WHAT A BLAST!

By Shanna Hogan
Photos Courtesy of Ringling Brothers & Barnum Bailey

It wasn’t the adventure or the nomadic lifestyle that led Tina Miser to run off and join the circus. Tina became a professional human cannonball for love.

Ten years ago, while volunteering at a summer circus festival in Indiana, Tina met a carnie named Brian.

“He was transitioning from being a flying trapeze artist to a human cannonball – that was his career change,” she says with a laugh. “At the time he was building a cannon and he asked me if I wanted to see the cannon and fire him out of it.”

They ended up becoming cannonball colleagues, and Brian trained Tina to perform the stunt. They were later married, and five years ago they had a daughter named Skyler, who travels with them in the circus. Ringling Bros. provides a traveling nursery and teachers for all their performers and their families.

Fifty weeks a year, Brian, who is now semi-retired, shoots Tina out of the canon, where she accelerates to speeds of 65 miles per hour in less than a second. She describes the stunt as “exhilarating.”

“It feels like slow motion. Every detail plays out slowly in your mind,” she says. “For me, I feel like it lasts a long time, even though it’s only two-and-a-half seconds.”