March 16th, 1996 – The Miracle Boy & Wildman Roughing It

Tue, Apr 1, 2008

Days of the Wildman

Actual Journal Entry:
Woke up real early with Melissa. She dropped me off at the LAX & I flew to Brownsville, Texas. Got in at 5pm & drove to South Padre Island for the ESPN “Destination Extreme” Freestyle Contest. I got there & hooked up with Dave Mirra & the Hoffman Bikes crew. We went to their room & drank & hung out. Then the whole crew walked to a huge club. There were people everywhere (It’s Spring Break here). But it was mostly full of lame “jock” types. We walked back & Mirra & I tried to sneak into the Hoffman crew’s hotel but security chased us out. Funny. So we walked back to the car & slept in it. I slept in the trunk & Dave slept in the back seat. The trunk wasn’t too bad to sleep in, actually.

Looking Back Now:
Yeah! Spring Break freestyle contest in South Padre Island! Any freestyle contest at a spring break location right on the beach was always a guaranteed good time. How about the name of the contest? “Destination Extreme” Man, that sounds so cheesy. I remember seeing Tony Hawk skate at this contest. I thought he was only an old school 80′s skater. But after a few years of winning the X-Games, he quickly became one of the action sports richest dudes.

Dave Mirra & I were both sponsored by Haro in the mid 90′s. I’m not quite sure why we didn’t have a room reserved this night. I guess the Haro budget was a little slim. But it’s kind of funny that we actually slept in our rental car. It’s safe to say that I haven’t slept in the trunk of a car since then and I can only assume that Mirra hasn’t slept in the back seat in quite a while. We did have a hotel for the rest of out trip. I think Mirra went on to win the contest. And I went on to crash a whole bunch in my runs & didn’t qualify to the finals. But I did score a photo on the cover of BMX Plus doing a handplant over a handrail. That’s right. A handplant back in the mid 90′s. I pulled my first one back in 1991.

Phototodd_1-752383
Ramp to ramp flair transfer? If you would’ve seen all the bikini clad girls in the stands, you would’ve done some wild stuff too!

1 Comments For This Post

  1. King of Pipeline Says:
    March 23rd, 2009 at 12:47 am

    That handplant is still stoke. Weird how easy they do them now. But that trick still blows my mind.. Hard to keep feet on the pedals. Allistar Whitton does them with ease. I remember watching that contest on tv.. I still have it taped.. Mirra was the man..