Mat Hoffman with Mark Lewman: The Ride of My Life Read online

  02

  LEARNING TO FLY

  Thirty-five years before I was born, inventor and former circus worker George Nissen envisioned the first trampoline. He was inspired by flying carpets. George’s preliminary designs provided about the same amount of bounce you’d get from, say, leaping up and down on a hotel room bed. Nissen used rubber bicycle inner tubes as the next technological step, honing his design until he felt it was time to give his invention the ultimate field test: get some kids on it. The trampoline made its public debut at a YMCA camp, and the reaction among the first test pilots was so overwhelming that George was convinced he was onto something big. It would take a few years to attract a mass audience to try this new kind of fun, but George stuck to his guns and kept on bouncing. During the feel-good 1950s, the trampoline became an American phenomenon.

  Wherever you are, George: Thank you.

  I was raised on trampolines. I started jumping when I was two years old. To me, it was a big stretchy thing that made you go bouncy-bounce. By the time I was six I had backflips wired. From there I learned to do thirty backflips consecutively, with only one jump between each flip. Travis, Todd, Gina, and I would come up with different combinations and string our tricks together into runs. One of my favorite runs was a backflip and a half, landing on my back and launching into a front-flip to my feet, then following through into another flip. I had one trick I called a suicide. I would jump as high as I could and do a front-flip and arch as hard as I could, coming down staring straight at the canvas, then turn my head and land on my back right before I hit. This one never failed to frighten bystanders.

  There are two disciplines in trampolines: the backyard style and the more formal gymnasium style. At one point when I was a kid, I enrolled in a gymnastics class, ready to demonstrate my skills for the instructors. They insisted I start out on the balance beam. After a week balancing on a narrow beam, I decided gymnastics wasn’t for me and reverted to backyard style. I owe a lot to the hours we spent experimenting on trampolines. Before I discovered bike riding, the canvas catapult was my halfpipe. It increased my equilibrium and taught me how to spot. It also developed my craving for individual sports, things that combined physical and creative abilities.

  I think it was Todd’s idea to move the trampoline next to the slide. We worked our way up the steps on the ladder, until we were jumping off the top of the slide. This was a hoot, and we soon got a new tramp. We put scaffolding in between the two trampolines and learned to do flips over the scaffolding from tramp to tramp. We’d raise the bar on the scaffolding to see how high we could go as we flipped back and forth. Soon we built up the confidence to begin moving the trampolines apart, creating a gap: four feet, six feet, eight feet. Anything farther than eight feet across and over the scaffolding got pretty intense.

  We also tried doubles routines on the trampoline. There’s a technique called double bouncing, where two people jump together to harness their momentum, using the canvas like a teeter-totter. If you do it right, you can really sky doing double bounces. Attaining maximum height was a conquest we never grew tired of. We would also hose the canvas down to make double bounce marathons and scaffolding sessions more challenging.

  I was trying a double front-flip when things went crooked. I overrotated and ended up doing an extra half flip, and all my momentum was channeled into my head. I came down and whacked my face on the steel springs, punching through them and connecting with the metal support bars of the trampoline. It made a sound like a bell in a boxing ring, and the springs peeled my eyebrow back, putting a bone-deep gash just above my left eye. My dad took me to the emergency room, my head wrapped in a bloody turban. The ER doctor undid the bandages to reveal a slab of skin dangling from my ham-burgered forehead. As the doctor prepared his suture tray he said to us, “I don’t know if this is going to ever heal properly. There’s going to be extensive scarring, and …” At that moment my dad did something that made a dramatic impression on me and came in handy many times later in life. He told the doctor if he didn’t have the confidence to do the job to keep his hands off my head. We left the doctor standing there holding the needle and thread. Dad used his connections in the medical field to find the best plastic surgeon he could find, and my eye healed up fine—there’s barely a hint of scar today.

  Thanks, Dad.

  MEDICAL TIP FROM MAT

  New doctors are often assigned to the emergency room shifts to give them plenty of experience dealing with a variety of traumas. Sometimes you get a great doctor; other times you get a green one. Trust me, it sucks to be somebody’s learning curve. Any time you find yourself in a situation where you need a doctor, remember that you have a choice in the matter. Insist on a doctor who has 100 percent confidence in the outcome of the procedure, and don’t be afraid to get a second opinion.

