Meet Me in the Hills
It was 2019, mid-September, the long taper of a summer without demarcation. It was the evening. My phone rang.
Slobber strands dangle from a hound’s jowls.
The last steam-bath days of St.Louis heat stretched on. It was 2019, mid-September, the long taper of a summer without demarcation. It was the evening. My phone rang. It was Jackson. He pitched a rendezvous. Meet in Colorado to hitch along for a short leg of the 6th Maiden America tour, joining the FBM/Profile crew and some of the extended ménage for 48 hours of riding in the Rockies. It was short notice and a short trip—a blink, really.
Maybe I’d get in a few airs before my elbow began ripping apart like viscera velcro. The dry hinge joint was creaky, had been for months, and gripping my bars was more of a symbolic gesture. Tendonitis, shitty, but not a deal breaker. And the road tugs. And prospecting for transition gold in the mountains with long time friends, the call drowns excuses. I’d take what I could get. I booked the flight to Denver.
Summer boiled off without a hiss besides the brushes on Bohren’s Black Earth, but Jackson’s call promised fall wouldn’t evaporate the same way. I was ready, and in the dark before dawn on the equinox I pulled on my backpack and tugged my bike bag 6 blocks to the Red Line and took it to Lambert.
Jackson and I became close friends during my two stints living in Santa Cruz. I watched Garrett grow up ripping Ramp Riders in Saint Louis with his brothers. And Steve Crandall, whose party I’d be crashing, was a friend from years of crossing paths on the road.
I knew a few of the renegade BMX nobility loitering in the motel parking lot from Woodward, BMX events, or previous meet-ups with FBM. Some: The Leeper Bros, Jay from QBP, Vic from Circuit, Matt from Profile, and the bizarrely talented Declan Murray, were new to me and—
A cosmopolitan vagabond approached the van.
”I’m so horny.” he said.
Eric Holladay was grinning behind black sunglasses as he strolled up in a billowing un-buttoned short sleeve, khaki shorts, and slides, banana in hand.
”I’m horrnyyy,” replied a voice from the shadows of the van interior, Seamus I think.
”Man, I’m so horny. Is anybody else horny?” called Garrett.
Pockets of voices spread around the asphalt called back, “I’m horny,” “Whooo’s horny?” “Soo, horny.”
The call died off as suddenly as it started—this was a pack of coyotes.
Time dilation is wild. Two days, and that’s being generous, felt like a week. On day one I managed a few carves at The Hook and a few airs at the Milliken park which earned me six more months of frayed cable friction in my arms. So, I was sidelined right away but happy and shot tons of photos.
This trip marked the conclusion of FBM operating as a handmade in the USA BMX bike company. Steve made the announcement while everyone was taking a break at Frisco. But, he also made clear this wasn’t the end of the road for friendships or road trips.
FBM was always more people than product anyway.
The road—we met there, we meet there, and if we see each other again, that’s where it’ll be.
*Click’em to make’em big and un-cropped.
a Little extra—2016 Memphis rendezvous on film
Coffee Breakers
Waves, Waves, Friends, Coffee a few days kicking around the coast in photos.
Coffee walks, talks, and waves.
The Good waiting
The good doesn't care how you get there, but it’s waiting.
My Credence MOD, one vessel that’s carried me through life in a city, life in the mountains, life in the forest, life in the desert, life by the sea, life after surgery, life out of my car. life with clocking in and life after.
“There is always so much good out there for us, waiting.” a friend wrote in response to some travel photos I shared in our years long, but intermittent email chain.
I agree, but I’m sure he played some role in shaping my opinion when in 2004 his BMX company put out a world tour video.
The riding in the video was raw, powerful, and inspiring, but the context of the riding was the belle of the ball, not the progression of tricks, the promotion of products, not even the riders.
The spirit of exploration imbued every part of the trip.
A world tour seeking out ruined ramps in vast, desolate landscapes, immaculate architecture calling for a carve betwixt esoteric sculptures in ancient cities, improbable skateparks lacquered in vibrant graffiti embedded in equally vivid cultures in stark contrast to our own, and plenty of bizarre, shreddable, infrastructure monoliths rising from distant no man's land horizons that act as anchors, beacons, portals, and corridors to an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. Many of which became pilgrimage sites for following generations.
In that context the bike is just the vessel ferrying us, and our friends, through our experience.
How rad we get, or how much fun we have along the way is up to us, and if we make these experiences entirely about the bike and how we're riding it, we risk making our vessel into a cardboard boat, permeable, soggy with time, and easily sunk by the waves and rain from the inevitable storm of entropy.
26 years into my own riding, I still wake up with this electrostatic feeling in my skin, a hunger for a carve on the edge of traction, the cresting arc of a good air, wall rides, and the buzz of discovering new ridescapes.
But, I know the bike is just a vessel, an avatar, and it could easily look like a skateboard, a pair of shoes, walking your dog, a guitar, a pen, a camera, anything, any activity.
It can take any form because the power isn't in the vessel, it's in the understanding that "There is always so much good out there, waiting."
When you know that, the vessel appears in a form just for you.