Summer X!

This Summer has been jam packed with BMX for me! I feel like I’ve been all over the map in the past few months! From Cali to PA to Brazil I’ve had a little taste of everything! We’ll start off with X-Games at the end of June! My wife Natalie and I made a road trip out of it and packed up my Mom & Dad’s Honda Odyssey and set out for Cali. We stopped in Amarillo and Flagstaff on the drive out.

We also drove past a sweet mole marker road sign in Texas!

I had to stop!!

Once we got to LA I got to start having fun on the ramps that ESPN provided for us to play on for the week!

The park comp was fun, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the course this year, plus I managed to leave my S-One half helmet at the course the night before the comp and had to ride the entire Park event in my full face that I use for Mega! No good, I couldn’t breathe the entire time I was riding and had cotton mouth the whole time… I still tried to fire out an Ally-oop gap that I’d been eyeing up the whole week during practice! I didn’t end up pulling it, but I got really close and I think if I had a little more time on it I could have pulled it clean!

Mega was so much fun this year!!!

I ended up getting to ride the ramp so much more than in past years and as a result, I had way more fun than normal!! I learned how to do probably the best feeling trick ever on a bike and haven’t stopped doing it every chance I get since! The One handed Tabe!

I ended up just barely missing the landing on yet another triple whip air this year… It put me in 5th over all, but I still had a blast!

I may have left LA with a little less skin than I arrived with, but at least all of us walked away on our own feet this year!

New Edit filmed entirely with an iPhone! Good times down in Austin!

My buddy Zahck Isreal and I took a quick weekend trip down to Austin and came back with this! Enjoy! iPhone Austin Edit

2012! What’s been going on this year! Lots O Photos in this one! =P

Pretty much the whole months of January and February have been work months for me. I’ve been helping one of my friends install and fabricate huge Iron doors for people that can afford to spend a lot of money on their front doors!

We even put in the front door on Mat Hoffman’s new house too!

That job was really fun because Mat has a vert ramp in his back yard, so we were able to take breaks from the door to get a little vert session in!

That last one is Mat blasting.

Turns out working with metal can be hazardous to your epidermis! Haha

I think that splinter was in there about half an inch!

And wood too…

We (we being the Tyler BMX crew) also re built our private warehouse over the past few weeks. It still has a little ways to go, but we finally got it to a point where we could leave it for a bit and have good sessions until we feel the need to do more!

Before

After

Also, I plan on adding a lot more art to the ramps. I repainted the fan box on the back wall to a 4 ft by 4 ft FiveTen logo!!!

I tried to mask it all off and make it perfect, but about a third of the way into it, I took a step back and it looked really bad, my proportions that is, so I just grabbed a sticker and free handed it with a brush! Needless to say, I’m pretty proud of myself for getting it that close freehanded! There is a local Dallas street artist that came in to ride and did a piece on the curved wall ride that looks really cool too. He is planning on coming back to help fill the place with awesome art! I’m looking forward to it!

Speaking of art, I added some new paint to my helmet too!

We had our first session on the new ramps the other day, and Twenty-eight BMXers, three girls, and one dog showed up for the fun! =) It was an awesome session. Jacob Hope was one of the guys that came and filmed a bit for an edit that he’s been working on. There are only a few clips, but it’s pretty cool.

Here’s the completed web edit Jacob did.

;

Here are a few iPhone photos of me riding the new setup! I really need to get my hands on a nice set of flashes to use with my buddies camera! =P

Carving the new Ghetto rigged vertwall

Three-Tabe over the Volcano

These two are pretty blurry, but we have a 360 turndown and a 360 tabletop on the box

This is a 450-whip to oppo Smith on the sub

This is the slow part of the year for me concerning BMX, but I try to do as many shows as possible during my down time! A few weeks ago I had the honor of doing a halftime show for an Oklahoma State University basketball game with Mat Olson, Peat Brandt, John Shaw, and Mat Hoffman. It was a lot of fun, kind of crazy though! We had a total of eight minutes to put on the entire show, that included setup and tear down! One minute to set the ramp up on the court, six minutes to do stunts, and one minute to get the ramp back off the court!

Hahaha this photo is outstanding! It’s a still from Mat Olson’s GoPro when he jumped over Mat H. in the shawi! Notice that Mat’s arms are spread out wider than the landing of the ramp!

Psycho took this photo! Just wanted to mention that! =P

Me and Psycho

That’s my Hero! Love this guy!

And that about sums up the past few months!

