The Ride of My Life (16 page)

Even the daily operating expenses of being a trucker were steep: It took $350 just to fill the gas tank. The truck would leak a gallon of oil every ten hours of driving. It also lost a quart of power steering fluid every eight hours, and since power steering fluid is expensive we’d use transmission fluid, which is cheaper but thinner, so it bled faster. There was no heat and no air conditioning in the cab, and if we got stuck in traffic, it would overheat and take three hours to cool down.

Once, I hired a disreputable chop shop in Oklahoma City to do an air ride axle conversion, which would smooth out the trailer and maybe make my dreams of a Sprocket Jockeys lounge a reality. Our first trip on the new axle, Steve, Rick, Dennis, and I drove to a demo in Michigan and made decent money. Driving home I was happy because I had enough to pay for a project I’d been cooking up—building a twenty-one-foot-tall plywood ramp and going for the highest airs possible. As I let my mind wander, we hit a small bump in the freeway, and there was a snap. Suddenly the view out my windshield changed from the two-lane blacktop of 1-94 to pure blue sky. We were skidding down the highway at sixty-five miles per hour with a broken axle, sparking and grinding holes through the bottom of our dual fuel tanks. The nose of the truck was pointing straight up. I wrestled the steering wheel for control, unable to see as we plowed to a halt at the side of the highway overlooking a steep ravine, which led to a drainage ditch. A hissing haze of smoke and steam sputtered from the truck carcass as we climbed out and surveyed the damage. The whole truck had snapped in half. To make matters worse, there was a gurgling sound of rushing liquid, as the fuel tanks let go. Several hundred dollars worth of diesel fuel ran down the hillside and collected in the ravine below. Just then the state police showed up and informed us we were not allowed to leave the scene, or the state, until the Environmental Protection Agency had surveyed the situation and provided a cleanup estimate—which, of course, I would be responsible for. Damn.

After a few hours, the guys in white rubber Haz-Mat suits finally arrived and told me it was going to cost two grand and that I had to help clean up. None of us were too stoked to be mopping up stinky diesel fuel from the bottom of a ditch in the sweltering heat, after a long trip. Dennis, Rick, and Steve pitched in, and we got the job done. The whole fiasco, including tow truck and rig fixing, ended up costing seven grand, the exact amount I’d cleared at the demos.

I didn’t let anything alter my plans to bring a portable half pipe show to the people: Not the fact that I was “only” seventeen, or that I had to become a trucker, or that I had no sponsor to pay for the equipment. I approached every obstacle as a mere detail that stood in the way of riding my bike. I didn’t really have a choice.

The Sprocket Jockeys were a band of brothers who came together during tough times and rode it out. We lived off Taco Bell value menu items and usually packed into one hotel room. The core of the group was Steve, Dennis, Rick, Jay Miron, Dave Mirra, and I. Over the years, many different people rode in Sprocket Jockeys demos, and looking at the talent roster today is pretty amazing. In the world of state fairs, we earned a reputation as a decent act and became known as “rebookable” entertainment. This is a term reserved for attractions that consistently drew a good crowd, and fair organizers would often rehire the Sprocket Jockeys for the following summer. Not a lot of acts were bestowed that honor. Our contemporaries on the circuit included the Shark Tank Thrill Show, a vaudeville-style Donny and Marie tribute, and a damn fine mobile puppet show called Grandpa Cratchet and His Puppet Ice Cream Truck.

The Sprocket Jockeys were hired every year to do the Texas State Fair, four shows a day for twenty-four days straight. The fair drew up to two hundred thousand people a day during boom weekends, and there were sometimes eight thousand people amassed around our ramp watching us ride. This was the kind of exposure I was hoping for, and when wide-eyed kids and freaked-out parents made their way over to our autograph table after a show, I felt a glow inside. There’s nothing like the look on somebody’s face after they’ve witnessed bike stunts for the first time. Kids would always ask what kind of bike they needed, how we learned, where we rode. Operation “Next Generation” was taking shape.

