I have been riding mountain bikes for over ten years now. I first fell in love with the sport in the sixth grade, when i was eleven. Since then I have been very fortunate to only have three major injuries, and compared to most accounts they were minor. When I was seventeen, I landed with my foot out in a really awkward position. The force of the landing went straight up my leg and into my straightened left knee. My knee did not bend like it was supposed to, and it took all the force, instead of absorbing it. The pain was instantaneous, I knew I had done something terrible right away. Within ten minutes my knee had transformed from a boney structure into a gelatinous piece of flesh that extended from my calf all the way into my thigh. Flexing it was out of the question, if was seemingly locked in a straight position due to the swelling and whatever damage I had caused. I ended up at ER, and there, they could not for the life of them, figure out what I had done. The swelling was much too immense for them to determine anything. I was scheduled for an MRI immediately, seeing as our medical system is so backed up, that immediate MRI was three months away. After a month, my mother and I determined that a private MRI was relatively inexpensive, and quickly booked one. After forty five minutes of laying inside a tube with my unbendable leg, forced to a thirty degree angle, they decided that they had a good enough image. I met with a specialist the next day who informed me that I had somehow managed to bruise the end of my femur severely. He was surprised that all the essential bits and pieces of my knee were unscathed after such an impact. Fast forward two more months and twenty five physiotherapy sessions later, and I was back on my bike.

           In the next four years, not a single injury forced me off the bike, minus a couple weeks where I had mono. That Iron-man streak came to an end last June, where on a trip to Oregon, I dislocated my left elbow. Up until this point I had never experience a dislocation, or a broken bone. I had hit a small hip jump, where I got tossed awkwardly, and ended up washing out on the landing, I ended up sprawling on the ground, arms straight out, with my elbows locked. The force went through my arm, and into my elbow. This force was enough to rip the joint completely apart. Now at this point it did not hurt, there was just a dull feeling of uncomfortable strain in my arm, looking at it, on the other hand, was horrific, there was about two inches of arm on the wrong side of my elbow. Add to this, a “medic” lady barking in my ear that I need to sit still because I have apparently broken my collarbone, and I was stressing. The event organizer ( I was at a Jam fundraiser for some local trails ) decided he had had enough of the ill-informed medic who was incorrectly diagnosing my dislocated elbow, as a broken collarbone, and threw me into his truck, promptly dropping me off at the local clinic. At this point, the dull feeling in my elbow had turned to an throbbing ache as the shock wore off. My one friend who was comforting me, decided that he was a pussy and could not handle the sight of my mangled elbow, he quickly abandoned me for the waiting room. Next, came my first taste of morphine; that was certainly interesting. The pain had subsided, and was quickly replaced with a feeling of comfort. They then took some x-rays to make sure that I had not caused any internal damage to the bones, all of which came up negative at this point.

          This was good because it fast tracked me to the next step where the two elderly nurses treating me, tied my shoulder to the headboard of the bed, and proceeded to play tug-of-war on my arm until it clicked into place. When they were satisfied that It was back in place, they sent me back to radiology, where they had me straighten my arm, which had been at a right angle for the last fifteen minutes after they had put it in place. As i slowly straightened it, to my horror, I saw my elbow once again pop apart. Back to the room where the two nurses proceeded to punish my poor arm with tactics that Im sure any dominatrix would have been proud of. I on the other hand was not amused. This process of tug of war to x-ray to re-seperating my elbow was repeated twice more, until it was decided that the tendons were much to tense to allow my elbow to go back into place easily. To remedy the tension that my tendons were under, they hooked me up to an IV, in which they administered a muscle relaxant. Within fifteen minutes my whole left side was in a state of groggy-ness. At this point a much younger male Doctor came into the room to supervise the two elderly nurses. They went back to their standard tie my arm to the bed, as they pull on my arm. The doctor quickly stopped them and informed them that they were doing it incorrectly, and with one quick turn and tug of my wrist, popped my elbow back into place. I was much relieved, and with the next set of x-rays, came the joyous result of my elbow being in one piece once again. They stabilized my arm with a half cast, and wrapped it tightly, Informing me that I could not remove the wrap for 3 weeks. I then had to drive home from Bend Oregon with one hand, in my standard truck, due to my pussy friend being irresponsible and not getting his drivers license until he was twenty. My arm took about two months to get to about ninety percent, and then another two months to get one hundred percent. At this point I should have spent a lot more time in the gym, like I had after my knee injury.