Till next time… =)

Mini Mega in Zurich, Switzerland!!!

This is the first year that the Freestyle Zurich event has had a MegaRamp at their event, but it was a Skate, FMX, Snowboard, and Free Ski only contest so the MegaRamp guys flew Vince Byron and myself to Zurich to put on a demo to see if we could get the crowds approval of BMX and in order to possibly have a BMX contest next year… Maybe even a full size MegaRamp event! Needless to say, I’m pretty sure we locked BMX in for next year!!!

They had a crossover event where the crowd got to pick their favorite event and athletes! The two lonely BMXers took the win over FMX, Free Ski, Skateboarding, and Snowboarding!! That was a huge deal!!! And we were just there to do a little demo!

There were between 15-20,000 people in the crowd going nuts!

It was rad! Congrats to Vince for winning the over all athlete award!

Really, the only crappy thing about the weekend was that some turd of a person stole my iPhone 4 while I was riding in the event… That meant that I lost every photo I’d taken to put in this Blog update… But it’s ok, I was able to buy a new one when I got home so I’m back on track now! Rockin’ a sweet white phone now!

A big thanks to FiveTen Shoes to hooking up the purple kicks! They are awesome! Also a huge thanks to Dave Metty for shooting ALL of the photos you see here! =) Thanks buddy!

Over all it was an awesome weekend! I can’t wait till next year!

Brazil… (WARNING! GRAPHIC PHOTOS)

Brazil… The second stop of the 2011 MegaRamp tour… Got down there a few days early so there was plenty of practice time on the ramp. It was pretty much just me and Anthony riding for the first two days. The other dudes, Vince, Colton, James, & Steve, didn’t show up until thursday night or afternoon or something. Not sure why, but they didn’t want to go earlier in the week like me and Tone. At any rate, Anthony and I had a great time having the ramp all to our selves!

SUPERMAN-SEATGRAAAAAAAAAAAB!

 Paulo, Anthony, & me

That little speck in the trees is me!! Super Seat on the 60.

This is a really cool link to some highlights from the contest and the week!

They ended up thinking it was going to rain on Saturday and Sunday so they had us run the BMX contest on Friday so they could at least have TV footage to show on ESPN Brazil over the weekend. It didn’t end up raining over the week end but it didn’t really matter for me. On our first runs  of 4, I dropped in on the 60 foot gap, because there was no 70…, and did a Superman Cannonball. I was psyched that I’d pulled it clean and got a good pump into the quarter. I hit it with a bit more heat than I had been in practice and did a double whip to get a good score on the board before I started to go for it. I didn’t want a repeat of X-Games last year… (4 triple whip attempts & 4 crashes) Unfortunately I pushed in a little too much and had drifted out over the deck and no matter what I wasn’t going to pull the trick.

That is the air I crashed on, so at this point I was actually going over the two options I had. I knew I was going to crash, so I was a matter of how I would crash now. Because I was over the deck I could ether throw the bike and try to get my body into the ramp, or brace and let the bike take the brunt of it by casing… The problem with the first option was that I didn’t think I’d make it into the ramp, and that could have resulted in a broken back if I’d sat on the coping. Needless to say I went with number 2. It was the better choice but the way I landed was kind of a freak accident. Believe it or not it was a controlled crash, and after watching the video, I don’t even think it was very bad!

The best I can figure, my wrist broke when I cased, and the rib and spleen when I hit the bottom of the ramp. I re-broke the same rib that I popped in China on the Street course. When it broke it pushed into my spleen and popped it like a mellon! I thought that I’d just knocked the wind out of myself though and gave a thumbs up to show that I was alright. It wasn’t until I was getting ready to go back up for another run that I started to feel the stomach ache. About 15 minutes later when I was back in the medical room I passed out from blood loss.

Weeeeeeeeeee!

Splat!

The neck brace in that photo wasn’t necessary.

I was in surgery within 3 hours of the crash and thankfully the doctors were able to fix my spleen and I was able to keep it! They told me after the surgery that I’d actually lost 2 liters of blood internally! That’s about 1/4 of the blood that’s in my entire body! I call that a close one! =P

This is a screen grab from my surgery video! A.K.A. my guts floating in blood!

This is my spleen. You can see the gash running down the center spewing fresh blood!

These are the tools used to fix me.

They only had to make 4 small incisions to do the surgery that literally saved my life! Big big thanks to God for guiding the hands of the doctors that worked on me Big thanks to the doctors too! Thanks guys! =)

I think I lost a little weight over my 4 day stay in the hospital!

