10 of 12

Well, I officially got to ride Birdland 10 of the 12 months this year. I took my first runs on the first day of spring in March and, based on the rain coming down right now and forecast, took my last runs of 09 today. It was pretty spongy out there, but the new jump and turn revision were running fast and smooth. If you've never been a racer, I probably can't describe how awesome it feels to speed jump this roller and carve around this berm, but it is.
The new non-jump makes the S-turn work better too. I love this thing. The first jump in the background there is much bigger now too. I added to the landing again today, making the gap a little smaller but it's also taller, baller.
I took down the bridge as well. It was pretty solid when it was up, but that thing was like a Jenga puzzle. After removing the first ten screws, it was wobbly as hell. I took out one screw from a pallet and one whole side fell on me. I knew that damn thing would take me out, one way or another. It was an eyesore, too.
My new Facebook profile pic.

Bro Model

Here's O.G. Deliverance Teamster Brian Rensberry's "bro model" deck from Merde skateboards. Pretty sweet!
Brian's been living in Portland for the last few years, shreddin' the crete, but he's a Kzoo lifer.

from the clay you were born

and to the clay you shall return....
1909 has been an exercise in letting go of nostalgic attachments. First the Honda, now, the very first jump I built at Birdland. Yesterday, I tore down the "jump into the first turn", which was the very first jump I built out there. It was a fairly big gap but really a non-jump. It messed with a lot of people. I built the berm bigger and and built a big, mellow roller going into it. Maybe we can scrub it. Or maybe it will just fuck everyone up. Either way, it's prolly gonna be a few months before we find out. I was hoping that I would get another session in this week, but today's rain laid a wet blanket on that idea. In the interim, I have MC projects going down.

Totally Stupid

The people at Suzuki are super smart. Even in 1974, those motherfuckers knew what they were doing. I don't want to speak for them, but I'm going to assume they would not be stoked on the mods I've made to one of their products. I've been going at this thing hard for a couple of weeks now. Tonight, at 10:34 pm, I gave myself a deadline of 11:00 to get it started. At roughly 10:59, one good kick produced kind of a cough/backfire. The next hop brought it to life. It's not running great--I'm waiting on an air-filter from Taiwan, but it ran. Now, the question is, what the fuck am I going to do with a 185cc, 2 stroke hard tail chopper?

I want to be a fireman when I grow up...

...which I'm obviously not doing any time soon.

I want to be a fireman when I grow up... from deliverance on Vimeo.

Overtime

We are definitely in overtime, being able to ride trails this late in the year. A handful of dudes came out today and we had a great session. I just finished a new jump that took me the whole time to get over (just weird timing and you have to pedal all the way up to it) but we had a good time. I only managed to get photos of Brian Block, but he is a great subject...
Look at how freakin' high that last one is! And I have never seen a can can that tweaked in my entire life (Josh White maybe). Even on a borrowed bike (mine). Yes, the bridge is still up. I hit it one more time and Dave, who generally is Bo Duke when it comes to that thing, got totally wadded up on his last attempt. A fitting end to a poorly designed hazard.

End notes

Some notes about the video below.
It's Dave dancing in the beginning, not me. Dave also does the feeble grind (one of the first I ever saw performed) and the bottom bracket grind (still amazing to me!), both on a Dyno freestyle frame with a welded on bash guard with skateboard truck copers on the bottom so it would slide. When I do the 360 off the side of the quarterpipe in the one indoor demo, it bent my Bottema forks (this note is for Kim Boyle). I'm riding a Robinson race bike in most of the old clips (favorite bike ever). The bike shop is Verns Sport & Cycle, our family bike shop. Business must have been slow. Dave is wearing a Mr. T mask in the clip where he punches the kid's hat off and dominoes the entire row of brand new bicycles with the skateboard. The half-bar spin and bar spin I do in there are the only ones I've EVER done (besides on a flatland bike). Most of the street riding is from Grand Rapids and some from Kalamazoo. There is footage from three different demos in there. The current footage of me was shot a couple weeks ago, by myself, in the morning, with a tri-pod. The rest of it was shot last Sunday (without a tri-pod, obviously. ha ha). I was 25 in 1990. That clip of Dave jumping the bridge is the last documented footage of the bridge, as it is coming down...