Tuba Mike Shirley and I had planned to road trip to the first major U.S. contest held at a concrete park some weeks ago, and thanks to a few kickass sponsors and Tuba’s blinding yellow Ford pickup, we were on our way.  I was happy for the chance to get to know Mike better, and what finer way to do it than by traveling together for 14 hours from Flag to OKC.  As we ate up mile after mile of I-40 asphalt, we related stories to each other, like stuff that had happened to us lately, and whatever the scenery brought to mind.  Daytime driving is much better than nighttime driving for many reasons, but being able to see what you’re passing by is the main one.  When we went through the burly upcroppings of hardened lava flow on the windswept plateau of Northern New Mexico, I recounted the story of how flatland legend and Graveyard Products founder Richard Zabzdyr had been killed coming back from the York Jam in ‘94 in that very place.  Danny Williams’ dad had originally pointed out the upcroppings to me on our trip back from the ’95 Oklahoma City BS contest.  If I remember aright, Richard and a couple other flatlanders were driving back to California at night, and the passengers were asleep. The driver nodded off as well and went off the road right into this nasty shit, and Richard didn’t make it.   Very sad. 

Footjam nosepick on the sub, straight outta Tuba City.

 I had seen the diagrams of the OKC park in the Glendale X-Park and Chandler Bike Park design input meetings, and it looked sick as hell, so I wanted to get some good riding time in there.  Getting to a big contest early is always a good idea, especially if you don’t want to ride a very flowey concrete park with 50 people at once.  We rode all day Thursday, and it was well worth missing the extra day of pay.  During one of my rests, I struck up a conversation with Shawn “Elf” Waters, who with his little crew had built some of the best contest dirt jumps ever.  I told him how I’d lived in Salt Lake a short time in ’95.  I had gone up there to do shows with this guy that had put out a call for show riders in BMX Plus!  Let’s call him Mike G.  Mike G. turned out to be the shadiest piece of shit ever, and I came back to Arizona three weeks later, very broke and much wiser.  Guess that’s what I get for reading Plus!.  Elf told me that not long after my encounter with this tool, Matt Beringer and himself met Mike G. and eventually got screwed over as well.  Turns out Mike G. recently did a stint in the joint (big surprise there), and had last been seen getting kids to pay him to be put on Team Haro.  I guess they’d give him some money and he’d give them a Haro jersey and a couple of other trinkets and he’d tell them they were sponsored by Haro.  Gay and lame, bro. 

Jesu de Christo!  Calm down, Mike!

The camera's a little far away, but that's your humble narrator, Jason Ryan, with a toothpick on the sub box.

Alright, dammit.  Next time I'm showing Mike how to use the zoom.  Jason Ryan, nosepick on the 10' over-vert.

On Friday when we got through riding, Scott Foster squeezed into the cab of Mike’s truck with us to get a room at our Motel 6.  He had been paying like $150 a night at a hotel downtown, and since he didn’t want to rent a car, he couldn’t get to anything cheaper without a big bike ride.  We all went to Hooters to eat after showering, and a couple of the waitresses were straight up on his nuts.  I would have been jealous, but they were kinda rigged up hillbilly Hooters girls, so I didn’t care so much.  Brian Tunney wrote something in some magazine a few months ago, talking about Scott, and he was saying how he heard some shady shit about him but had never met him personally.  Well I’ve met him personally, and I’m here to say Scott Foster’s a really decent type of fellow.  He hung with Mike and myself on Saturday night, also, when we went to the bmx art show.

I must be out of the loop with flatland nowadays.  Homie here was pumping this wheelchair to get speed, and it was working and how!

"After the Fire"- Brian "Yella" Gavagan

"The Ether Bunny"- Leigh Ramsdell

The art show was a new thing for a CFB.  They held it in this old train depot in downtown OKC which had been restored and turned into an art gallery.  They had a flatland jam going in one big room, art was displayed along with artist bios in the adjoining room, and a theatre was set up for a video loop in yet another darkened room.  I was intrigued most by Hoffman’s pictures taken from a helmet cam about 12 feet out on vert, Leigh Ramsdell’s paintings, and Yellow’s paintings.  Also, Sandy Carson had some pretty engaging pictures of some 12 year old ghetto girls that were smoking outside of a concrete skatepark in the State of Washington, I believe. 

Hoffman to Old School, "You were big and sexy out there!"  Old School to Hoffman, "You bet your crippled ass I was!"  Nah, I didn't say that.  Just on the inside.

Mike was a little low on cash for a motel on Sunday night, so we decided to drive straight to the Albuquerque park after the pro park finals ended at about 8:30 pm.  I don’t remember much about that stretch, cause I was pretty much getting my nap on the whole time, or at least trying.  We got to Los Altos Skatepark before dawn, but there was no gate, so we began riding by orange streetlight.  I got a flat and ripped tire in the big bowl from some broken glass, so I broke out the camera and got some swell clips of Tuba hitting wallrides across the street and a bowl corner in the park. 

A heifer fight broke out during pro qualifiers between a 210 lb. blonde and a 250 lb. brunette.  From the looks of this blonde clump of hair in the grass, the brunette heifer won.  OKC...

 Since when do millionaire bmx riders jump over fences to break up catfights?  Nyquist, letting the trash 'stache do his thinking for him.

So you're an Albuquerque beetle, right?  You're crawling on a brick wall at 6 AM, thinking, "No one's going to bother me here," when BAM!  You're run over by some asshole from Flagstaff.

 Hoffman had one of the best announcers ever at the CFB:  Paul Rogers from England.  I honestly think he made me ride better.  Tuba Mike, pocket table air.

Taking off from old Albuquerque, Mike was so tired he couldn’t keep his eyes open.  I wasn’t any help, either.  I was tired as a mug, too, and I kept dozing off.  I remember waking at one point to see Mike hitting himself hard in the head with his fist to try to wake his ass up.  It was about then I suggested we pull over so he could get some shuteye.  After about an hour-and-a-half of sleep, Mike was rejuvenated and ready to head home. 

I had been uncomfortable during the ride home due to a bruised tailbone from one wreck or another, but I decided not to feel sorry for myself when I saw a guy with two hooks for hands filling up his truck at a gas station.  Further down the road, we passed a guy with a fake leg on a motorcycle with a sidecar.  Nope, the bruised tailbone didn’t hurt that bad at all.

We didn't stop there.