Mat Hoffman with Mark Lewman: The Ride of My Life Page 3
Travis and I after winning trophies racing. He raced BMX on his Skyway TA, I raced MX on my YZ 80. We both got second that day.
The Edmond Bike Shop team (left to right): Chad Dutton, Jeff Worth, Steve Worth, Josh Weller, Travis, Me, and Eric Gefeller.
It was Tom who introduced me to the organized motocross-racing scene. He taught me MX assault tactics like how to start in second gear and get the holeshot, leading the pack into the critical first turn. I also learned how to wail through the berms and position myself to swoop and pass high or low out of corners, and I converted Tom’s advice into a few trophies. Near Oklahoma City we had the Interstate Motocross track, and the 59th and Douglas motocross track. We occasionally made the long drive to Ponca City, Oklahoma, to try our luck at the track there. The different tracks each offered a distinctive layout over winding, serpentine sections that threaded through several acres, full of jumps and mud bogs.
My riding skills were improving, but part of the equation in racing is getting the most out of your equipment. I learned about bike maintenance the hard way at the 59th and Douglas track. I got the holeshot and led the pack for two laps before my bike bogged down and sputtered to a standstill. I couldn’t figure out how to revive it and later found out the gas tank was fouled with water. I got last that day. Tom hipped me to the concept of maintenance for maximum mechanical performance. He taught me everything from fast flat tire changes, to how to swap out the rods and pistons and bore out the engine to increase horsepower. My bike got more dialed, and my riding got faster.
Tom also taught me how to merge technical knowledge with the practical. One afternoon it came in handy. I’d ridden my cycle down the road to a gas station near our neighborhood trailer park. As I bent over the bike to fill the tires with air, shadows fell across me. Then came the “hey, nice motorcycle” jeers, followed by several requests to hop on and take my bike for a ride. I knew where it was heading; these were the kind of comments that can only lead to a bike jacking. I flipped the cap to the spark plug off to discreetly disable the engine and turned around. I told the wolf pack of local toughs the motor wouldn’t run, offering to let them try kick-starting it. After some unsuccessful attempts, I got on and said there might be a way to get it to turn over. I put the cap back on the plug, kick-started, and gunned it, roaring away to freedom.
The owner of the Edmond Bike Shop, Ron Dutton. He was the Godfather who sparked our imaginations by stocking his shop with treasure.
My parents were always incredibly supportive of anything their children wanted to do, but I could tell they weren’t that into my motorcycle phase. Dirt bikes are obnoxiously loud, make you smell of oily two-stroke smoke, and it’s a lifestyle synonymous with mud. When they did come to watch me race, Mom and Dad usually scoped from the safety of the car. I think they were also starting to worry about my odds forgetting injured. I was consumed. I raced Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon, plus during the week, I rode after school. I began developing an appreciation for jumping and was always trying to go higher, land farther. If I took a weekend off from my bike, my throttle wrist would get so sore and feel broken my first race back. My body was a revolving landscape of scraped shins, bruised elbows, and pepperoni-scabbed knees.
It was a knee injury that raised my parents’ eyebrows toward my fixation with speed and jumping. I was out by myself, ripping around the fields in our backyard without a lot of safety gear on. As I powered through a turn, my front tire spit a splintered tree branch into my exposed kneecap and tore open a deep gash. I plastered on the biggest Band-Aid I could find, concealed the limp, and didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I hoped I could hide the injury and still go on a family trip to Whitewater, a nearby water park. That much blood and swelling is tough to keep secret, and Whitewater made the cut even worse. When my mom found out, there was a scolding, followed by stitches. Just after I got the knee sewn up I went out riding again and slipped off my foot pegs over a jump. I put another puncture wound in my knee, prompting another trip to the doctor. This time I got additional stitches and a knee immobilizer. This injury was the beginning of the end of my motocross days. My attention was being stretched in several other directions.
