High- Flying Hot- Wheeler : Stunts: For the daring performer, each show under the big top is a job. But the circus is his life.

For Alex Ramos, it is just another day at work. He mounts his yellow motorcycle and puts on his crash helmet.

Then he drives up a ramp into a 15-foot-high metal latticework sphere called the “Globe of Death”--where he and a second cyclist do loop-the-loops that would make sane people ill.

The audience roars its approval at one of the biggest crowd pleasers under the big top at Circus Vargas, set up this week in a dusty vacant lot in Canoga Park.

Ramos, a veteran circus performer, is also a trapeze artist. He appears as one of The Flying Rodogel with his brothers Bernardo and Eduardo and Bernardo’s sons Douglas and Oliver.

“I have 30 years in the circus. I was born in the circus,” said Ramos, 30, who started out performing in Merida, Mexico, as a clown at age 8. He is proud of being part of the third generation of The Flying Rodogel, the family’s stage name.

“We have a lot of responsibility for our name,” he said. “Because in Mexico, we were very well-known trapeze performers.”

The family travels with Circus Vargas 10 months a year. On the road, home is two silver trailers that double as living quarters and dressing rooms.

Ramos also assists in two other acrobatic acts. American crowds, especially young boys, love the motorcycle act, he said. But it is not that popular in Mexico, where “they have motorcycles because they can’t afford to buy a car. In the United States, you have motorcycles for fun. In Mexico, it’s not for fun.”

He relaxes between the afternoon and evening shows, changing from his costume into a jogging suit. “It’s a very short, but very hard job,” he said, requiring intense concentration and physical exertion.

A family atmosphere prevails amid the trailers parked side-by-side behind the big top. The smell of freshly cut grass, which was several feet high before the circus came, hangs in the air, along with the pungent odors of tigers and elephants. The performers, who are used to living on asphalt shopping mall lots, have been complaining all week about the dust that seems to cling to everything.

Sometimes the constant traveling and performing can be tiresome.

“If you come to the show, it’s fun,” he said, walking wearily back to the trailer after the last performance. “But for us, it’s not fun. It’s a job.”

Still, it is a good life, he said, with friends and family always nearby.

“We’re working together and we’re living together,” he said. “And this is very important.”