Random As Rhyme

My friend Yuri took some new shots of me. I’m stoked on em.

Another day another whip

Tobagans have quickly become a favorite of mine

Last but not least I learned to table, which I am PUMPED on this trick is way harder than it looks

At this years X-games BMX legend Van Homan joined Matt Berringer, and Mike Aitken in the sadly growing group of riders who have suffered serious head injuries in the past two years.

All of those riders are ones I have admired my entire riding career and it’s a real bummer to know that they all might be forever changed because of their conscious choice not to wear helmet. Mikey’s life has already permanently changed but it remains to be seen what the long term effects on Matt and Van’s lives will be.

Now I am no saint, I used to ride BMX without a helmet all the time and thankfully when I did sustain my last head injury I was wearing a helmet which probably saved my life as I currently know it.

I strongly believe that when you are at the pro level you should wear a helmet all the time, no exceptions. You are lucky enough to be part of a small group of people who are fortunate enough to make a living doing what we all love and you should take the necessary precautions to do this for as long as possible.

Let’s not kid ourselves here the sport is dangerous and at the level it’s progressing it’s not going to get safer any time soon. Let’s take a look at our idols and legends; Matt Hoffman and Jay Miron. True pioneers of the sport, gladiators if you will, who gave up their bodies to push the sport as far as it could go. They wore safety equipment (for the most part) and still destroyed their bodies to the point to where Jay can’t ride at all anymore and Matt, god that he is, is somehow riding with essentially one arm and more than quadruple the amount of concussions that end a professional hockey players career.

If today’s top pros are going to keep pushing themselves day in day out they need to wear some protection, at least on their head if no where else. This is alarmingly apparent in Van’s situation where he fractured his skull in a contest environment. Contests are designed to be a place where you lay it all on the line and if you are going to lay it all out there you should be in a bucket.

‘Street’ or no street.

Morgan Wade took a ton of slams at this years X-games and thanks to his helmet (and super human pain tolerance) he was able to get right back up to take more.

If any of our (and when I say our I mean the ‘mid-school’ crowd) legends are going to make it into the ‘DMC years’ of BMX they need to start wearing proper equipment all the time, not some of the time.

If they are not ready to do it for BMX do it for your friends, do it for your family and do it for yourself. The amount of time I have spent trying to put together the pieces of just a few hours of missing memory depresses me enough, I couldn’t imagine trying to piece together weeks, months, or years.

Get well soon Van, Matt, and Mikey.

Ride safe.

Everyone who lives BMX this weekend was reacting to two major events; The first was the news that Dave Mirra was in the hospital with a life threatening illness (bacterial meningitis) and the second was that The Canadian Beast, aka Jay Miron, sold the company he started (Macneil) to his former employees and is effective more or less immediately fully disengaging from the BMX world.

While both are significant nuggets of BMX news Dave Mirra is a tank and is damn near out of the hospital already. The news of Jay’s departure has left a lot of people wondering WTF happened.

For as long as I can remember I’ve looked up to the following riders; Mat Hoffman, DMC, and Jay Miron. There are a few more that I really respect and would like to (or have) meet one day (Foster, Bestwick, Nastazio for example) but the aforementioned three probably had the biggest impact on me at the age I needed to be impacted to keep the BMX fire burning 5 alarm.

Out of those three riders Jay stuck out because he was a Canadian shredder when Canadian shredders were relatively rare.

My first memory of Jay was when my mom called me at my dads house and told me to turn on the TV to some obscure television show. The tv show ( which was The amazing incredible or something like that) featured Jay, in full Schwinn gear on a bike with 4 pegs and bars a little bit forward, flying down a sketchy rollin from high in the rafters to hit a box jump below. He hit the lip and sent a double flip and wrecked, hard.

Before the stunned announcer could ask if he was dead Jay was responding with “I’m ok” and was already on his way back up the roll in to drop in and send a perfect double flip in front of a crowd of people who had no idea what was going on.