          It has been about fifteen months since this happened, and this passed Tuesday I was shooting a video with Darcy and Jonathan from Ant Hill films for my main sponsor Knolly Bikes. I was feeling very confident, riding a line that I had created specifically for this web video. The line started out with a jump to a ladder, that actually was much older, and I had resurrected, this then lead into a squirrel catcher. This particular stunt is much easier then it looks, and is designed to scare off riders who are not as confident, thus potentially averting a much bigger crash on one of the harder stunts that awaits further down the line. I hit said stunt a couple times comfortably without much though. I went back up, and coasted in, at this point I was thinking about the stunt that was coming up next, and did not brake nearly enough going into my “squirrel catcher,” I ended up going over the bars at high speed, I was launched straight towards the ground with my arms extended in front of me. I bounced off my hands and all the way to my feet in what I thought must have looked somewhat intentional. The thought that I had somehow managed to escape such a high speed crash quickly escaped my mind as that familiar feeling of my elbow being in an uncomfortable position came back almost instantly. I looked down and of course to my horror, It had dislocated once again. This time though, I quickly moved my arm in the same fashion that the doctor in Oregon had moved my wrist, and to my surprise my elbow put itself back together. Although I knew that my shoot, and season, were both over, I was relieved that I was not going to spend another three hours at the hospital all drugged out with my arm being tugged on like a rope. I now sit here in a sling typing at ten words per minutes with my right hand only, reflecting on how fast something that is so fun can turn to pain and anguish instantaneously. I have a lot of friends who have done much worse, and more permanent damage then myself. These people are the people who motivate me, watching them work so hard to get back to doing something that they cannot let go. Im not looking forward to the next month or so, waiting for the swelling to leave, and the movement in my elbow to return, the rehab and the physio. Eventually though, I’ll be back on two wheels, doing what I love.

Shit happens. And I’m knocking on a piece of wood as I type this.

Ross somehow got word that a family in Lynn Valley was giving away a miniramp. He called me and expressed to me that he felt this would be a great first feature for our backyard bike zone. I agreed and quickly we spread word to the bros. A plan was set into motion.

We trek out to the house to observe our potential acquisition and plan further. We find that the miniramp is very well built but a little smaller than we had hoped. We really should have reconsidered going through all the effort at this point but we were loaded with youthful optimism and decided to continue our pursuit. We decided that we would rent a U-Haul truck and take the ramp apart, load the truck up, drive it over to our zone and then reassemble the ramp.

Ross picks me up in the U-Haul one dark and cloudy afternoon after school. As a side note, I don’t know what kind of asshole decided it was a good business policy to let 18 year olds rent 12,000 pound trucks but at the time we thought this was awesome. The crew was Ross, Fraser and I. We disassemble the ramp with little problem and load all the pieces into our truck. We make a quick stop at a nearby Wendy’s for junior bacon cheeseburgers and continue.

We arrived at the house and realized driving an 11 foot tall U-Haul truck into the backyard was going to be difficult. These are the things that we should have considered at a much earlier point in time but that’s just the fuckin’ way she goes. There was basically one route to take. We figured we could probably squeeze the truck around the left side of the house, as there was a about a 10 foot wide space. It didn’t look that realistic but we had come that far and there was just no way we were giving up. I lacked a driver’s license and Ross quite reasonably decided he did not want to attempt this squeeze-play. Fraser was probably a little too confident and we should have pointed this out but we agreed to let him try.

Frase climbs into the massive truck and begins to drive around the side. He was actually doing a decent job and it appeared for a few blissful moments that it would work. He managed to get the front end of the truck through the tight space and really should have continued to go straight forward for a bit but he didn’t. He turned right into the yard much too early and had not adequately considered that the truck he was driving was 24 feet long. The top of the truck began to dig into the roof of the house and produce a resistance. Fraser, possessing a very tenacious character, decided to power through the resistance and consequently ripped a massive chunk out of the fucking roof. This literally left a gaping hole in the side of the house. I decided that I would inform my father of this later and that we should continue with our plan. We did, after all, have the truck in the backyard and it would be a shame to give up now.