  Like Father, Like Son

  When I was growing up, my dad was in his heyday. His go-for-broke approach to life hadn’t faded with age, but it had become more refined. He was enjoying success as a businessman, and his leisure activities reflected his freewheeling, high horsepower persona. I don’t think my dad paid attention to how much money he made, or spent. He was good at spending it, sometimes too good.

  He had a penchant for Porsches. Once he made a bet with one of his salesmen that he could leave their meeting and make it in time for my brother Todd’s football game, which started in ten minutes—and it was a twenty-minute crosstown drive to the game. He hit the road doing 110 miles per hour in his Porsche Targa, and took a shortcut. He didn’t see the ravine in the road built for the drainage of a lake. It was a twelve-foot drop and fifty feet across the ditch. With a slight pitch on the takeoff, it was a scene right out of a Burt Reynolds movie. Dad’s foot never left the gas pedal. He later said he was so high in the air he could see a little old lady in a white Chevrolet as he flew over her. He landed hard and blew out the motor mounts in the car, wasted the engine, lost the bet, and missed Todd’s game.

  Dad loved to race his cars. He was in Dallas with my mom when some knucklehead in a hot rod goaded him into a street sprint. Despite the fact that my mom was his passenger, Dad accepted the challenge and the two cars tore through town. Dad drove like a nut until he was confident he’d tramped his opponent, then realized they were rapidly approaching a stoplight. He locked up the car sideways, screeching the tires and leaving melted Goodyear imprints smoldering in the intersection. Dad was stoked he beat the guy, but my mom was steamed. Her philosophy was to give you as much freedom as you wanted, but if you screwed up she held you responsible for your actions. She was definitely the voice of reason in our family. She helped balance out my dad’s stubborn side.

  My dad went through a phase where he kept two Maseratis—one to drive and the other as a backup vehicle. He was in the habit of rocketing down lonesome highways at 150 miles per hour with one finger on the wheel while en route to his next sales call, or just to clear his head. Even with the two Maseratis, one was constantly wrecked and in the shop. He’d swap them back and forth between crashes, and eventually his hazardous driving in these cars is what made him find religion.

  My dad didn’t need a motorized vehicle to test himself. Once, when he was away on business in Texas, he went out for some cocktails and found a guy with a bull. Dad expressed his desire to be a matador and seized the opportunity by the horns. Before the night was through, he was in the bullring waving a red cape. The fifteen-hundred-pound steer charged, and my dad quickly came to his senses. He ran for cover. Unfortunately, he made his move clutching the cape right in front of his chest. The bull zeroed in and rammed him dead center in the torso and almost blew out Pop’s lungs. During another midnight rodeo escapade, Dad made a bet he could rope a calf while riding a bucking bronco. He got flipped off the horse a few times but climbed back on and rode him out, eventually winning the bet. Later he found out he’d split his sternum.

  Mi familia (left to right, top to bottom): my sister, Gina, Dad, Mom, my oldest brother, Todd, me, and my big brot
her, Travis.

  Even during activities as innocent as going out to eat, my dad usually managed to take control of a situation. One day we were in a hurry and stopped at a Waffle House for a quick breakfast. As fate would have it, the food was taking forever. Finally my dad said, “We gotta get this food going” We all watched, shocked and sort of psyched as Dad marched into the kitchen and shooed the cooks away from the griddle. He wasn’t aggressive about it, but he definitely exhibited, how shall we say, extreme confidence. The bewildered chefs didn’t know what to do, so they got out of the way and let my dad make the waffles.

  I was involved on a recon patrol with my squad, searching for the enemy deep in the bush. Canteens were the only source of water.

  Bring the Pain

  If I inherited my dad’s “no compromise” genes, the characteristic my brothers helped bring out in me is a tolerance for pain. I wasn’t a Kevlar-coated superchild. I bruised, bled, and cried like a typical seven-year-old. But I did begin to toughen up under the influence of Travis and Todd.

