Todd Lyons.com

Actual Journal Entry:
I Rode to work at GT. During the day, I had a meeting with Todd Huffman & Big E. Huffman liked the proposal that Big E gave him about me riding a Fueler & me being sponsored by GT. But Rich Long (owner of GT) is out of town “˜tll next week. So I won’t know for sure until then. He said I could put the bike together and “test” it. So I stayed until 7pm building the bike with Big E. It’s fresh. It’s got brand new everything! I rode it home & left my Supercross bike there. Later John Povah picked me up & we went to the P.O.W. house. There was a little party there, but it wasn’t that great.”

Looking Back Now:
I worked at GT Bikes in Huntington Beach for most of 1993. I was a driver/gopher who just ran errands & drove around and picked up & dropped off all kinds of miscellaneous stuff. Not really a truck driver. I mainly drove a van. And when there wasn’t any driving to do, I helped out in the warehouse. Or I took the vans to get washed. Yeah, it was a chill job.

It seemed like every BMXer from Orange County worked at GT at one time or another. This job at GT was the last job I had, before my current job that I have now at SE Bikes And if memory serves me correct, I made a whopping $4.45 an hour. I never would have guessed back then that I would go the next 10+ years of my life without having a “œreal” job.

The Fueler bike was GT’s first ever “dirt jump” bike. It seemed so weird back then to hear the word “dirt jump bike.” Yeah, S&M was in full swing back then making frames, but I think GT was the first to make & market a complete bike specifically for dirt jumping.

The sponsorship proposal stated that they would pay for a lot of my expenses to get me to races & jump contests. I was pretty psyched seeing as Supercross was barely paying my entries. The only thing I ever remember hearing from Supercross was “The check is in the mail.” “Yeah right, sure it is”

Photo
During my short stint with GT, I rode in one freestyle contest. It was up on Nor Cal & I took the win in the expert class. Yeah, that’s right. I won and I was wearing a Dyno open face helmet!