement of a few hundred mountain bikers — he jumped on a table and did a handstand just as Bok captain Siya Kolisi lifted the Webb Ellis trophy.
His “highest, fastest” handstand was also unplanned. He was on a flight to Cape Town when it dawned on him that a handstand at 35,000 feet and at a speed of 1,000km/h needed to be done. “I approached the cabin crew, who initially said WTF?” But he explained and, after checking with the pilot, was given the go-ahead.
Ayliffe is not only taking handstands to new heights, he’s taking them to new depths too. He did a free dive to the bottom of the ocean exhibit at the Two Oceans Aquarium and performed an underwater handstand. During the dive he met Alvi, the green sea turtle whose rescue story went viral after a plastic bag was pulled out of its throat.
It’s not the only time Ayliffe’s handstands have made a splash. On June 19, he decided to do a handstand on the Milnerton pier at sunset with a splash of waves in the distance. To get the ideal shot he had to be upside down when a wave hit the pier. He set up his camera and did the handstand.
“I was inverted and comfortable and then I heard what sounded like a train approaching. I tried to look under my arms to see what was coming … the next two seconds were a blur as a cannon shot of icy cold water blasted me over.”
With salt water pouring from everywhere, including his ears, he leapt up to chase his GoPro that was making its way down the pier. “Nature had delivered a sucker punch to remind me who was king of this castle,” he grins.
He got his GoPro back, and with it one of his most dramatic images.
Ayliffe has been joined upside down by celebrities like seven-time world surfing champion Stephanie Gilmore; pro mountain biker Robyn de Groot; sports commentator, actor and singer Sal Masekela (Hugh’s son); and Rasta, a Harris hawk from Plettenberg Bay’s Radical Raptors, a rehabilitation centre for birds of prey.
Ayliffe was on his hands, a piece of meat on his shoe, and Rasta landed on his foot.
Some handstands have taken meticulous planning and sweet talking to get permission to go where no handstander has gone before — like the rim of the Cape Town Stadium, which is where Ayliffe marked his handstand century. “Trying to focus on balance but looking hundreds of feet down on the pitch was, well, indescribable,” he recalls.
It was a team effort that made handstand #332 on the cable car roof — the grandmamma of all handstands — possible. He needed intense concentration, unbelievable balance, hardcore core strength and tremendous courage to pull it off. The car was parked about 5m below the top station for the attempt. Ayliffe was tethered but knew if he fell forwards he would slam into the car and do serious damage to himself. He let all the white noise melt away, entered his quiet space and kicked up … and nailed it. It was a mind-boggling feat.
The image went viral and Ayliffe became an instant celebrity. People asked for selfies with “The Handstand Guy”. When he reached the challenge’s halfway mark he performed a handstand on the pizza ovens at the Pomodoro restaurant in the Wilderness, and the owners created “Jeff’s Halfway Handstand Pizza” to mark the occasion.
Not all the handstands went his way and he will never repeat the Noon Gun exploit. He had wanted to do a handstand at Cape Town’s oldest living tradition and, just as it is for the gun itself, timing was crucial. Ayliffe needed to hit a perfect handstand at exactly the moment the gun was fired. He kicked up and got into the zone when the officer began the countdown: Three. Two. One. That was the last thing he remembers.
“I have no recollection of the boom. I felt a thump; like I’d been hit by a pantechnicon. I was knocked over. There was a sharp pain in my left ear and ringing in both ears. I couldn’t hear a thing. I looked up and saw 20 wide-eyed tourists staring at me.”
Ayliffe writes a caption to accompany each image and includes a fascinating nugget of information about the place he has selected and that particular handstand’s backstory. He hopes to publish the images in a book and will donate the proceeds to the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital.
I tagged along with Ayliffe on Wednesday to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden where he chose to mark his 338th handstand on the Boomslang, a tree canopy walkway built to celebrate the garden’s centenary. He found a spot and kicked up; his feet were in the sky in a perfectly straight handstand and it looked as if he was floating on his hands. A crowd gathered, clapped and shouted “bravo”.
From today there are 23 handstand days left of 2019 and Ayliffe still wants to pull off one on the beach, with children playing Calypso Cricket, and on Robben Island. For his grand finale on New Year’s Eve he plans to bring 365 handstanders to a huge field and for them all to do a mass handstand with Table Mountain in the background.
Ayliffe’s handstand mission has never felt like a chore and he says being able to push his creative boundaries has kept him motivated. Each handstand tells a story. Some are quirky, some are profound; all are inspiring.