The First Mega Ramp part 2

This clip is from a TV show called Stuntmasters, and features Mat Hoffman, the first BMXer to ever appear on the show.

In the last post I wrote about my experiences shooting video at the 2-Hip King of Dirt contest at Mission Trails, near San Diego, California in 1991.  As radio icon Paul Harvey used to say, "Here is... the rest of the story."  At the time I went to that contest, I was working as a production assistant at a TV production company called G.R.B. Motorsports in Studio City, California.  I was the low guy on the totem pole, doing stuff like ordering supplies, labeling and logging tapes, and keeping the tape library organized.  It was my first job at a "real" Hollywood production company, and we were producing the supercross and monster truck TV shows that year.  The main office of G.R.B. was about a mile away, situated in a nice suburban house.  That part of the company produced the World's Greatest Stunts and Stuntmasters shows.  One of their stuntmen, who went by the moniker Johnny Airtime, also worked on staff in that office.  So I did something I wasn't supposed to do.  I made a 3/4" (professional quality) copy of the highlights from the Mission trails contest, and I sent it by interoffice memo to Johnny Airtime, who I hadn't met at the time.  I sent a note that said something like, "I'm a BMXer working at the other office, and I thought you'd like to check out some footage of a contest that happened last weekend."  I put it in the interoffice mail, and went on with my job.  The next day, our receptionist buzzed my phone, "Uh... Steve... Johnny Airtime's on the line... and he wants to talk to you."  I was blown away.

Let me tell you a little bit about Johnny Airtime.  There was a long stretch, more than fifteen years, between the stunt career of Evil Kneivel and Seth Enslow, who sparked another generation of motorcycle jumpers.  In that period between the two, Johnny Airtime was the guy who kept motorcycle jumping alive.  But he took a different tack than Evil.  Rather than just hitting a ramp and hucking himself over a bunch of cars, Johnny Airtime did super technical, and super dangerous motorcycle jumps.  In one jump he jumped over a moving train, lengthwise.  That's crazy enough.  But Johnny set it up so the train smashed his takeoff ramp seconds after he took off.  In another jump, he jumped two semi trucks lengthwise, while the trucks were doing 30 miles an hour down the road.  In another jump, he jumped off a takeoff ramp and into the back of a moving truck.  He actually smashed through the roof of the truck on purpose.  Johnny Airtime took motorcycle jumping into a whole new realm of super technical jumping, and inspired a new generation that started with Seth Enslow and other crazy freeriders, and turned into today's freestyle motocross guys. 

So, needless to say, I was blown away that Johnny Airtime wanted to talk to me on the phone, and my boss, who was an asshole, was kind of pissed off about it.  So I picked up the phone.  "You BMX guys are crazy!" Johnny exclaimed.  "I'm not crazy," I replied, "but my friends are."  We hit it off immediately, and Johnny talked about how crazy that footage was for about fifteen minutes.  Then he took it to a place I never expected. "We need one of these guys for Stuntmasters," he said.  At the time, I was spending my weekends shooting footage of Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, and the rest of the guys on the S&M team, which was the leading team of jumpers at that time.  Johnny asked me what these guys could do... and actually land.  Moeller was known for doing huge 360's, so I told Johnny about that.  I said the top guys could 360 about 20, maybe 25 feet.  "But it has to look spectacular," he replied.  "Uh... they could jump over a pit of rattlesnakes or something."  Yeah... rattlesnakes, that was my first idea.  Johnny told we that wouldn't be visual enough.  So as my boss peaked into my office, wondering what the hell I was doing, Johnny and I threw ideas back and forth.  "They could do a 360 over about three cars," I offered."  "It has to look more spectacular," he replied.  "Uh..." I stammered, "you could set the cars on fire."  Johnny Airtime said that might work.  I was stoked, because I thought I just scored a TV appearance for one of the S&M guys, either Moeller or Clymer.  We threw around a few other ideas, but kept coming back to the 360 over three flaming cars .  Then the conversation took another tack, "What about that kid Mat Hoffman?" Johnny asked.  He said he had seen some video of Mat and they'd been thinking about contacting him, but no one knew exactly what kind of stunt he could do.  "Yeah," I replied, "Mat could do it."  We talked another minute or two, then Johnny thanked me again for sending him the footage, and we hung up.  My boss asked why I'd been on the phone for 20 minutes when I was supposed to be working.  "I just came up with a stunt for Stuntmasters," I replied with a smile.  My boss looked perplexed and walked back to his office. 