We quickly unload the miniramp pieces out of the truck. We then decided we should get the truck out of the backyard and then go to work assembling the ramp. Fraser volunteered to be our driver using the logic that he was now used to the big truck and had learned from his mistake. This made sense to me and I agreed.

This backyard was quite big and Fraser wanted to conduct a massive three-point turn, using all of the available space. I did not know it at the time, but there was literally an underground creek that ran through the top left-hand corner of the yard, creating quite swampy conditions. Fraser drove directly into this corner and threw the truck into reverse. To our horror, the truck did not move back a single fucking inch. It instead sank about a foot into the yard. We could only see the top of the wheel. Not quite realizing the severity of the problem, Fraser continued to hit the gas pedal, only worsening our situation.

We tried just about every fucking thing we could to absolutely no avail. The truck just kept sinking further and further. We dug and dug and tried to create a ramp using plywood, but the weight of the truck merely pushed the ramp into the mud. We worked for about 2 hours and had not made any progress. All we had managed to do was create a huge hole surrounding the tire.

At this point my dad came home. I guess he heard us because he came to check out the situation. I don’t think he was quite expecting what he got. As he walks around the side of the house, I see his face go stone-cold as he first sees the corner of his newly acquired home on the ground and the hole where it used to be. His face then goes from cold to a confused shock as his gaze meets the massive U-Haul truck sunken into his yard. If I can recall, I believe his words were “How the fuck did you guys manage this?”

He goes inside to change and then comes out to help us. Now, my father is a man driven by values and his favorite pastime is to inflict these vales onto others. Soon we were receiving a lesson on how our current situation was a “great opportunity for teamwork and character building”. The man had been home for a bout 5 minutes and was quickly delegating roles to all of us. He called my mom and instructed her to order us pizza. “It’s going to be a long night and you boys must be starving”.

The pizza came and we took a short break. We were now well into our third hour of work and we had no idea if we had done anything to help the situation. The fact that it was now dark out really did nothing beneficial. The yard now looked like a war zone. There was no grass left at all and instead just a massive mud pit.
I won’t bore you with the details of our manual labor. Just know that it was another 2 hours before we got the fucking thing out. At that point it was 10:30 and we were a full 5 and a half hours past the time that Fraser drove the truck into the house. My dad’s enthusiasm for team spirit had been replaced with anger as he had realized that his son and his friends were true pieces of ungrateful shit.

The next day, Ross had to clean the truck. He told me that he spent an hour cleaning a full foot of mud off the top of the gas tank. We went back to the yard to assemble the ramp and survey the damage. We had truly fucked that yard up; there was just a gigantic messy hole. On top of that, once we assembled the ramp, we realized how small it actually was. It was literally unridable. When you dropped in your front tire would instantly hit the bottom of the ramp and your speed would die. The thing was barely more than a bike length wide. I think we tried to ride it for 5 minutes before abandoning it forever. We were all in bitter moods as we realized we had really just fucked everything up. There was not a single good thing to come of it. The ramp was later destroyed when the house was being torn down. I recall staring at its smashed carcass and feeling like a little piece of me was smashed with it.

Fuck U-Haul

The crew came down to Ross Measures, Tyson McCrea, Harookz, Ryder Kasprick (pre husband/baby daddy), Jesse Roberts, and myself. Driving up in the BR van, we departed early one sunny weekday. At this point I am going to stop telling this story in this manner as there is a lot of fucking boring details that simply don’t need to be told. I will basically just go on a point by point basis from here on out.