Crazy Legs
Let’s face it; eleven-year-old kids are flaky. I was at a point in my life when my interests were all over the map. In school, I was a shape-shifting social chameleon, transforming from a glasses-wearing superpreppy nerd one year, to a curly-mohawked (frohawked?) loner the next. I got into wrestling for a spell and won a few matches. I was drawn toward the sport by the incredible mental focus and individualist aspect; if you got beat, there was no team to blame it on, just yourself. I also experimented with basketball and football; I was okay shooting rock, but on the gridiron I was the kind of kid who ran the wrong way and scored touchdowns for the opposing team.
My first true BMX bike was a red Mongoose that I picked up during my chameleon phase. The bike’s main purpose was entertainment and to get me around Edmond. There were a few different trails in town where kids congregated to dirt jump, tell lies, and throw down breakdancing challenges.
I was known to partake in the art of electric boogaloo on occasion, and after learning the basic robo-style popping and locking moves, I graduated to the gyroscopic stuff. Since backspins in dirt are pretty rugged, we’d leave the trails and seek out smooth surfaces to polish our skills. Battles were organized at the local Wal-Mart and other random places that had good floors. In these spontaneous spin sessions I learned to do backspins, which progressed into the crotch-grabbing shoulder-blade-torquing windmills.
I got a chance to show off my Straight Outta Wal-Mart style when my school had a cotillion. Like most of the unlucky bastards I knew there, my parents had dressed and signed me up against my will. It was rough. Everything I didn’t like under one roof. A posse gathered, and we took over the floor, converting the most sanitary sanctuary into a breakdancing battlefield. My friends and I were part of the younger crowd, but there were older kids ring leading it, rocking the moves to the cheesiest eighties Top 40 music. It was a defining moment, and a lightbulb flipped on over my head that helped shape my attitude of, “if you don’t like something, do your own thing.”
I won the tournament in my weight division, eighty-five pounds. My coach told my dad he thought I could win the state title if I stuck with it. That didn’t make it much easier for Dad when I decided to stop and ride my bike full time. He still supported me, though.
Waking Up at the Bottom
I also followed Todd’s lead and dabbled in BMX racing, but instead of staying low and going fast, my goal was to go slow and get passed, then sky off all the jumps. It was a sign of things to come.
My life changed the day I went with my mom to the Edmond Bike Shop to pick up Travis’s birthday present. It was a Skyway TA frame and fork. To some it was “Just” a bike, but the TA’s chrome-plated teardrop tubing and TIG-welded seams were practically glowing with possibility. It screamed pure performance, a brand-new ride for brand-new times. Freestyle was an upstart hybrid sport that was spreading like wildfire from the West Coast. An extension of BMX racing, it was an activity that revolved around individuality, freedom, and style. And it was about to hit Edmond, Oklahoma.
When I told my dad I wanted to give up all sports and only concentrate on bicycle riding—it nearly killed him. He wanted to be in the stands watching me play basketball or football and say, “That’s my boy out there.”
But he and my mother were supportive. They built the first ramp for Travis and me. Mom was so worried that we would get hurt that my dad said, “Don’t look out the window for two weeks.” That helped—but it was a rough two weeks.
My brothers and I had seen ramp plans in a copy of BMX Action magazine and set about acquiring the plans, permission, and materials to make a quarterpipe. Tom’s dad, my uncle Larry, had the carpentry skills needed to create our first driveway ramp. The early ramps were deadly compared with what we have today. They were typically about six feet tall, five feet wide, and the transitions had more kinks than the Amsterdam red-light district. Our driveway was made of dirt, so we got used to riding a lumpy, rock-pocked runway up to the wooden ramp. It’s a wonder anybody who rode those things survived.
The first time I rode a ramp is the day it all clicked for me. I was eleven years old, and it freaked me out just standing on the deck looking down the barrel of our mighty six-foot quarter. The thought of pulling aerials or dropping into the thing seemed impossible. Todd talked me into letting him hold me on my bike over the edge of the ramp. I wanted to be held in a bomb drop position, to see what the perspective would look like. “Don’t let go,” I warned him. He promised he would hold me steady. I peered over my bars at the ground below, pretending, and without warning, Todd let go. I dropped to the transition and rolled away, barely in control. As I whisked down the runway I realized I’d just pulled what I didn’t think I had the balls to do. In a split second my mental outlook had been changed by a burst of accidental action, erasing the limitations that existed in my mind. I wanted to try it again, without second-guessing myself on what I could or couldn’t do.