I ended up meeting Johnny a couple of times, and he said that they planned to do the BMX stunt for the next season, and I could work on the crew.  Soon after that, thought, most of the staff in my office quit to go work on American Gladiators.  My workload tripled, and most of the people left in the office I didn't like.  I quit and found another job.  I never heard another word about Mat's stunt until about a year after it happened.  Somebody told me they saw it on TV, and I was stoked it actually happened.  At the same time, I was bummed I didn't get to work on the crew of that show.  But that's life in Hollywood.  I rarely saw Mat during that time, and I never mentioned my conversation with Johnny Airtime to him. 

But wait... there's more.  I titled these two blog posts, "The First Mega Ramp" because in my mind, Death Jump at Mission Trails was the first Mega Ramp.  It had a downhill run to a kicker, a long gap, and a big, downhill landing.  That jump vaulted a handful of BMX riders into the realm of stunt men. 

Years later, I read Mat Hoffman's book.  In it, Mat mentioned the Stuntmasters stunt, and said that was where he met Johnny Airtime.  Mat told Johnny he was looking for a way to do higher airs.  Mat was flirting with the fourteen or fifteen foot range on a normal ramp, but couldn't take it any higher.  Johnny, being an expert at the physics of jumps, told Mat that to to bigger airs, he needed a bigger ramp.  Mat took that idea and ran with it.  The next year he built the first mega quaterpipe, 21 feet high as I recall.  Following that he made a mega halfpipe and put a weedeater engine on his bike in an attempt to push high airs even farther.  On the quarterpipe, Mat set an official world record of a 26 1/2 foot air.  Mike "Big Island" Castillo, who worked for Mat during that time, told me he's seen Mat do airs about 29 feet out unofficially. 

The lesson for me in all of this is that when you show other people your sport to spread the news, it can have bigger consequences.  I sent Johnny Airtime some footage to show him BMX.  That led to a stunt and Johnny meeting Mat.  That friendship led to the birth of Mega Ramps, and ultimately to today's big air bike and skate contests, which is some of the craziest riding ever.  That led to the Nitro Circus "gigantaramp" where they jump the big gap on all kinds of contraptions.  And now you know the rest of the story.

The First Mega Ramp

This is footage I shot at the 2-Hip King of Dirt in spring of 1991.  The footage was edited and used in the first official S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm A Racer.  That video title was a line Dave Clymer used to pick up his girlfriend at the time. 

OK, for this second post on the new version of Freestyle BMX Tales, I'm jumping forward a bit to 1991.  To set the mood, BMX and freestyle had nearly died in 1989.  At the bike trade show in early 1989 I heard one thing over and over, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing."  After that trade show, nearly every company either dropped completely or seriously cut back their BMX and freestyle programs.  At the same time, street riding was becoming its own genre, and the AFA's flatland and quarterpipe contests were fading in popularity.  Veteran Haro pro Ron Wilkerson became the main promoter of contests, putting on halfpipe, street, and dirt contests.  At this time, the fledgling indy company S&M Bikes, headed by racer/jumper Chris Moeller, was being run out of a tiny one bedroom apartment.  There were a whole bunch of hardcore riders still, but the industry just plain gave up on us.  Those were some of the best days of BMX, when pros traded ramen recipes and slept on whatever motel floor was available at contests.  Pro purses were small but the tricks kept getting bigger.  Into this world came the word that Ron Wilkerson was going to hold a dirt contest at the legendary Mission Trails jumps near San Diego.  Mission Trails was home to Death Jump, a steep roll in to a three foot kicker that launched riders over 25 feet of flat and then to a steep down hill landing that was hardpack covered by sandy dirt.  Wiping out was like landing on sandpaper.  We were seriously worried someone might die at that contest. 

There was a crowd of 150 or so people that day, nearly all hitting the jumps one after another.  In those days there were many more people riding than taking photos or shooting video.  I went there with the S&M Bikes/P.O.W. House crew including Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, Keith Treanor, and others.  Tim "Fuzzy" Hall was there, and boosted a killer archibald over the table top jump.  Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson did a decade over the same jump, which was a pretty new variation at the time.  Mike Kranaich (I never could spell his last name) was coming close to landing double tailwhips on that same jump, the first time any of us had seen that trick tried.  Then the contest moved up to the double jump.  Vic Murphy was doing textbook caliber tabletops.  Chris Moeller is seen in the clip above trying 360's over that jump.  But the real mind blowing came when Mat Hoffman tried a backflip over the jump, the first time anyone had seen that tried on dirt.  He under-rotated and crashed.  But hell, he's Mat Hoffman, so he tried it again, and didn't make it that time either.  But Mat let the genie out of the bottle, he came close enough to show everyone that backflips on double jumps were possible, and several people learned them in the next couple of years.  Mat was a vert rider in all our minds, nobody really expected him to try something unheard of on dirt. 