Admittedly, some of the folks occupying seats during our sold-out shows were senior citizens who’d merely wandered over so they could rest their bones while they tore into a deep-fried turkey leg and some Tornado Taters. But we’d also be surprised by some of the random people we converted into fans. The same squad of United States Marines came to see the show every year. They’d sit in the front row, and even though they didn’t ride, over time they had developed an eye for good tricks. They would bellow their approval when we were going off but also scream like drill sergeants if they caught us slacking: “You call that a no-hander? Get those arms stretched!”

At the fairs, we had two priorities: Ride hard, and amuse ourselves. We sometimes had shows where there were less than ten people in the audience. We’d start these backward and announce “We’re going to warm up with the easy stuff, and we’ll work our way up the ladder to the big tricks.” I’d roll in and spin a no-handed 540 as high as I could,
or a barhop tailwhip, maybe a 900 if I was feeling perky. For the “hard trick” section of the show, we’d make the crowd scream themselves hoarse for an elementary stunt, like a peg stall on the coping.

The way the shift rotation worked was a Sprocket Jockey had to ride for three days and on the fourth day, he’d get a break and be on announcing duty (Dave Mirra and I both sucked at announcing, so we never got days off). It became a tradition for the announcer to try disrupt the show by doing something stupid to make us laugh so hard that we couldn’t ride properly. There was a point in the demo where we’d circle around behind the semi trailer to build up speed as we pedaled toward a box jump. It was a blind spot, hidden from the crowd’s view. One day as I sprinted around the truck, Dennis dropped out of a tree wearing a ninja mask on his head and landed on my back. I didn’t make the box jump. When it was Steve’s turn, he upped the ante by placing a mysterious paper bag right in our path labeled “bag of kittens.” He also moved random barricades to completely block the runway. Rick got us by dressing up as one of the fairgrounds maintenance men, complete with an orange jumpsuit and a pushbroom that he tried to club us with. The audiences never had a clue about what went down behind the curtain, which made it even funnier.

Our ramp was sixteen feet wide, ten feet tall, and made of metal. It would get hot enough to fry meat on it in the midday sun and slick when it was dusty or wet. My attitude is that the show must go on, rain or shine. I’ve stood atop the wet decks during demos and sprayed the ramp with lighter fluid, then set it on fire to burn off the moisture. People assumed I was trying to add a dimension of danger to the show, but it was actually to make it safer, so our wet feet wouldn’t slip off the pedals.

Evening shows were the ones that drew the biggest crowds, and I would be extra motivated to go off. Seeing Jay, Dennis, or Dave blasting big would help get me psyched. Anybody who’s ever been to a freestyle demo knows the announcer’s favorite phrase to pump up the crowd: “Come on [insert name of state here), the louder you get, the higher they’ll go!” The Sprocket Jockeys fed off one another’s energy, and the crowd’s reaction put us over the top. I’d do a 900 on my first big wall, into a 540 on the next, into a tailwhip on the next wall, linking them together in the gnarliest run I could think up. I would also uncork double tailwhips pretty consistently, and I was working on barhop tailwhips for a time but kept crashing them. This was a ramp that sucked to crash on, too. The flat bottom of the thing was elevated four feet off the ground, and there were crank handles sticking up along the edges that raised and lowered the transition. It required pinpoint accuracy and was a pretty hairy ramp to ride or skate. Tony Hawk did a demo with us once and got gored by a crank handle, which sent him to the hospital. I also took my share of bad slams during shows and often had to run behind the trailer and vomit, then hop back on my bike and complete the demo.

We spent up to 220 days a year on the road and became immersed in the surreal subculture of carnival workers. A lot of carnies are honest, nice people, but living in a trailer full-time and making an income on the midway is a rough life and has the potential to attract some shady characters. We encountered the entire spectrum. Carnies thought we were insane in the membrane after seeing us take devastating crashes on our bikes and keep getting back up to ride again. In turn, we’d see them socializing at a local bar, wearing big knives on their belts and getting rowdy, and thought they were pretty tweaked. It never crossed my mind that I was in a vulnerable situation being around these guys. If a carnie approached me like a pal, pointed to another fair worker, and said, “See that bastard over there? Stay away from him … he’s nothing but trouble,” I knew the real guy to watch out for was probably the one giving the advice. The only carnie recommendation I ever truly trusted was something I learned after seeing how the rides were put together: Don’t ride the rides.