When all was said and done I had to spend an extra week in Brazil after I was released from the hospital. Darryl, Ray, Jeff, and the rest of the MegaRamp guys were awesome and took care of everything for me! MegaRamp also had ALL of my bills covered too! That’s called doing it right! I hope all of the other big events take note of how the MegaRamp crew is doing it! They even made sure that I was taken care of for the extra time I had to spend down there. Priscilla Coraccini stayed with me and came to the hotel every day to pick me up to take me out and about for lunch. I probably spent about 16 hours a day sleeping 4 hours just sitting in bed and the other 4 out around town with Priscilla. Each day I was there I felt better and better.

I saw some cool graffiti too.

I crashed on July 1st and flew home on the 11th. Over all it wasn’t the most fun trip, but I still managed to have a good time and make some new friends!

Home Sweet Home!!

Thanks again, God, Darryl, Ray, Jeff, Kevin Robinson, Anthony Nap, Priscilla, all the Doctors, and all my Brazilian friends! You guys were all awesome!

Holy cow it’s been a while!

It seems like a year has gone by since my last post!

After I got back from China I did some show and had the weirdest thing happen… 

 

 

Mid 360 turndown in a show my rib broke or popped or something… It made a sound that was quite loud and knocked the wind out of me! I pulled the trick but had to stop because I couldn’t breath! I also had what looked like a pinky finger pushing under my skin on that same rib! fun…

Fast forward a month or so.

Chris, Natalie, Josh, and I all passed out certification to be Krav Maga instuctors! Probably the hardest physical challenge I’ve ever done!

Pretty much strait from there I flew out to Woodward West for the first stop of the new MegaRamp tour!

Came out on top! It was an awesome time and luckily everyone came out safe! There was a lot of new blood on the ramp!

Me, Vince, and James. 1,2,3!

Got to go chill at Nasty’s place with all the dudes! Good times!

From there I had a short stay at Woodward East where I picked up a new trick!

Good times all around! Next stop, Brazil…

 

To be continued…

China & the Asian X-Games

Just got back from Shanghai China where I was able to get down on the Mini Mega Ramp & Street comp. Good times, bad food, and crazy people! It’s always a fun trip!

Here are some photos from my stay in the Orient!

During Street practice Miah said that he’d give me a Dollar if I did a one handed whip over the flower bed… How could I pass up a dollar!!!! =P At any rate, I biffed it! Somehow I managed to do a sideways belly flop on my back peg… I pretty much impaled myself in the ribs on my back peg! Sucked!

Notice all the “peg” shaped skin on the inside of my shirt! Not sure exactly what I did to my ribs with this one but they sure did feel extremely bruised if not cracked or broken! Made it hard to breath all week!

He never did give me that dollar… but I guess thats fair, I didn’t pull the trick. =) Congrats on 1st place Miah!

I ended up in 7th place after all was said & done on the street course. I was happy with that, because I felt way out of my element!

I also manager to do this to my back wheel! turned my 30 spoke into a 19…

This is how I fixed it!!!

Saves weight! HA! It actually worked pretty well too! Got me back & forth from the hotel!

Mike “Big Island” Castillo was nice enough to let me borrow his back wheel for the comp!

Got out the GoPro for some cool shots on the Mini Mega.

Mini Mega was fun too, I ended up in 5th. Zack Worden killed it! Good job Zack! Bikeflip Backflip’s are wild!

On a side note, I’m not a huge fan of the food choices over there! =P However, the peach pizza was not to bad!

I’d stay away from the stinky tofu and the duck heads though!

And the iFony 4’s & iPeds! Complete crap!!

The “Bovi’s” were sweet too! =P

Ok that’s all I’ve got! =)

Youth Group

Had an awesome night with the boys at out Churches youth group tonight! Wall Ball was ferocious!!! So many welts were made, I might have even lost a nipple!!! HAHA! Good times. =) Had an awesome devotional too, we all shared our testimonies and got to know each other a lot better.

Hahaha “Creed Sheds!” This is so good!

A Blast From The Past! Nachooooooooooooo!

One of my old buddies “Nacho” stopped be the warehouse last night to get a sesh in and brought his brothers old bike from probably the year 2000! This thing was crazy heavy! I couldn’t believe that we all used to ride a setup like that! I bet it clocks in somewhere around the 45lb mark!!! Just take a look at that thing! It was awesome to hang out with my boy though! Needless to say, we took turns riding my bike all night! HA!