My first contest. This was also the first time I rode a quarter-pipe that was over six feet tall. I could barely air out, but man, was I was excited to drop in on it. This was the day I realized how much there was to learn, and that I was just starting my journey.
I dropped in on that ramp for the rest of the afternoon, over and over. Todd and Travis went inside the house, leaving me to ride alone. Eventually, I got caught behind my seat while dropping in and went straight to my head. I woke up on the bottom of the ramp, with no idea how long I’d been unconscious. All I remember is my sister’s boyfriend waking me up, asking me if I was okay. That was my first exper
ience with tunnel vision. But there was a glimmer of something good at the end of that tunnel.
Vert is an intense discipline. It takes years of dedication to get to the point where you can go off and blast big, and along the way you don’t get many instant payoffs. But that first spark early on was enough to kindle my curiosity. I imagined what else I could do with my bike, and I was hooked.
New Kids in the Shop
For a new life-form to thrive, the organism needs the proper environmental conditions. Our sterile atmosphere was Edmond, a vacuum of culture. BMX exploded nationwide in the early 1980s, but in our town, riders were outsiders. Freestyle had a rebellious vibe to it, because it was often the dividing moment, separating the kids who liked racing from the kids who liked showing off. Riders in the early eighties caught the rush of being swept up in something new, and the activity wasn’t restricted to the confines of a dirt track. Riders were free to experiment with tricks on flat ground, in the streets, and on ramps. We’d camp out in the magazine aisle of the local grocery store and read BMX Action, BMX Plus!, and Freestylin’. Every issue seemed to cover a new stunt, breakthrough trick technology, and fresh faces and places. There were barely any boundaries or rules—as a sport, the paint wasn’t even dry. It was up to the participants to shape it.
Our petri dish was the Edmond Bike Shop. Aside from the trails, the shop was where local riders gravitated. Ron Dutton was the good-natured owner of the Edmond Bike Shop. He was tolerant enough to allow a pack of spastic eleven- twelve- and thirteen-year-olds to cluster around the shop for days on end, ogling the inventory and steaming up his sticker counter with our sweaty faces. Sometimes Travis and I would ask to get dropped off there for a couple of hours, like we were going to the movies. To us, it was a form of entertainment. Dutton kept the shop stocked with the cream of the crop in BMX technology. Product hung from the ceiling, covered the walls, and crowded the showroom floor: Hutch, Torker, SE, JMC, Redline, and more. Whenever we’d notice a new part or accessory had arrived, my friends and I would descend on it and begin babbling with plans to purchase that new set of Skyway wheels or the Vector stem/handlebar combo, or we’d debate what brand of foam donuts to get for our Oakley grips. I’d walk in the door and be rendered powerless, the wad of lawn mowing money melting a hole in my pocket. The interior of the shop had an energizing effect on us. After being thoroughly charged up, we’d get on our bikes and ride.
I was so into freestyle that I wore Dyno BMX pants to school, regardless of any fashion laws I was violating with my dangerously bold color themes. I treated my bike like a priceless artifact, polishing my seat, grips, and the surface of my Tuff Wheels with Armor-All liquid silicone sealant—a substance that kept my bike shiny, but incredibly greasy. Taking my cousin Tom’s engine performance tips even further, I began experimenting on my bike with power tools. I ended up accidentally boring a hole into my forearm when I attempted to drill through the length of the handlebar stem bolt, to run a brake cable through it. This one hurts to admit, but I used to put my bike in bed, under the covers, and fall asleep next to it.