• So we get to Silverstar and are greeted by our Pinkbike liaison. He will now be referred to as “P.L.”. He is a good guy all-in-all, and he has hooked us up with this trip, so he would remain in my good books for the time being.
• We get introduced to our accommodations. They were fucking great. We had a big ass house stocked with bunks and food. We had a great deck with our own personal hot-tub. I personally felt sorry for Silver Star. They had trusted Pinkbike to provide them with a legitimate crew of people to publicize their operation and had gone above and beyond to impress us. Some of us were those things but of course it does not appear that way when they see Ryder and I jump out of the car, claim how “dope” our room was, ask why the TV isn’t a flat screen, and then promptly demand beer for when we get back. I would say I have come a long way since then, but at that time I was arrogant and was armed with a strong sense of entitlement.
• We go up the mountain and immediately my bike breaks (Thanks Cove Bikes, you guys truly fucked me over and over again in those years). By the time I get down, the guys at the rental shop have provided me with a Devinci Wilson. While I was appreciative of this, I still could not understand why any one in their right mind would give Mike Wilson his own pro-model bike. Not only was he fucking terrible at riding, but he also gave the sport up less than year later for his Mormon religion.
• That night, Silverstar treated us to some sort of alpine European dinner. This was a disaster. P.L. liked it but that was pretty much it. Jesse at the time pretty much survived on a diet of junior bacon cheeseburgers and I could see his face go white as the schnitzchel was placed in front of him. I am pretty sure Ryder didn’t eat anything other than Pez and Doritos and all I ate was hot-dogs from 7-11. We quickly choked this down and headed back to the cabin for a hot tub.
• All the older people had been drinking all dinner and being the little bitch I was I begun to complain about not being able to drink myself. The mountain had shit the bed majorly by deciding to hold off until the next night to bring us beer. Jesse decided they were too drunk to drive down to Vernon to get to a liquor store but said that I could drive and that they would come along as passengers. At this time, I had a learner’s license. So you had me driving a god damn Ford e350 down windy mountain switchbacks with a bunch of drunken mountain bikers as my passengers and I don’t even have a valid license. Thank fuck we had no run-ins with the law because I still wouldn’t have a license if we had.
• We get back to the place and drink heavily. I was like 120 pounds and drank a couple 40’s of colt 45 with Ryder in the hot tub. I believe it was at this point that P.L. realized we were not good additions to the team. I started to sing M.O.P’s “Ante up” obnoxiously and I just don’t think he could see how I was adding any value to this trip. Whatever, M.O.P is fucking awesome and if he doesn’t like it, tough shit.
• Next day was more riding, went pretty well. This time, I ate Nacho’s and not some Scandinavian dish so I was content and we all knew tonight was the big night.
• We get back to the crib and there is a cooler PACKED with booze. Unfortunately, some asshole had forgot to remind Silverstar that Mike Reid had canceled on the trip so there was even some cider drinks in there. Whatever, I figured these would come in handy as those “oh fuck, we’re out of beer but fuck it, we have some ‘mike’s hard’ left” drinks.
• The communications guy at Silverstar came to party with us and was awesome. He was shot gunning multiple brews before dinner.
• P.L. got a little worried as everyone other than him proceeded to get shit-housed. I don’t think he foresaw this. He figured everyone would just have a few brews but being the people we were, we looked at any opportunity to get drunk as something that was to be seized and exploited to the fullest.
• We are all in the hot-tub and all day Ryder had been taunting Jesse that the “infamous 2-six stallions” (rival bike gang) were better than the Bicycle Rockers. Seeing that in his drunken state Jesse was starting to let all this taunting get to him, I decided to provoke the surrey-boy mentality that undeniably lay somewhere deep down beneath his calm demeanor. This backfired. The guy went totally apeshit. He started to yell at me so I flicked hot tub water at him. He then began to choke me so I had no choice but to throw pint-size blows. I really figured I was getting the worst of it but P.L. did not see this as being the case. He was quite a bit bigger than I and decided to exercise this size advantage. Amidst my fury of blows, I felt a hand grip my bathing suit. Next thing I know, I am in the air above our deck. I land with great force on my knees in the doggy style position. Still in shock, I feel P.L.’s hand grip the back of my throat and he says “YOU HAVE TO LEARN A LITTLE SOMETHING CALLED RESPECT”. He really killed the buzz with that. No one spoke for a bit but I think Harookz played middle-man and ended up making everything all right. I admitted I had gotten slightly out of control and soon we were all drinking again. The night ended with Tyson and Harookz testing each other’s strengths with various push-up contest’s and arm wrestles. All of the drinks were downed and we felt content with the trip. Our man from Silverstar was absolutely shitfaced and could barely stand, but this failed to deter him from hopping in his car and driving home.

We left with fond memories of Silver Star the next morning. I made up with P.L. and all was forgotten.

The first 2 days were spent driving roughly 20 hours to Vail Colorado for the Teva Mountain Games. Myself, Mitch Chubey and Logan Peat took on the drive to Vail in the NSMB team truck. A few hours separated our departure and Ross Measures, Danny Brody and Eric “Lawrek” Lawrenuk’s departure, but somehow Ross managed to beat us there with his long legs.

