My wheels were in my big, old fashioned suitcase, the kind you carried, with no wheels. I had a box, about half the size of a bike box, that had the rest of my bike in it. When I checked in at the San Jose airport, I told them it was camping equipment, a trick I learned from Skyway pro, Robert Peterson. That saved me the $25 bike fee on the airplane. We could do that back in 1986. My parents dropped me off at San Jose airport, one of those airports where you still had to walk 100 yards out to the airplane to board it. The suitcase had my clothes, and wheels, I think I was running Araya 7X race wheels then, maybe I still had my red ACS Z-Rims, I can't remember. The box contained the rest of my bike. I had $80 in my wallet. The money was made working nights at a Pizza Hut that was just down the road from the Winchester Mystery House. I boarded the plane, and made the short flight down to LAX in Los Angeles. It was dusk, right at the end of July, 1986, when I landed. I was met by three guys, my new co-workers, Andy Jenkins, Craig "Gork" Barrette, and Mark "Lew" Lewman, the editorial staff of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.
Eleven issues of my San Jose Stylin' Xerox zine about the Golden Gate Park/Bay Area BMX freestyle scene, had landed me a job at Wizard Publications, publisher of those magazines. We piled into Gork's van, after handshakes and retrieving my luggage. We talked about freestyle, or something, as Gork drove down PCH, Pacific Coast Highway. PCH is anything but a highway there, it's a surface street, the ocean is not visible most of the time, and there are dozens of stop lights, and plenty of traffic. I don't remember the conversation in the van. I do remember that I was wearing Levi's and a long sleeve, button up shirt. The reason for that is because I was so fucking nervous about my new job, that I developed a serious case of the hives. Then I laid out to tan a couple days before, which apparently makes the hives worse. So I rocked jeans and button up shirts for more than a week, until the hives finally went away.
I had turned 20 years old three weeks earlier. I had never taken a single college course, after graduating from Boise High School in 1984, but I was replacing a guy with and English degree, Don "Don-Boy" Toshach. I would mostly be an assistant to the three other guys in the van, working on both magazines. But I would also be the new proofreader of both magazines. If one single mistake made it into print, in either magazine, it would be my fault. That's part of why I was so nervous. Plus I was just super uptight and anal retentive, and shy, in general. I was still a virgin at 20, and hoped BMX would relieve me of that. It finally did, but it took another year.
It was dark when we got to Torrance, and we didn't go to Gork and Lew's apartment, where I'd be sleeping on the couch for the time being. We went straight to the Wizard office, at 3162 Kashiwa Street, in Torrance. The reason for that is that the BMX Action 10 year anniversary party was that Saturday. They picked me up on Thursday night, and Friday would be my first day of official work.
But Gork parked the van, and the three guys led me into the the small door on the side of the small warehouse. We walked past the legendary TOL halfpipe that R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff had built a year or two before. It was surreal for me.
Only 11 months earlier, I was the dorky kid you see in the photos above. I was the manager of the the Boise Fun Spot, a tiny amusement park in Boise, Idaho. I was one of about 5 BMX freestylers in the Boise area, and half of the only freestyle team in town. Like riders all over the U.S., and a few parts of the world, I waited for every issue of FREESTYLIN' to come in the mail, and I read every fucking word, ads and all, at least twice, the first day each issue arrived. Then I read it again the next morning, usually. The magazines were our only view to the larger world of the weird, new, little sport of BMX freestyle. There was no internet, few videos, and no TV coverage of BMX back then. Suddenly, a year later, on a dark evening in July, I walked into the door of Wizard. By some crazy stroke of fate, my life totally changed in a day. I would be a small part of writing and putting out those magazines that were read anxiously by riders worldwide.
I wound up spending most of that night, sitting six feet off the ground, on a big shelving rack. I helped Gork go through a bike box full of color slides, photos taken during ten years of BMX Action magazine. We needed to find 100 of the best slides, for a slide show to play at the anniversary party. I was clueless on the history of BMX racing, and when I found some interesting slides, I'd show Gork, and he'd school me on who that was, and tell me about them. Slide by slide, I spent my first night learning about th ehistory of BMX racing. Finding photos of "Trash Can" Morgan, jumping in combat boots, was the highlight of the night for me.
About three hours later, we headed back to the apartment, and I made my bed on the couch, and we all headed off to sleep pretty quick. I struggled with feelings of being overwhelmed, would I be able to actually do me new job? I wondered why my my zine had landed me the job. But I was really tired, and I fell asleep pretty quick.
Sometimes we make slow steady progress in life. Sometimes we seem to head backwards, and everything goes wrong for a while. Sometimes we have to struggle to simply survive for a long period of time, and then, suddenly an amazing opportunity comes out of nowhere. That chance gives us the opportunity to show who we really are, and who we are capable of becoming. Either we sack up and take a shot, or we freak out and don't take the opportunity, and spend our lives regretting it. Starting that job at Wizard Publications, that night at the end of July 1986, changed the entire course of my life. And I'm glad I took the job, and took the chance to head off on my own in Southern California. It's been a wild ride since, but that job started me on a real world education I never would have got any other way.
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