Blast from the past

A few months ago Ryan Corrigan was working out in LA building the ramps for the X Games Superpark contest. He spent many days in the X Games warehouse and while there he stumbled upon an old Hoffman Bikes Taj bike that looked exactly like mine. He brought home pictures of it and we both racked our brains trying to figure out how one of my old bikes could have ended up there.

On a recent trip I got to stop by the warehouse and low and behold there was an old bike of mine straight out of 1996! I had no idea how it ended up there, but there was no mistaking it. It had my old sponsor’s UGP and Airwalk stickers in all my usual places, and they were hand cut out to fit the bike in a way that only I could have done sitting bored somewhere in the winter. Something wasn’t quite right about it though and although the frame was for sure mine, I wasn’t sure about the rest of the bike. 

After some hunting I found out that the bike was actually Steve Swope’s. Apparently I gave him the frame after only riding it for a short while. He thought that my bikes were pretty good, so he set his bike up to be more or less identical to what I was running. 

Here’s a shot Jeff Z found of me riding almost the exact bike from sometime back in the 1900’s. Its funny to think that we used to use 46 tooth sprockets on BMX bikes. It looks like a freaking spare wheel.

And for comparison, my modern day bike. It probably ways 15 pounds less then old bike and is way more sweet.