The Ride of My Life (42 page)

The last contest I entered. X Games 2001.

During the month of February, my calendar clogged up like a toilet. March was overflowing with places to be and things to do. The first stop was a week in Merritt Island, Florida, for the first CFB contest of the year. Between hosting and helping my team run the event, I squeezed in some ramp time. I rolled in and did a few lines, savoring how great life was. A couple walls later, I woke up in the flatbottom with a dull throb in my wrist. End of session. Since I was supposed to shoot a poster for Steve Budendeck for Ride BMX magazine the next day, I taped up and rested my wrist. Throughout the night I woke up to test my boo-boo and see if the pain was subsiding. It was stiff and puffy, so I suspected there could be something majorly wrong with me, but “broken wrist” wasn’t in the schedule so I had to block it out. The next afternoon Steve set up his gear on the deck. With a taped and braced wrist, I let fly with a few runs of my newest trick: a stretched no-footer one-hander, while controlling the bike grabbing onto one front peg. I had a contest running on Hoffmanbikes.com to let my friends name it. Three hundred thousand votes later, cock block was the title of the new trick.

After Florida, I bounced home for a half a day, then was on a plane to New York to participate in a panel of experts for Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal. The conference was in the ritzy Waldorf Astoria Hotel. My copanel posse were representatives from all the traditional sports—hockey team owners, tennis coaches, football players. The media and the sports industry were invited to the conference to discuss the future of sports. I talked to a room full of people who had no idea who I was or what I did. I just sort of kept them guessing during my panel time. Immediately after the conference I was on a plane to London for a conference of a different nature.

My British friends Stu and Ian throw a legendary shinding called the Backyard Jam, which is part contest, part demo, part throw down, and all fun. The last jam they had was in 1997, and things got so out of hand that they had to take a five-year hiatus until they were ready to put on another one. I arrived in Heathrow and Stu told me the media had been hounding him to see if I minded doing a press day. The Euro Activision crew was there, so I figured I’d help do some game promo for
MHPBMX2.
I went to the Sony Playstation Skatepark, retaped my wrist, and jumped a box jump for a glamour shot in
Esquire.
I then pumped out about five interviews in a row for
Time Out, Metro,
and other mainstream British mags. By the end, I wanted to tape my mouth shut—I was sick of hearing myself talk. We finally wrapped and drove the remaining four hours to Telford, where the Backyard Jam was going down.

The ramp was small, maybe eleven feet tall, but it looked fun. I was aching to ride, and my wrist was killing me. It hadn’t healed much since Florida. I geared up, taped up, and rolled in to do a show. Since I made up the trick in 1990, I’d wanted to break eight feet on a flair—put some distance under my upside-down head and the eight-foot mark on the height pole.

The Backyard ramp felt quick and juicy enough for such a feat, so I pumped hard off a no-hander into a flip and cranked it, landing smooth enough to pull a tailwhip on the next wall. It was a good session, and afterward I checked out my flair on video replay. I got my eight-foot flair wish. After the demo, I undid my wrist dressing and was in a world of hurt. My ability to block pain while riding was good, maybe too good.

England is a great place if you don’t have insurance and need to see a doctor. It’s free, fast, and they don’t ask a lot of questions. I got my hand x-rayed and the film revealed cracks through my navicular bone. Damn—those little bastards are supposed to be hard to heal [wrists constantly bend and move, hence, are rather weak). I was sent to another room to get a cast. I asked the nurse who was wrapping my wrist in plaster to keep the cast thin around the webbing area of my thumb and to position my thumb in the shape of a grip so I could ride my bike. “You must be kidding,” she said. “Yeah, you’re right. I would never do that. Could we modify it this way anyway?” My UK teammate John Taylor was there with me, cracking up.

