I heard about this comp from a post by Mat Hoffman on Facebook. I was really stoked to hear that there was an X-Game qualifier in the city of Boise, where my life in BMX started. In a trailer park outside Boise, known as Blue Valley by us residents, a bunch of us white trash kids started riding our bikes every evening and trying to out-do each other. After a few months, someone heard there was a BMX track near downtown Boise. We packed four guys and three bikes into Scott's mom's Ford Pinto, and went to our first race.
The Fort Boise BMX track was built in an abandoned sewer pond at the edge of the foothills. I can't tell you how stoked we were to see a place actually built for BMX riding. In October of 1982, that seemed amazing. Looking back, it wasn't much, but it was something. Scott, Jason, and Brian raced as I watched and coached. All three guys went home with trophies. The next weekend, we packed all the BMXers into my dad's van, and headed to the track. It was the last race of the season, and we all raced and had a blast. I was hooked on BMX. Here's what our track looked like back in 1983.
I know that the sketchy old BMX tracks of the 1970's and 1980's spawned better tracks and later skateparks all over the country. When I got serious about BMX freestyle in late 1983 and 1984, I was the third freestyler in Boise, and the whole state of Idaho, following Justin Bickel and Wayne Moore. Wayne retired at the ripe old age of 17, and Justin and I reformed their trick trick team into the Critical Condition Stunt Team. We did shows everywhere we could in the Boise area, and also rode in parades, stoked to share our weird little sport with the people of that area.
It was only a couple years ago that I learned that Boise sits just above 43 degrees latitude, which stoked me out. Not many freestylers out there started riding at 43 degrees above the equator. As one of the pioneers of freestyle in the Boise area, I'm stoked to see that they've actually built a great skatepark there, and that it was picked to host an X-Games qualifier. It's cool to see some amazing new school riding going down in the little city in the middle of nowhere that gave me my start.
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