  Todd has always had a natural ability to do everything and make it look easy, and he could talk anybody into anything—even climbing into a clothes dryer. We were playing hide-and-seek, and I was looking for a good spot. Todd suggested I hide in the dryer. “Perfect!” I thought. I’d never be found in there. I climbed in and the next thing I knew I was tumbling on high. I clonked and bonked around inside until I figured out how to kick the door open. When the hatch popped and the dryer shut down, I could hear Todd in the laundry room, cracking up at his own cleverness and my gullibility. I put my feet and head out, and my brother offered to help me. He pulled on my feet and my hands and at the same time wedged my back and ass in the dryer. I was stuck. This got him laughing again, until finally he took pity on me. Todd gave a good yank on my arms and jerked me free. The top of the doorway scraped the length of my back and took off some skin. My back hurt like second-degree sunburn for the rest of the day.

  Travis, he liked to kick ass. That was his thing. He had a reputation as a macho, hair-trigger, borderline lunatic. He became a local legend when a schoolyard bully began picking on some of our friends. My brother cornered the guy and fought him, only Travis won using his mind, not his fists. He kept his hands in his pockets and let the bully take as many shots as he wanted. The kid kept beating on Travis, who would comment on his weak punches with a cocky, “Is that all you got?” Eventually the bully got so freaked out by this psychotic behavior that he was scared away, and he stopped picking on people.

  Travis studied Ninjitsu and he would demand that I spar with him. If I balked, he’d make me an offer I couldn’t refuse: fight or bleed. As the little apprentice, I had to take what Travis dished out during his “training” sessions. Occasionally I would emerge victorious. Once we were fighting in the living room and I got him down. He couldn’t escape my patented vice grip sleeper hold headlock; he was turning purple, trying to muster up a burst of Incredible Hulk-style rage strength. I was in total control, but I knew if I let him go I was toast. We got stuck in that position, and I began screaming, so the whole family could come in and see that I’d won the fight. I also called them for backup: I knew I’d need protection until he calmed down.

  Boot Camp for Bikers

  With twenty acres of territory to roam outside the realm of adult supervision, my brothers and I found many ways to entertain ourselves. Sometimes our fun was dangerous, but more danger meant a faster learning curve on new activities.

  We were war freaks. We played a hybrid form of hide-and-seek combat. In addition to the previously mentioned farm animal purchases, our allowances were also funneled into a never-ending need for army surplus. Todd, Travis, and I took pride in our status as surplus store locals. We sported fatigues, army shovels, combat caps, and helmets. We drank exclusively from canteens, which we wore on our olive drab utility belts. Out in the field, the only food we’d consume was survival rations: dehydrated beans, tinned fruit, dried meat products, and potted meat. Yes, I used to eat Spam recreationally. Basically if it had a ten-year shelf life, we were down to chow it. We started out staging our wars with plastic M16 replicas, but there were too many arguments about who shot whom and discrepancies over flesh wounds versus kill shots. The Travis and Todd war tribunal voted to allow BB guns into the game.

  Since I was the youngest, my brothers told me that I was too little to use the “real” weaponry. I turned into a human target. To avoid getting nailed in the forehead, groin, or shoulder blades with a well-aimed brotherly bullet, I had to adapt. Fast. I learned to scramble through the underbrush. Hiding. Running. Climbing. Burrowing. My brothers originally promised to only pump their pneumatic air rifles once, giving them a limited range. Before long, the single-pump rule was abandoned. After all, there are no rules in battle. Travis and Todd would pump their guns as many times as they could until they had a good shot at me. With copper BB’s zipping past at six hundred feet per second, I honed my evasion techniques. Still, I sort of sucked at it and was wounded in action countless times. These battles motivated me to start building fuselages out of wood and get everyone to play out air battles instead, which was safer for me.

  Learning to Fly

  Building airplanes also helped fuel my dreams of flying. We used plywood, two by fours, barrels, and other barnyard debris to create our planes. My cousins, brothers, and I would sit in these splintery contraptions for hours, pretending we were airborne. Eventually this wore thin. Travis and I tried building a side-by-side hang glider out of two by fours and bedsheets and called out the whole family to watch our maiden voyage. We launched off our slide and hit the ground in a hurry. I was unscathed, but Travis broke his finger.