Over a couple of golden summers, Travis and I made the transition from grommets to bona fide bike shop rats. I forged a few of my lifelong friendships inside that building—guys who I still work with nineteen years later, like Page Hussey and Steve Swope. The crew also tended to congregate at my house, and I’m certain I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for the incredible support of my parents. We needed to rebuild our six-foot quarterpipe to eight feet? The construction site was at our place. And later, when it was crucial we get a halfpipe? Mom and Dad had no problem letting us build it in the backyard, or with allowing all the locals to session it. Our freestyle fever was matched by Mom’s enthusiasm—whether it was making us custom riding shorts or helping us figure out how we could put on a trick team show—my mom was at the heart of it. When our small band of friends formed the Edmond Bike Shop Trick Team, my mom was so proud.
The Mountain Dew team [left to right): Josh Weller, Me, Steve Swope, Keith Hopkis, and Travis.
Just Dew It
The team consisted of Ron Dutton’s son, Chad, and Jeff Worth, Josh Weller, Eric Gefeller, Travis, and me. Our first public performance was at a nearby park, after a parade. We put a fancy paint job on our six-foot BMX Action quarterpipe and wrestled it into a truck; then it was hauled via parents to the demo site. It was the first time I’d ever ridden a ramp on cement. It was a show filled with mistakes and nervousness, but we really got into riding in front of a crowd. It only took one show for us to realize we needed a bigger, more transportable ramp.
A carpenter was hired to make an eight-foot quarterpipe. He convinced us there was no way to make an eight-foot radius [there is], so we got a nine-foot-tall ramp instead. We called it “The Wall.” It was massive, way bigger than standard ramps of the day. We didn’t know any better so we rode it, eager to do more shows. My parents kept watch over the community calendar, and if a festival or public gathering was approaching, they’d make some phone calls and get us a gig. The Edmond Bike Shop Trick Team posse shifted members when Chad Dutton and Jeff Worth dropped out and were replaced by Steve Swope and Keith Hopkis. We’d travel out of town, performing wherever we could. It wasn’t a moneymaking endeavor; we just did it because that’s what freestylers were supposed to do.
Austin, Texas 1986. It was a demo for the Texas AFA—one of the first shows outside of the Edmond Bike Shop and Mountain Dew shows I was asked to ride in.
My habit was starting to pay off in other ways—my airs were getting higher, shooting out of the ramp and into the seven-foot range. I invented my first variation, a switch-handed aerial. Another arrow in my quiver was the frame stand air. I’d do an air, jump up from the pedals to the top tube, and ride out doing a frame stand. The no-footed can-can had become the trick of the era when California pro Mike Dominguez unveiled it during the King of the Skateparks contest—Freestylin’ magazine ran a full-page photo of the trick. No-footed can-cans were pro level and rumored to be incredibly hard to pull. During a show, I accidentally did one when I tried my frame stand air and missed the top tube, flinging both feet out sideways. It was a mistake that inspired me to start practicing them, and before long I could extend both legs in photo-perfect form.
In 1985 a Mountain Dew commercial started popping up on TV, which featured freestyle greats like Ron Wilkerson, Eddie Fiola, and RL Osborn. Its flight lasted all summer, and Travis, Steve, and I would surf around channels trying to avoid the shows but find the advertisement. My mom saw how psyched we’d get and called the local Pepsi bottling and distribution center to talk about creating a local form of promotion in sync with the commercial. A few days later we set up our ramp in the Pepsi distributorship parking lot and did a show in full uniform for a couple of executives from the plant. They were stoked, and we were in. We painted a big Mountain Dew logo on our ramp, got jerseys and stickers, and they set us up with a sponsorship through Edmond Bike Shop to keep us flush with parts and inner tubes. In exchange for the Mountain Dew support, we’d do shows at random supermarkets that sold the soda.
The Best Bet I Ever Lost
Competition was another aspect of the freestyle scene. The American Freestyle Association (AFA) was starting to take root, and we got word of sporadic, organized local competitions happening around Oklahoma. I entered my first contest as a novice. It was in the days when we still rode the six-foot quarterpipe, before we built “The Wall.” The contest had an eight-foot-tall ramp, and I wasn’t used to the height. I’d hit the ramp really fast and crashed every time. On one of the slams I held onto my bars and my brake lever pinched my fingernail like a pair of pliers and tore the nail clean off. That one sucked.