For most of his life, Michael Comberiate has preferred to look at the world, as he says, upside down.
With his hands on the ground and feet in the air, the retired NASA engineer has kept meticulous records of how many handstands he’s done in his 77 years: more than 105,000.
He’s done handstands on mountaintops, pyramids and sheets of ice; in about 250 countries, all 50 U.S. states, plus dozens of times in Antarctica and the North and South poles. Comberiate — whom friends and colleagues dubbed “NASA Mike” — says by his estimates, he has done “more documented handstands in more places than anyone ever.”
Over decades, Comberiate has suffered severe back pain, separated shoulders and undergone several surgeries for torn rotator cuffs — injuries he says are unrelated to handstands, but rather mostly due to years breaking boards and cinder blocks as a taekwondo master black belt.
Now he’s battling his fourth bout with cancer — a rare and aggressive form called mantle cell lymphoma — so he’s put most of his travels and handstands on hold.
Comberiate said he hopes that once his five months of treatment at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda end in late February, he can overcome the side effects that cause dizziness and weakness in his arms. He wants to get back to his regimen of at least five handstands a day and try to do more handstands in more places.
“It’s been a fun thing to do,” Comberiate said one afternoon in the spacious home that he built himself in Highland, Maryland. Even though he’d just completed inpatient cancer treatment, he could barely sit still as he talked with excitement about his passion for inversions.
“It’s unique and it introduces me to a lot of people and breaks the ice,” he said. “People start talking to you when they see you with your legs up in the air.”
He grew up in Adelphi, Maryland, and started doing handstands as a teenager. In college at the University of Maryland in College Park, he joined the Gymkana gymnastics troupe. He later got the idea — which his friends considered harebrained but fun — of counting the handstands he did everywhere he went.
When he traveled for his job, making satellites and specialty communications equipment that could withstand harsh weather in far-flung places including Australia, New Zealand and Alaska, he’d tack on extra time to do a handstand or two. He estimates he’s spent about $250,000 of his own money to travel.
To keep track of his efforts, he’s saved a photo of nearly every handstand. A few years ago, he self-published a 900-page autobiography called “The World I Have Seen Upside Down.”
There’s the time he did 10 handstands to get just the right shot at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. There’s him upside down at the Great Wall of China, in front of London’s Big Ben and the Louvre in Paris, and amid elephants grazing in a field in Kenya. There he is on sheets of ice in the North Pole, and in Bethlehem inside the Church of the Nativity, built over the site where Christians believe Jesus was born.
Comberiate said his handstands start conversations, even when there’s a language barrier. If he’s alone, he asks passersby to snap his photo. Inevitably they ask: What’s this about? Where are you from?
“The next thing I know, I’m walking with them, and they’re showing me their world,” he said. “It’s like I represent some kind of freedom or enthusiasm. I guess it’s a can-do spirit that is contagious.”
One of Comberiate’s friends — Michael Smith, of Odenton, Maryland, who’s known him for 25 years and traveled with him to Africa, Asia and Europe — laughed recalling the handstands and the stares.
“Mike’s the kind of guy who’s going to squeeze every drop out of life,” Smith said.
Comberiate recalled how hard it was back in the “olden” days to catch his handstands with film cameras.
“You’d come back home from a long trip, hoping you got the shot and you’d have to wait to develop the film to see if it was a good one,” Comberiate said.
In his basement, he keeps hundreds of glass vials, old film canisters and prescription bottles filled with little souvenirs from his travels. One is marked “Dead Sea Mud, Jordan. Nov. 12, 2011.” Another holds sand and reads “El Camino, Santiago.”
Comberiate said he used to pick destinations by throwing a dart at a map on his wall. Once, it landed on the floor, and he took it as a sign to go to Antarctica.
His handstands are not in the Guinness Book of World Records but he is — for his work at NASA. In 1999, he and a colleague set a record for holding the first “pole-to-pole” conference call between the North and South poles. He’s also been recognized by Ripley’s Believe It or Not for carrying ice from the North Pole to the South Pole and vice versa.
This spring, his cancer returned.
“Some people hear a cancer diagnosis, and they sit in a recliner and say, ‘Oh I have cancer, and I’m going to lead a cancer life,’” said his wife, Carolyn. “Not Mike. He’s done the opposite.”
In the past few months, even as he juggles his treatments, Comberiate walks 10 miles a day — mostly on a treadmill — or exercises on a stationary pedal machine when in the hospital.
“Mike’s made peace with the fact that he’s not going to be around forever,” said his friend Smith. “He’s bummed about it, but he’s not going to sit down and go, ‘Poor me. Woe is me.’ He’s going to continue to do what he can for as long as he can.”
One afternoon, as he showed visitors his memorabilia in his basement, Comberiate asked, “You want to see me do a handstand?” He’d just gotten home the day before from a week-long stay at NIH. He still had his hospital band on his arm.
“Come on, Mike, you can do it,” he said aloud to himself. “Just get those legs up there.” Several times he bent over, put his hands on the floor and tried to thrust his legs in the air, but he was too dizzy. After a short break, he tried again and nailed it for a few seconds.
“See,” he said. “I knew I could still do it.”
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