The Archive Photos

My early days of riding bikes were never captured on film...those long summer days of practicing wheelies in front of my house until I could do them as long as I wished. The jump at the end of street that would send you flying into the trees if you weren't careful...no one was. It wasn't until I started seeing magazines that had pictures of riders fully decked out in goggles, helmet, gloves, jersey, and leathers that I insisted on having pictures taken of me riding my bike. These photos are from the 80's and show the bikes I owned.

My brother eventually saw that I was outgrowing my first bike and the Open Road my Mother had purchased for me from Montgomery Wards wasn't holding up to the jumping I was putting it through...so he decided he was going to buy me a bike. He found a kid who was selling his 80' Mongoose race bike and took me there to buy it one day. It was beautiful and fully decked out for racing with all top of the line parts. When I got home with it I instantly wanted my red Lester coasterbrake mags put on and probably threw away the spoked wheels with freewheel. I now think back at that being a very stupid thing to do...but I was a kid and didn't know any better.

Here is the only surviving picture of my first Mongoose. I remember taking this picture because I had just returned home from the bike shop where I bought a red California Lite padset and some new grips. This was the Mongoose Motomag with Ashtabula parts with the usual suspects on it. Sugino snowflake sprocket, KKT rat trap pedals, Sugino cranks, Tange pinch fork, Mitsuboshi Comp 3's, Messinger seat, fluted post, Tange clamp, Tange headset and BB, etc. I now wish I had taken a better picture of this bike.

I don't remember what happened to that first Mongoose now, but I remember buying a chrome one from Mark in 84' and building it up as my first real freestyle bike. I bought some lavender Hutch freestyle tires and GT frame and fork standers and bought an ACS stem with the latest technological breakthroughs...Potts mod and the Rotor! This was a great bike to start freestyling on and as I got money I bought new parts for it. When I took the picture here I was done adding parts and was just about to buy my first Trickstar F/F...but that's another story. First let's take a look at the years spent on this bike.

So here's a close up view of the "brake-through" technology offered by ACS in 84'. The ACS stem I bought came with the new stem bolt that allowed the cable AND the cable housing to pass through it and down into the fork steer tube. The first versions of this front brake mod only allowed the cable itself to go through the bolt. Now Mongoose didn't make this frame with the ACS Rotor in mind and the first production run of the Rotors came with a giant U-bolt to hold the rear cable stop. As you can see, the frame gusset prevents proper placement of the U-bolt so I went to the hardware store and bought a much larger U-bolt and just rigged it through the gusset hole. This made the rear cable stop have a not so cable friendly angle but it worked about as well as the Dia-Compe brakes did back then.

I remember that after I had learned some tricks I wanted to be in every picture WITH my bike. This was met with the usual resistence, but after awhile my persistence melted away thier apprehensions and I was included in most photos.

So this was 85' and I was just learning to ride in and out of Miami Hoppers at the time of this photo. I touched riding into this one, but I pulled it up and rode away without a dab. That was a big deal then...I remember my first time riding in and out of this without touching...I was so stoked! Dig that family car we had! A red Dodge Swinger with a slant 6 engine!!!

	As simple as this looks, it's pretty hard to do on a single top tube frame. I'm standing on the top of the front brake and steering with my knee against the handlebars. This was the first surfer I learned before I had seen anyone do them on the crossbar and seat. I could do these for miles and eventually learned to turn around on this street in front of my house.

Here's a blurry pic of me rolling after a bar hop. I can't believe I used to do them with the bars backwards. What's funny is I could jump over the bars but couldn't ride out yet. What a poseur!!!

Here's a pic of my beloved kickturn ramp after I dragged it out of my driveway for the winter. My parents got sick of me demanding that they park on the street so I could ride. They were so amazed that within 8 hours of the wood being delivered to our house that there was a ramp in it's place. In the spring I had some friends help me lift it up and over the fence and into the back yard where I built a 20 foot flatbottom from it to a 7 foot radius quarter pipe. I built my small ramp after seeing the CW show at Rockville BMX in 86'. Dizz blew my mind with all his kickturns and attitude. I rode coaster brake so it was a natural progression for me to learn tricks fast on that ramp. I had so many great sessions riding that thing...

Here's the only surviving pic of me riding my Hutch Trickstar pre restoration. This was taken by my brother on a cold January day at Jamie Roberts ramp in Severna Park. I loved this ramp. Jamie and I rode this thing everyday for a year and a half before I got my drivers license and didn't ride as much. Stupid me. Unfortunetly Don didn't snap the pic at the height of this air but I was only doing about 3 - 4 feet at this time. Jamie and I later started mingling in the 6-7 feet zone regularly before we stopped riding together. He later went on to learn lots of airs and go pretty damn high.

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