The next day I showed up at the jam with a new cast, but it needed forty-eight hours to dry and I only gave it about twelve. It started to get mushy right away. The day was rough. I slammed on a tailwhip and knocked myself out. When I came to, my vision was haywire—everything was really bright—I was in battle mode. This is a state of mind I fall into where I go bigger and try harder just to spite the odds. I’m aware when I get into this emotional state, but I can’t change it. I shook the slam off and got back on deck. Landing a flair so smooth the day before got me thinking. I wanted to see if I could do a dream line of mine, which was link four of the five elements of vert—the 540 air, the 900 air, the tailwhip air, and the flair—together back to back. (Fakie tricks and lip tricks could be considered additional elements, but the four aerial elements listed, plus the standard 180 air, are the essentials.) With my vision bright and my mind tuning out everything else, I dropped in and did a no-hander, to an invert 540, to a flair, to a tailwhip, to a 540. I was psyched and satisfied. Then I started playing around and linking variations together. I threw a lookdown switch-hander and tried to squeeze in a no-footer in at the last instant, but I missed my pedal and sat on my rear tire on reentry. I was launched into the back of my seat, and it felt like I got gored through the stomach. I thought I was going to puke, so I went behind the ramp and lay down. I kept my fish and chips from making an unwanted appearance, and after a few minutes’ recuperation, I grabbed my bike and went back up to the top of the ramp. The crowd had dissipated, but I didn’t want to end my session on such a bad note. I dropped in and did a no-handed 540 into a tailwhip on the other side and called it a day. I went to my hotel and packed my bags, jumped in a van, and took another four-hour ride to the airport. I flew to Oklahoma to pick up my family and then jet to Brazil for the South American X Games.

The Hoffman Sports Association put on the bike events at the South American X Games. The contest pavilion was called Flamingo Park and was right near the water with Sugarloaf Mountain as the backdrop. Steve, who usually acts as our commentator, isn’t exactly fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, or improvisational forms of communication. We got a translator who couldn’t speak English but could write it. Rather than provide a running commentary in his usual flowing style, Steve’s dialogue was typed into a computer and he read it like cue cards as the South Americans did their runs. Because wooden ramp surfaces don’t last long in the rain and tropical humidity, parks south of the equator tend to be made of concrete. The local riders were thrilled by the rare treat of riding a plywood ramp. I thought it was pretty funny to hear them complain that “all” they had to ride were concrete pools and bowls.

South Americans are very passionate about their sports. Personal space boundaries are nonexistent in the heat of the moment, and the fans there love to cheer in your face, hug, wave giant banners and flags, and do special dances to show their appreciation. The crowd was superhyper and overjoyed.

After the contest was finished, I did a demo with Bob Burnquist, who was born in Brazil. There, he’s considered a national hero, on the same level as Michael Jordan during his heyday on the court. This was apparent as we entered the stadium under a full security escort, who parted the crowd like bulldozers. Bob and I took the ramp and gave it up for a good hour. One of Bob’s friends, Fortunato de Paula, was skating in the demo too. I did a flair over Fortunato while he threw a frontside 540.

By the end of the session, the sun was setting and shadows were falling across the ramp. It was humid as hell, and I was sweating so bad I could barely hold onto my grips. My right wrist was glowing and throbbing. On the other side of the deck, I spotted a trio of bikers who’d helped us with the contest. I’d met them at least six years earlier, doing demos in South America. They were old school guys, and I was happily surprised to see them still into riding. As I sat panting and sweating, ready to conclude the session and sign some autographs, the three amigos pulled up their shirts and stood in line shoulder to shoulder. Each had a number painted to his chest: 9, 0, 0.

“Mat, don’t even think about,” Steve said. I’d ridden well, managed to stay unhurt [despite the busted wrist), and we were done with the demo. It was almost dark, and I’d only pulled one 900 in the past eight years—which was at my last contest in Philly a few months back. “I’ve never done a 9 on this side of the equator,” I said wistfully, trying to dry my palms on my sweaty pant legs. “I wonder if I’d have to spin it the opposite way?” I cracked. “
MAT
…” said Steve in a concerned tone, but I’d already dropped in. The crowd was chanting as I hit the wall and flung into a mighty spin, hoping my weak wrist wouldn’t tweak.

I pulled it. My first 900 after age thirty. I slowed to a stop, laid my bike in the flatbottom, and saluted the crowd. The ramp was attacked by Brazilians going nuts, and for the next two hours I signed, and signed, and signed. The language barrier melted away and words weren’t even necessary. It’s good being loved for doing what you love.