We were also exposed to plenty of music on the fair circuit. For some reason the fair organizers would schedule attractions that were right next to each other at the same time. We’d be forced to battle the Donny and Marie tribute act—they would turn up their PA system to try and drown out our music, and we’d turn our Bad Brains CD up a few notches. Then they would break out with some fancy two-step shuffle dancing to get their crowd cheering, so we would respond. Jay would fling a no-footed 540, or Dennis would throw some technical deck tricks, or I’d link together some combos, and our crowd would roar louder. It was back and forth.

Once we were doing shows at the Deer Creek Fair in Indianapolis. There was a concert pavilion connected to the fairgrounds, and REO Speedwagon was playing a midday show. A severe thunderstorm blew in fast, and the fair had to be shut down. As the sky turned black, the wind kicked up and the radio was full of talk about tornadoes. We
closed down our rig, which was essentially a giant lightning rod, and took off in search of shelter. As the posse of Sprocket Jockeys rode full gallop across the fairgrounds parking lot, we could hear REO Speedwagon still on stage, playing “Riding the Storm Out.” I was cranking my hardest into a gale-force headwind as newspapers and trash flew past like tumbleweeds. I felt like I was trapped in a music video.

Another time, the Deer Creek Fair featured the Monsters of Metal tour: Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax. During our afternoon Sprocket Jockeys show, Scott Ian and a couple of the Anthrax crew were in the crowd. It turned out they were bike fans and got stoked on our stunts. Backstage passes and front row tickets were flowed and gladly accepted by Steve, Dennis, Rick, videographer Ed Roman, and me. I happened to have some wigs with me (because you never know when they’ll come in handy], and we decided it would be a good idea to break them out and attend the metal concert. After a quick thrift store shopping spree, we had a barrage of new disguises. We looked like idiots.

We hit the concert a bit late and had to boot some leather-clad heavy metal cretins out of our seats. Everybody around us was pretty bewildered by our ensembles, and when we started mutant redneck moshing in our seats, they were annoyed. Anthrax noticed the flurry of activity coming from the front row and leaned over the edge of the stage to see what the hell was going on. My wig fell off while I was headbanging, and the guys in the band realized the jackasses in the front row were their special guests. They started laughing and had to stop the song until they regained their composure. During Slayer’s evil set, Dennis, who was dressed like an elderly transvestite, stood on a chair and danced explosively. The security guards who’d been giving us the eye all night had an excuse to yank him down. Dennis was escorted off to the sidelines, and his wisecracking retorts to their questions didn’t help matters. Just as he was about to get his ass kicked by two well-built security guards, we surrounded them and began doing our interpretation of a Native American rain ceremony dance—whooping, shuffling, and waving wigs in the air like we just didn’t care. The guards thought we were dorks, but it saved Dennis from a beating.

During the era of Sprocket Jockeys shows, there were many times when we acted foolish, but we never fooled ourselves that fair demos were glamorous events. It was often a pain in the ass, sometimes it was superboring, and other times it was “
How did I get here?”
weird. But it was a good recruiting system, and I was in it for the long haul. I saw what happened when kids who stumbled onto the Sprocket Jockeys realized how much fun you could have on two wheels and aspired to get a bike. Each kid I rode for was another brick in the new foundation.

Just about everybody in Edmond loved Joni Hoffman. Her passion was to help people, and she was great at what she did; she worked with disabled children and was involved in our community. My mom was the peacekeeper, the encourager, the brains, the organizer, and the binding force that made our whole family work together. She was the absolute center of our household. Her own upbringing was kind of difficult, but she didn’t let whatever struggles she overcame in her childhood affect the way she carried herself as an adult and a parent. That was her inner strength. She and my dad were the ideal pair. Mom balanced out his stubborn, uncontrolled side. She had so much love to give, which was exactly the thing my dad needed.