At this time I had maybe seen a handful of flips and never even thought a double was possible, and yet there it was.

I was blow away.

Once I dove further into the culture of BMX I realized that Jay had been around for sometime and could really through down hard on a bike, at every discipline.

Later in my riding, and while still doing events with the Action Sports Coalition, I was able to have several encounters with Jay and maintain somewhat of a relationship with him over the years anytime he would come back to Ontario.

It was on one of these  trips to Ontario where I was fortunate enough to see him ride in person. It was at a demo at Muskoka Woods. While the demo was great this was also the first time I was able to see first hand the rumored BMX had done to his body.

Immediately after the demo he had  a personal massage therapist on hand to stretch his body out for him so that he could walk the next day. It was a strange sight.

Jay, like a lot of the true pioneers of BMX, paid the price of pushing our sport with his body and for this we should all be thankful.

Without Jay (and the rest) there is no telling if there would be the Boomerang (aka downside whip), double flip, or 540 tailwhip. Jay suffered for these tricks that are now almost common place.

While some might question his decision to leave BMX entirely I must say that I understand.

Think of it as breaking up with your girlfriend but then being around her all the time watching someone else had what you had. Some of us can take that in stride but others can’t and need to get away before it destroys whats left.

It seems that after all these years Jay has decided that all he needs is to get away.

Peace out Jay, thanks for all the frames, contests, and inspiration. All the best of luck with whatever you do next.

Jay Miron Props Bio

Jay Miron in the First Macniel Video

Jay Miron In Mad Matt

It’s been quite sometime since I have had a new bike and since I just finished my recent edit I figured it was well deserved.

I really liked my last Whitton 2 even though it turned out to be bent and I figured that sticking with the same geometry would mean not having to get used to a new feel. This meant a Whitton 3 was in order. I was going to get it in white but that is not out for public consumption until next month so I got matted red instead and I must say its a really nice color.

Here is the parts list and my gf took the photos for her 365 project.

Bars: Sunday Forumphs
Stem: Fly
Forks: Demolition Concord
Front Wheel: Odyssey M7 front wheel (G-sport marmoset and odyssey 7ka)
Frame: Whitton III 21″
Cranks: Profile 175s
Pedals: Animal plastic Steven Hamilton’s (Clear)
Sprocket: Kink Sound
Rear Wheel:Odyssey 7KA and Odyssey Hazard hub
Hub Guard: FBM
Brakes: Mono small/gtx/evo1s
Tires: Dirt path/Aitken
Pegs: Hoffman

Props to my friend Chijioke for getting me a good deal on the frame and fork and doing the build and Scott for hookin it up component wise.

I finally finished my latest BMX edit. I plan to reexport it to vimeo at some point to take care of those audio pops but for now this will do. Check it out!

I am getting a new bike on Saturday so I can’t wait to start filming a new edit with that one!

Two of my homies from Calgary put together a little edit with the help of their friend Andrew who has an HD camera. These guys are shredders.

I am working on a new edit as well, should drop sometime before the end of the year.

The GTA BMX scene has suffered from a tremendous blow this year with what the park formerly know as “The Warehouse” falling under new ownership. The news came down via facebook from Jamie Burke who has been down with the park from the beginning, I’ve transcript ed some of his originally message below:

“it truly hurts me to have to inform you that the warehouse is closed(to bikes) this season(or forever, who knows.)….i found out that i was in competition with some skateboarders so i was rushing to close the deal and open the park….. was dicked around with alot and he ended up renting the warehouse to the other people.”

Loosing The Warehouse is much more than just losing an indoor riding spot. There are a few other places to ride indoors in the area (with a new one on the horizon) some of which have just as many ramps (or more) than the warehouse with cleaner bathrooms and air quality. But that’s not the point, losing The Warehouse is more akin to losing a club house. This private/semi private park was the central hub for riders all over Ontario.