Then came the part of the contest that excited and scared everyone: Death Jump.  Secretly we were all hoping it wouldn't live up to its name that day.  Now keep in mind, this was just a big group of hardcore riders out in the desert.  There were no TV cameras or crew people.  There were no paramedics.  It was as core as could be.  Just a bunch of the world's best riders trying the biggest jump anyone had ever seen up to that point.  In the clip above you see Bill Nitschke endo on death jump.  It was a gnarly crash, but amazing because Bill was best known as a flatlander.  Keith Treanor ejected off his bike and did a painful one hand, two feet slide down the landing.  One of the locals jumped it shirtless, kicking into a half tabletop.  Dave Clymer is the guy in the clip who does the eject to back slide, saved by his mailman short shorts.  Chris Moeller was definitely one of the favorites of the day, he'd earned a big reputation as one of the world's craziest jumpers.  He easily cleared the big jump a few times, then managed a big no hander.  You can hear Ron Wilkerson on the mike going,"Yeeeaaah!" after that one.  Mat was still riding, despite his hard backflip crashes, and hucked a no footer to no footed can-can to no footer over Death Jump.  Dang!  Also in the mix was all-around riding legend Dennis McCoy.  He hucked a backflip  attempt, and then a 720 attempt, crashing hard both times. 

But the crashes of the day belonged to the relatively unknown Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson.  He had several huge bails that day, but the climax was his 360 attempt into the crowd where he hits another bike which flips up and hits him in the head.  Somehow, everyone walked away from that contest... well a few were limping.  There was plenty of road rash from the hard, sandpaper-like landings.  Eddie Roman and I got video footage, and we both used it in videos later that year. 

The biggest thing about the 2-Hip King of Dirt contest at Mission Trails was that it completely changed everyone's perspective about what was possible on dirt jumps.  This was four years before the first X-Games.  BMX was "dead."  But a handful of guys changed the way we all looked at our bikes forever.  Suddenly backflips were on the table.  Twenty five foot jumps were on the table.  Double tailwhips were on the table.  In one crazy, thristy afternoon, BMX riding changed forever.  In my typical way, I was wondering about the future.  Death Jump reminded me of the freestyle skiing jumps where people did triple backflips.  Watching Death Jump that day, I predicted someone would eventually do a double backflip on a bike, as crazy as it seemed at the time.  It took several years, but it eventually did happen.  Now as I write this 24 years later, both a BMXer and a MX rider have done triple backflips.  How far will it progress?   That's up to today's young huckers.

The Return of Freestyle BMX Tales

I was in seventh grade at Willard Jr. High School in the small town of Willard, Ohio when a hillbilly kid told me about riding in a BMX race.  He said there was a water jump that had goldfish in it.  Unfortunately, he was a known liar and nobody believed him.  That was about 1978, and it was the first I heard of BMX.  A couple of years later I lived in Carlsbad, New Mexico and bought a Sentinal Exploder GX BMX bike off my friend Mike for $5.  The bike wasn't really worth $5 because it had a coaster brake and sometimes the pedals would go around twice before the back hub would catch and move the wheel.  The bike sat in our garage for a year when we moved to Boise, Idaho. 

The next year we moved out to a trailer park in the desert outside of Boise.  There was nothing much to do in the trailer park, so all us young guys would hit these little jumps on our crappy BMX bikes.  We called the trailer park Blue Valley, and that's where I got into BMX in the summer of 1982.  We all started breaking parts on our cheap bikes, and scraped up money to buy quality parts to replace what broke.  We also continually pushed each other to get better.  That fall we learned there was a BMX track in Boise, and four of us and three bikes crammed into Scott's mom's Pinto (not a hatchback) and headed to the our first local race.  I watched as the other three guys raced.  Despite their cheap bikes, all three of them got trophies.  The next weekend the whole trailer park piled into my dad's Ford van and went to the last race of the season.  We all got third or better.  There were seven official teams that day, and the Blue Valley crew, had we been a team, would have placed second.  I was hooked.  BMX changed my life, and I headed in a far different direction than I thought I would in life.  This remake of my former blog is about that journey.