Showing posts with label Carlsbad New Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carlsbad New Mexico. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2016
Generation Evel
For most of us kids in the 1970's, it started like the kids in the clip above. I never jumped anywhere near that far on my banana seat bike. But I did jump it on a regular basis. Inspired by daredevil Evel Knievel, we jumped tree root sidewalk lips on our mild steel banana seat bikes as little kids. Then we moved up to scrounging bricks, concrete blocks, and random pieces of wood lying around our garages, and building rickety wooden jumps. For most of us kids across the country, we went through the 70's not knowing that a handful of crazy Californians had started modifying their Schwinn Stingrays and started racing bicycles motocross style. Bicycle Motocross was below our radar until the late 70's.
For me, seeing the Schwinn Phantom Scrambler in red and black in the window of a bike shop in Plymouth, Ohio in 1979 started the idea. I never did get that bike. In fact I moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico the next year, 9th grade for me. I had a cheap ten speed then. I used to ride it to an area called The Flume, where there were a bunch of off road Jeep and motocross trails. I wished I had that Schwinn Scrambler then. I still didn't know BMX actually existed. One kid in 8th grade told us about it, but he was a hillbilly kid who lied all the time, so none of us believed him.
As luck would have it, I bought my first BMX bike, a Sentinal Exploder GX, for $5 off my friend Mike, a few days before we moved away from New Mexico. It was red, mild steel, of course, and had curved, blade forks, and six spoke aluminum mags that I later realized were heavier than Motomags. It was a piece of shit. Even worse, it had a coaster brake that was all messed up. Sometimes the pedals would go all the way around twice before it would catch and turn the back wheel.
We moved to Boise, Idaho, and my Exploder sat in the garage for a year. Then my parents decided to buy a double wide mobile home and move to a trailer park outside of town. The idea was for them to save money for a year so they could buy a house. Little did I know that my Sentinal Exploder GX would change the course of my life while in that trailer park.
Yes, folks, Freestyle BMX Tales is back... for a limited run, until February 1st, 2017. More on the reason in the next post.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
My Start in BMX
I'm going to go back to the beginning of my BMX life, and write a few posts about the early days. I covered all this in the original incarnation of Freestyle BMX Tales, but I took all those posts down when I got real depressed shortly after my dad died in 2012.
For me it started in the small town of Willard, Ohio, which is in the farm country of northwest Ohio. One of the hillbilly kids in junior high told me that he competed in a BMX race where they had a water jump filled with goldfish that they had to jump over. That was in about 1978. Unfortunately, the kid had a reputation as a liar, and nobody believed a word he said. So we all thought BMX was dumb because of him.
A couple years later, my dad's company was having trouble, and he went looking for another job. He found one in Carlsbad, New Mexico. We moved there that summer, and it was a total culture shock for me. The city was about 70% Latino, and as a smart, pudgy white kid, I was a minority of a minority. I took two years of Spanish in Ohio, but I still didn't understand the names they were calling me in New Mexico. It was a tough year for me in many ways. But the best part of that year was time I spent out wandering the desert with my dad and his friends. I experienced four wheel drive off roading for the first time. It was amazing. There was an area called The Flume near our house that had tons of Jeep and motorcycle trails going every which way. Once in a while I'd ride my ten speed over there and ride the trails. After a while, I decided I needed a BMX bike to do it right. I bought one from my friend Mike for $5.00. It was a Sentinal Exploder GX. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else. It was a "K-Mart special" bike. A double diamond hardtail frame, a single gooseneck, six spoke aluminum mag wheels that weighed more than Mongoose Motomags, and knobby tires. Oh, and it had a coaster brake that didn't work right. Sometimes the pedals would go around twice before it would catch and spin the back wheel. It was a piece of shit. But it was my piece of shit.
As luck would have it, we moved to Boise, Idaho the week after I bought it, so I never road it out to The Flume trails. We moved into a nice, suburban subdivision in Boise, and my BMX bike sat in the garage for a year. Then we moved outside of town to a trailer park. My parents wanted to to save money for a year and then buy a house. Suddenly, I lived miles from town, surrounded by "desert." It's technically not desert, I think it's actually called steppe, which is miles and miles of waste high sagebrush as far as the eye can see. There were some little jumps in the desert at the edge of the trailer park. Every night, the boys of the trailer park would gather when the temperature cooled down, and we'd play wiffle ball or football or basket ball. Or we'd hit the jumps on our crappy BMX bikes. That was June of 1982.