After a quick 3 days of Teva Mountain Games and the usual shinnanigans involving every kind of weather you could imagine, the five of us were left with a difficult decision to make. Go home? or go Ride? Naturally, the answer was to go ride. Conveniently located roughly 4 hours West of Vail, is a wonderful place called Moab. For those of you that have been there, you know that it’s a pretty cool little place, also with a wicked slick rock bike trails. We were quick to pounce on this opportunity and we were off to Moab.

Straight to the slick rocks we went, and we pedaled for roughly 80 yards and we had already lost Logan Peat to a flat tire. With no tubes or tools, he took one for the team and retreated back to the trucks and we continued on our epic ride, following random white dots painted on the rocks. Throughout the ride we found a few wall rides and an incredibly large canyon hundreds and hundreds of feet deep.

Darkness came rolling in and we checked into our hotel and grabbed a bite at the local all you can eat pizza joint called Zax.

As if we weren’t ‘touristy’ enough before taking pictures of just about everything at the slick rock trails, we decided to go play tourists at the Arches National Park the morning after. Mitch used his rock climbing skills to scale about 20 feet up into a little cave on the side of an arch…soon to realize that the decent was going to be much harder than the ascent. We soon realized the vast size of the park and that it took quite a bit of driving to see all the arches. Driving to see the last arch, we also noticed that the park had a few 4×4 trails. With both of our groups in trucks, we took the challenge. The trail started mellow with a gravel road..soon to be followed by a few technical rock crawls. The 4×4 journey included some wildlife sightings..and me getting dared to grab the tail of a snake.

We were close to the tail end of the day and with about 4-5 more hours of daylight to spare, we decided to drive out to Green River, Utah with hopes of riding the Super Booter. We were met by strong gusts upon arrival to the site so we proceeded to 4×4 down the road in search of a ridge for myself and Mitch to ride. Not too long after, we found a ridge we were happy with and we started cleaning up a few lines. While myself and Mitch were working on a steep section, Ross was nice enough to build us a step down.

As the sun set, we knew it was time to hit the road and take on the 20 + hour drive back home to Vancouver…Wicked Trip Guys!

Cho

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This year I’m shooting a full segment for NWD 10, really excited to get started next week. I really hope my segment shows how much fun I have on and off my bike. I got a few lines that im working on right now out in the hills that hopefully alot of people will get stoked on. Theres going to be alot of cheese wedge nugs and classic kamloops lines, full of booters and fast trail. I want to bring the dirt jump skills that ive learned into the big mountain lines that im digging and riding now. Lots of multiple hit lines linked with trail, bringing my own personal flair. I got alot of other cool ideas that Id like to do as well, but well see how everything goes. Hopefully everything looks and turns out like how Ive been imagining it to be. Heres some photos of what Ive been working on…

I recently just did an Interview for Italy’s mountain bike magazine, which included a cover shot, 2 double pagers and a half page with the interview. As well as another interview for Boys Life magazine, that one was definitely funny to do over the phone. Theres also a shot in the new Bike mag that I got, pretty stoked on the shot, I even had to write 250 words about it. I wrote a bunch of stuff up and had the help of my friend Dylan to edit it up. Definitely does not sound like me, but oh well.

So I just got back from Jordies Fresh Air event down in Victoria at his mom’s house. Easilly the funnest weekend ever! Always good to be shredding hard with all the bro’s day and night. Everyone killed it hard, and I was stoked. First off lets talk about Danny Brodie for a second. Killing it hard lately, hes on a mission to steal Gullys job, ahahaha. Landing front flips, and getting rad at Jordies event! One thing you may not know about Danny is that he talks in his sleep. I had to sleep in the same room as him down there, and it was soo funny. I remember waking up to this kid just babbling off about the most random stuff, even about stocks! soo funny. Eric Lawrenuk destroyed it over at Jordies, landing a “hybrid 3 downside whip/decade” Gnarly! As well it was in mid set, Eric killed it! Of course Brandon won but we all knew that was going to happen before we even got there. Check out some funny videos and a vid of the contest over at www.blackboxlabs.net. T sage did a good job filming and editing those up.