Every time I went to The Warehouse I knew at least 5 other riders, which is not something that I can say about the outdoor park closest to me let alone other indoor spots in the area.

For me a lot of the time going to The Warehouse wasn’t even so much about the riding as it was about being around your friends, friends you don’t really get a chance to see all summer due to conflicting schedules and different local spots. The vibes were always positive at the warehouse and I rarely witnessed any sort of beef.

The riding level was always super high but it never gave off that competitive vibe that can happen at some parks. I learned a lot of new tricks at the warehouse and have to attribute a lot of my growth as a ramp rider to that park. The Warehouse helped push our scene to notable heights. Every scene needs a place like this and now our scene is lacking it.

Rumor has it that the place that bought The Warehouse may have a bike night here and there, which while the intentions are good, probably won’t work out to well. The Warehouse being the size that it is and the setup the way it is gets crazy with high capacity. On Jam nights if you are not a local its tough to judge the flow of the place and to know when to drop in and therefore really easy to ball up the entire flow of the park. Having a solitary bike night every few weeks will draw a similar if not larger amount of riders (at first) which will just lead to frustration when dealing with the increased numbers.

The bike nights also won’t have the same atmosphere traditional Warehouse jams had myself and some of my good friends have celebrated our birthdays riding at The Warehouse, Jams were always sponsored and occasionally a few pros would stop by as well (or people from way out of town).

Our scene was lucky to have The Warehouse for as long as we did and I don’t think any of us ever took it for granted. RIP The Warehouse you will be missed.

Here are some of the videos over the past two years of past two years at The Warehouse:

Short post today as I have spent most of it looking for jobs and watching bmx videos. However check out these videos from this years FIRST stop of the Dew tour. This year is going to be crazy. Damn.

Dirt Finals

Park Finals

Vert Finals

Stole this from my friend, who stole it from the come up

Skinny bars? Yes.  My bars are uncut now and they are even considered skinny. My x ups were terrible for a long time for no good reason though.

Big bars? Not Yet
Chain wallet? Yes, a bike chain wallet actually, they told me I couldn’t wear it to school
Front brake? For a day
No brake? For a day, different day then above obviously
4 piece bars? No way,  I did want haro knee savers pretty bad for awhile

Pegs? Always, hell I made my own
Pegless? Only racing or vert.
Motor bike chain? Yes, on two bikes.
Hip hop jeans? Obviously
Girls jeans? Obviously not
Elbow pads? Never two at the same time though
Peg chinks? Downside peg misses count?
5 inch pegs? Maybe actually.
Dickies pants? Yes they ripped and were stupid hot.
New Era? Not yet.
Studded belt? Neg.
Roof drop? Not interested
Half barspin? Yes for about a week.
Kick flips/Crank flips? I’ve done 1 ever, hurts my ankle to kick them
3/4 length long sleeve? No
Gyro? Only after learning whips… really long cable before then

Nokon cable? No…
Slammed or no seat post? No
Manual to 180? I can’t really manual all that well
Hand plant? No.
Multicoloured frame? The condor above was the most colors I have ever had a bike
Flourescent bike parts? Had a bright green cable once

Unlook back? No
Bandana? No don’t know how to tie them
Multiple foot jams? No
Dread locks? Chea!
Roll out half cab-Parrick style? Don’t half cab often
Roll out sliders? Sometimes
Emo fringe? Nah

Scanned up some more classic BMX, this time around its a kids book I have had since I was two (1986), Greg’s First Race.

THE BMX BUNCH – Friends draw together by their love for BMX bikes and daredevil stunts. Enjoy the escapades of the BMX BUNCH and the vivid, imaginative language used by fans of BMX freestyling and racing. The adventure, indexed glossary, safety rules, illustrations of BMX gear, and – of course – the bikes themselves entertain and instruct young readers – those who join in BMX action as well as those who watch.

In Greg’s First Race, Greg competes against Colin an ace racer. Only one buy can win. But eve losing has its rewards.