As the summer progressed, we rode our bikes more and more. When we broke parts, we'd save up our money and buy better parts. Every night we'd hit the jumps, trying to out-do the other guys. BMX became our thing. The summer days turned into a routine. We'd watch TV during the hot afternoons, then we'd meet up and ride our little jumps in the evenings. Then we'd occasionally sneak out of our houses at night and try to wake up other people and wander around, or maybe make out with one of the girls of the trailer park. There wasn't much else to do.
Our riding improved little by little. When somebody had a couple dollars, they'd buy a copy of BMX Plus!, the only BMX magazine on the newsstands in Boise. We would all take turns looking through the magazines, and then try to do the jumps we saw pictures of. I saved up my babysitting money, and finally bought a set of Z-rims. They were never quite true, but they were so much better than those awful mags.
In the fall of 1982, someone heard that there was a BMX track in Boise. In the next post, I'll talk about my first couple of races.
For me it started in the small town of Willard, Ohio, which is in the farm country of northwest Ohio. One of the hillbilly kids in junior high told me that he competed in a BMX race where they had a water jump filled with goldfish that they had to jump over. That was in about 1978. Unfortunately, the kid had a reputation as a liar, and nobody believed a word he said. So we all thought BMX was dumb because of him.
A couple years later, my dad's company was having trouble, and he went looking for another job. He found one in Carlsbad, New Mexico. We moved there that summer, and it was a total culture shock for me. The city was about 70% Latino, and as a smart, pudgy white kid, I was a minority of a minority. I took two years of Spanish in Ohio, but I still didn't understand the names they were calling me in New Mexico. It was a tough year for me in many ways. But the best part of that year was time I spent out wandering the desert with my dad and his friends. I experienced four wheel drive off roading for the first time. It was amazing. There was an area called The Flume near our house that had tons of Jeep and motorcycle trails going every which way. Once in a while I'd ride my ten speed over there and ride the trails. After a while, I decided I needed a BMX bike to do it right. I bought one from my friend Mike for $5.00. It was a Sentinal Exploder GX. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else. It was a "K-Mart special" bike. A double diamond hardtail frame, a single gooseneck, six spoke aluminum mag wheels that weighed more than Mongoose Motomags, and knobby tires. Oh, and it had a coaster brake that didn't work right. Sometimes the pedals would go around twice before it would catch and spin the back wheel. It was a piece of shit. But it was my piece of shit.
As luck would have it, we moved to Boise, Idaho the week after I bought it, so I never road it out to The Flume trails. We moved into a nice, suburban subdivision in Boise, and my BMX bike sat in the garage for a year. Then we moved outside of town to a trailer park. My parents wanted to to save money for a year and then buy a house. Suddenly, I lived miles from town, surrounded by "desert." It's technically not desert, I think it's actually called steppe, which is miles and miles of waste high sagebrush as far as the eye can see. There were some little jumps in the desert at the edge of the trailer park. Every night, the boys of the trailer park would gather when the temperature cooled down, and we'd play wiffle ball or football or basket ball. Or we'd hit the jumps on our crappy BMX bikes. That was June of 1982.
As the summer progressed, we rode our bikes more and more. When we broke parts, we'd save up our money and buy better parts. Every night we'd hit the jumps, trying to out-do the other guys. BMX became our thing. The summer days turned into a routine. We'd watch TV during the hot afternoons, then we'd meet up and ride our little jumps in the evenings. Then we'd occasionally sneak out of our houses at night and try to wake up other people and wander around, or maybe make out with one of the girls of the trailer park. There wasn't much else to do.
Our riding improved little by little. When somebody had a couple dollars, they'd buy a copy of BMX Plus!, the only BMX magazine on the newsstands in Boise. We would all take turns looking through the magazines, and then try to do the jumps we saw pictures of. I saved up my babysitting money, and finally bought a set of Z-rims. They were never quite true, but they were so much better than those awful mags.
In the fall of 1982, someone heard that there was a BMX track in Boise. In the next post, I'll talk about my first couple of races.
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