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.
It was 2019, mid-September, the long taper of a summer without demarcation. The last steam bath days of St. Louis heat stretched on. Slobber strands dangling from a hound’s jowls.
One night, I was noticing the Moonish qualities of the street lamp outside my living room window when my phone rang. It was Jackson. He pitched a rendezvous. In ten days meet FBM, Profile, and some of the extended ménage in Colorado to hitch along for a leg of the 6th Maiden America tour for roughly 48 hours of riding in the Rockies. It was short notice and a short trip—a blink.
Street Lamp, surrogate for the Moon.
I extended my right arm. My elbow creaked like a door in an abandoned Victorian. It had been for months. From time to time I gripped my bars, but by this point it was a symbolic gesture. The tendonitis wasn’t a deal breaker. Maybe I’d get a few airs in before the rusty hinge pulled off the door like viscera velcro. Anyway, prospecting for transition gold in the mountains with friends was reason enough to go. I’d take what I could get, miss work, and book the flight to Denver.
Other than the brushes on Bohren’s Black Earth summer boiled off without a hiss, but Jackson’s call promised fall wouldn’t evaporate the same way. So, before dawn on the equinox I threw on my backpack and tugged my bike bag 6 blocks to catch the 5am Red Line for Lambert. A few hours later Jackson grabbed me from the Denver airport and we were off to meet the others west of the city.
The smattering of vagabonds gathered in the motel parking lot soon after we arrived were mostly familiar. This was the renegade BMX nobility I was joining up with. Jackson and I were close friends from when I lived in Santa Cruz. I watched Garrett grow up ripping Ramp Riders in Saint Louis with his brothers, Zach and Adam. Steve Crandall became a friend after years of crossing paths on the road. Others: Stew, Dolecki, Seamus, Holladay I knew from prior FBM meet-ups and the typical currents of BMX life. The Leeper Bros, Jay from QBP, Vic from Circuit, Matt from Profile, and the bizarrely skilled Declan Murray were new to me and—
A cosmopolitan vagabond approached the van, ”I’m so horny!”
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 returned, “I’m horny,” “Whooo’s horny?” “Sooo horny.”
The pack call died off as suddenly as it began—these were 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.
