He did it. And he made it look so easy.

A few minutes after the clock struck 2010, Travis Pastrana jumped his Subaru Impreza 269 feet, smashing the previous record of 171 feet set by DC Shoes co-founder Ken Block in November 2006. And, just for added flare, he did it under the first blue moon in 19 years and in front a live television audience. Then he landed on a barge floating 200 feet off the Long Beach pier, flew into the tire wall and jumped out of the car to celebrate with the tens of thousands of folks lining the pier. Then, reminiscent of his 1999 jump into the San Francisco Bay, he backflipped off the pier and into the chilly water below. But he’s come a long way from having his gold medal and prize winnings stripped for that stunt. “Yep,” he says. “A long way.”

The thing is, it was hard to find anyone in Long Beach who was surprised by his success — or nervous in the hours leading up to the jump. “When I used to say I was going to do something, everyone would say, ‘Don’t do it. That’s crazy! That’s dumb! And they’d try to talk me out of it,” Pastrana says. “Now, I say I’m going to do something like jump a car onto a barge and they say, ‘Cool. You’ll be fine. You’re Travis Pastrana. It will work.’ Somehow I’ve built this reputation as being better than I actually am. It’s an amazing position to be in, because when I have an idea, people are willing to take a risk to help me make it possible. But it’s also very scary, because I have to think things through a lot more now.”

Check out the video HERE