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Greasy Pole Competition, St. Peter’s Festival, Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.A.: Ever since Italians began settling in the Gloucester, Massachusetts area just north of Boston, they’ve been coming together every June to celebrate the patron saint of fisherman, St. Peter. But what started as a day of tribute eventually turned from homage into a multiday celebration, with games, competition, and merriment. One of the most anticipated of the contests is the Greasy Pole competition, in which participants must make their way across a 45-foot (14m) greased telephone pole extended over the Atlantic in the (mostly futile) attempt to capture a red flag posted at the end. Oohs, Aahs, and Ouches! are constant refrains from the onlookers. Upon nabbing the flag, the contestant leaps (or more likely falls) into the water below and swims to the nearby beach, at which time he’s hoisted on shoulders and paraded about town. And for what? Glory! The only reward fitting enough for such a pain-inducing and ridiculous, yet wonderfully spirited celebration. www.stpetersfiesta.org/greasypole.html.

Cheung Chau Bun Climbing Festival, Cheung Chau, China: Just a short ferry ride (55 min.) from Hong Kong is the charming island of Cheung Chau, home to a small, but thriving fishing village of 25,000 people. Every late April or early May the locals host the world-famous and beloved Bun Climbing Festival at the Pak Tai Temple Playground. The festival features 14m-tall (46-ft.) bamboo towers of buns, which the contest participants clamber up in the hopes of clocking the shortest amount of time. Meanwhile, they’re bagging as many of the edible buns, made by festival revelers, as possible. Competitors are divided into three age groups, 35 and over, 18 to 34, and under 18 (participants much be at least 1m/31⁄3 ft. tall). Islands District Leisure Services Office ( 2852-3220). Leisure and Cultural Services Department (www.lcsd.gov.hk).

Tree Climb at Squamish Days Loggers Sports Festival, British Columbia: Amid a virtual thicket of logger sports—axe throwing, tree falling, and birling, to name a few—filling the hours of the Squamish Days Logger Sports Festival, the Tree Climb may tower above them all. In this event, tree climbers are challenged to a 24m (80-ft.) pole climb and descent. A timed event, the object is to scurry up and back down in as little time as possible, with past winners clocking in at jaw-dropping times of just 30 seconds. Intermediate and novice competitions are offered as well, in which both the heights and regulations (not timing the descent, for instance) are less strenuous. Loggers from around the world congregate in Squamish, 60km (37 miles) north of Vancouver and 65km (40 miles) south of Whistler, British Columbia, each year to participate in the contests and merriment. www.squamishdays.ca.

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The X Games

Bike Ballet

Los Angeles, California & Aspen, Colorado, U.S.A.

A motor bike and rider soar 40 feet into the air. Mid-flight the rider detaches himself from the bike, flipping it and spinning it around his head in mid-air like a spacewalker playing with a satellite toy. He keeps the bike in play by the tip of his fingers holding the back tail light as both man and motor stretch across the air. He then effortlessly pulls the machine back toward him and resaddles and straightens up just in time as the motorbike comes down and lands on its back wheel, then front wheel and he rides away. It’s a graceful display of man and machine in gravity defying unison, a trick at which any moment with the slightest mistake would see the rider painfully crash to the ground with his ride on top of him.

Yet crashes, bruises, and broken bones are all par for the course at the X Games. This jump jamboree is the Olympics of extreme sport and has its own A-list of fearless superstars such as snowboarder Danny Kass and skateboarder Shaun White, known as the Flying Tomato for his shaggy red hair and mid-air antics. They may not be household names among ordinary sports lovers