Jeff Tremaine, PJ, and Spike got a deal to make Jackass into a movie. “Come to Florida,” was all the information they would provide me with. Two days after my demo in Rio, I got a flight out of Brazil to Orlando. I had no clue what was waiting in store for me. All I had was a hotel address. I checked in, and walking through the lobby into the elevators, just as the doors were closing I saw Tremaine. I held the doors for him as he tumbled in with a sense of urgency. Jeff was struggling to keep from dropping a fifty thousand dollar digital beta camera, while simultaneously trying to hold up the camera operator, who appeared to be in rough shape. His skin was pale and clammy, and he was breathing funny and moaning. He couldn’t walk by himself, and I thought maybe he’d been bitten by a cobra, run over by a golf cart, or perhaps had fallen out of a tree. “This guy’s been a vegan for seventeen years and he just accidentally ate pepperoni,” said Jeff. “Can you hold this and, uh, start taping?” I grabbed the bulky beta cam and flipped it on. We made it to a room and the camera guy passed out. I was told to keep the camera on at all times.

Through the lens I saw Mr. Johnny Knoxville holding his toes open as Ryan Dunn took paper and slid it across the webbing between Johnny’s digits, causing juicy red paper cuts. Ryan gleefully and carefully did each toe, and then moved onto the soft spots between Johnny’s fingers. I got a good focus as the tub was filled up with rubbing alcohol and Johnny submerged his hands and feet into the liquid. A piercing scream filled the air.

Welcome to Jackass.

After some more blatant sadomasochism with the Jackasses, we went off to the Vans Skatepark in Orlando. I say “skate” park because like a lot of riding facilities, Vans-Orlando is biased against bike riders, allowing for very limited use of the ramps (skateboarders and in-liners can enjoy transitions every day). Vans has done so much good stuff for action sports and has made a tidy profit over the years selling shoes to not just skaters, but bike riders, too. I corner Steve Van Doren (the “Van” in Vans) and ask the same question every time I see him—when you gonna let my people into your playgrounds? He never quite has an answer. But this time we had carte blanche access to the park because of our film crew status, and the fact that we were about to break out one of the legendary Jackass props. The fat suit.

I’d been jonzin’ to ride in the contraption since I saw Bam Margera busting out, in the first episode of Jackass on my home TV. The fat suit consists of multiple layers of bubble wrap swaddled around the wearer’s body like a Saran Wrapped sandwich. Then supersized thrift store clothes are worn over the plastic rolls—the pants alone are big
enough to use as a tent. Basically, you look like you weigh at least five hundred pounds. The fat suit is actually light, however. It’s just incredibly bulky. My goal was to pull a flair in it. As the last of the padding was applied to my body, I was in the mood to throw down.

On the deck of the vert ramp, I looked at Tremaine for my cue. He asked me if I wanted to warm up first. “I don’t know,” I said as I started to roll in. At the same time, Jeff turned to the camera and said, “I just killed Mat Hoffman.” I dove into the flatbottom like an oversized lawn dart. I hit my head, saw stars, blacked out, and gave myself a concussion. The worst part was waiting for me when I woke back up—I’d just rebroken whatever mending had started to take place in my wrist. I couldn’t help but laugh at how stupid it was. I still wanted to do a flair, but I knew it was going to be a long, painful, yet funny night.

Take two. I taped my wrist and strapped on a wrist guard to remobilize it and waddled back to the top of the ramp. I didn’t think I could take another slam that grueling. I had to figure out how to roll in while only able to move one wrist and my toes. I tried a peg stall and pulled it, but I didn’t have the speed to do a flair. I went back up and was ready for another roll-in attempt. This time I lined up with the edge of the ramp. Unable to suck up my bike and body over the lip, I hopped both wheels off the deck at the same time and bunny-hopped onto the transition. I held on but was so stiff I lost all my speed. I worked on pumping high enough to throw a flair, and when I got my height I left the ramp, leaned back, and turned. The next thing I knew I was upside down, holding on, and coming in fast. I hit the flatbottom like a giant sack of garbage. I tried it again, coming closer, but no banana. The plastic bubble wrap was overheating my body, and I was aching and dizzy from my opening slam. I suggested we try the street course, which was another bad idea. I couldn’t even pedal. I wanted a superman and a couple flips over the box jump, but each time I was sent tumbling across the concrete in a ball of chaos. “Let’s save some for tomorrow” were the words I was waiting to hear from the crew. We left the park and went back to catch some rest.