  I became increasingly obsessed with flight and could usually be found in the yard or barn area conducting gravitational experiments. After seeing Zorro on TV, I had to try jumping off the barn onto the back of a horse. The horse moved as I jumped, and I landed on the ground heels first. I had bruised feet for weeks. Another TV influence was the Sally Fields sitcom The Flying Nun. Deeply affected after viewing an episode, I leaped off the roof of our house holding an umbrella—which didn’t work either.

  Eventually my brothers and I discovered a new attraction that involved flying: jumping bikes off the roof of the house into the pool. Todd came up with the idea, and soon Travis was copying him. Then I got in on it. At first I jumped without my bike, but the gap was at least eight or ten feet and there were some close calls. I didn’t have the bike skills to pull any tricks, but I knew how to pedal full speed, hold on, and scream. And that’s all it took. Roof to pool became our version of Fight Club. [The first rule is: Don’t. Talk. About. Fight Club.) During the summer this clandestine pastime became a daily ritual. As soon as our parents were gone for the day, we were on the roof. It charged me up so much. My parents uncovered our extracurricular aquatic activities and shut us down, but not before I’d felt a few brief moments of how much fun one could have with a bicycle and some air.

  This was my first halfpipe. The ramp was nine feet tall with twenty-two feet of flat bottom (primitive dimensions of the early days). Travis’ bedroom was under the far deck. As soon as it stopped snowing I was out there scraping the snow off the ramp; I couldn’t go a day without riding.

  03

  DESTINY KNOCKS

  Mr. T has a saying: Those who fail to plan are planning to fail. In theory, I like that motto. But when applied to life, I have discovered an opposite, equally powerful cosmic truth: You can’t plan shit.

  Sometimes the path appears as you walk blindly down it, with no idea of what fate has in store for you.

  There were always motorcycles around when we were growing up. My brother Todd was the family’s resident gifted athlete, the do-everything, fix-anything superman. By the time I was seven or eight, Todd was a full-blown motorcycle hellion. He’d roop through the horse pastures or down our long dirt driveway, roosting ruts in the sod and cranking wheelies forever. The trickle-down theory was in effect: Watching
Todd make it look like cake inspired Travis and me to take up the throttle.

  My first motorcycle was a Kawasaki KDX 80.1 paid for half of the bike by mowing lawns and doing extra chores around our property, and my dad sponsored me for the other half. At first I had no strategy, no style, and no clue. My riding was purely a matter of twisting the throttle and white-knuckling the grips. I’d keep it pegged wide open through the trails, building speed until I hit a solid object or lost control, going down in a cloud of rubble. Then I’d get up, kick-start, and do it again. By riding over my head I mastered the art of crashing, which is kind of the same principle as learning how to take a punch in boxing or how to fall in martial arts. It was so hard for me to learn to relax and flow through my environment like the wind; being stiff is usually at the root of any crash. I’d get especially nervous when another rider was right on my tail, trying to pass me. But Travis and I picked up a few tips from Todd, and our skills began to improve, ignited by brother-to-brother competitiveness. By the time I was ten, I knew I wanted more motocross power. I mowed more grass and upgraded to a Yamaha YZ 80, then traded that in for Honda CB 80, which was fast as hell.

  The turning point in my micro-motocross days began as I spent more time with my cousin, Tom Rhude. Tom was ten years older than I was, and he was a dirt bike disciple. After a few sessions together, he gradually slipped into the Yoda role, and I was his pupil. Tom’s tutelage was exactly what I needed to take my riding to the next level. Every weekend he’d take me out with his buddies, and we’d ride some of the best spots in Oklahoma. The Draper Lake trails were about two hundred miles of track, trail, sagebrush, and sandpits where we’d go riding. We’d gas our bikes up, grab an extra tank, and then take off full speed down a dirt path into the wilds. We’d ride until we ran dry, then top off our tanks and head back. These trips opened up a new world, full of independence and adventure, the fuel that all kids crave.