A few photos from Ride BMX mag the way they maybe should have been.

Since Harry Main is from England I figure he’s used to dealing with dragons and stuff, but it doesn’t look like he expected to find this one jumping out of a suburban house. This is how he broke his leg in case you were wondering. (Mirra Co ad, Ride #157)

In his interview Kurtis Elwell talks about how its tough to make a living from BMX. Above is the solution! (Zielinski cover photo, Ride #159)

For some reason they totally left out anything about Kurtis’ kung-fu demos. (Zielinski photo, Ride #159)

Forget about blowing out his tire, here Garrett Byrnes blows out a nice veggie powered crop duster on this wall. (Mulligan photo, Ride #157)

Max Gaertig has to know that it would have been way cooler if he had done this 180 whip over the guardrail barefoot and barhopped. (Zielinkski photo, Ride #157)

Based on his Ball Park Frank ad/ interview I guess Ryan Sher really likes wieners. I bet he would like riding one around town too! (Ball Park ad, Ride #159)

Aaron Ross learns the hard way that its not a good idea to try and catch the cannonball shot out of Odyssey’s new giant neon brake lever cannon. (Odyssey Ad, Ride #159)

Make your own… all you need is a Ride mag and eraser…. unless you’re one of those people saving them so you can sell them on ebay 20 years from now.

Erase away some of the photo, then fill in the blanks.

BIO and Bike Check: Up and coming star, Olympia Nelson.

Austin has always been a hot spot for BMX. Since the 80’s it has been producing riders that have changed the face of BMX and I’ve had the privilege of riding with a lot of them. I remember riding with one home grown local before anyone had ever heard of him. Chase Hawk and I rode together at 9th Street when he was 5 years old. I knew instantly he was going to make it big. I’ve always kicked myself for not interviewing him back then… it would be cool to brag that I discovered him and be able to look back and see what he thought his future might hold. With Olympia Nelson I have a chance to make up for that missed opportunity.

Olympia has only been on the Austin scene for about two weeks but already she’s got people talking. I knew the second that I saw her that she was going to be the next big thing. When I heard that she has arrived to town without a bike I immediately set to work custom building her one to her exact specs. Now that she’s all geared up I talked Ride into letting me do an interview and a bike check with what is sure to be one of BMX’s great talents.

Name and Hometown: Olympia Nelson. Austin, Texas.

So this is a pretty unique bike, can you explain what’s going on here?
Well, I really wanted to bridge the gap between skateboarding and BMX. I achieved this by building the bike out of the same materials as a skateboard. Plywood frame and solid urethane wheels. Blending the two genres gives me a head start on the future. Plus, lets seem them throw me out of a public skatepark now!

Why did you chose to have the bike built without pedals or a drive train?
There’s a few other people experimenting with that kind of thing now so I can’t really take credit it for it. I think that if you really know how to ride then you just don’t need those things. I wanted create the absolute lightest bike that I could and pedals, chain, sprockets all just seemed like unneeded weight. When I ride vert and skateparks I don’t ever pedal anyway, thats just bad style… Its all in the pump!

Speaking of weight, at only 5 pounds  and 1 ounce this is the lightest bike I’ve ever heard of. Don’t you think the light bike thing has gone a little too far?
Well, you have to remember that I only weigh like 10 pounds. Its easier to go higher if you don’t have to move as much mass.  I’m just taking advantage of available technologies to make riding more fun for me.

What else is special on the bike?
Its all pretty stock really… I guess I have a little phobia about breaking front axles so even though I was trying hard to save weight on the bike I decided to go with a bigger 1/2″ axle instead of those sketchy 3/8″ ones that everyone else uses.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think that sometimes people don’t take bikes with smaller wheels seriously. I mean, I’ve seen little kids doing back flips on 16″ bikes and I just kind of think it looks silly. I have a hard time comparing what they’re doing to what pros are doing on normal 20″ wheel BMX bikes. How do you deal with that potential bias in our sport?
The fact that you feel that way shows how outdated and out of touch you are. In 2008  85% of all BMX bikes were sold to so called “little kids” under the age of 12. BMX’s are “little kid’s” bike by definition and they include bikes with 8″,  12″, 16″ , 20″ and even 24″ wheels. Nothing bigger then 24″ though, that’s the line. For some reason anything bigger then 24″ is decidedly not BMX. To be honest I don’t think it should matter what size wheels your bike has. You know? If I do a 15 foot air on a vert ramp its a 15 foot frickin’ air! Doesn’t matter what you’re on… 15 feet would be impressive on a damned Segway! Personally I think the little bike gives me a bit of an advantage. Like when you see me jump the Mega-ramp it looks like I’m going sooo huge just because I’m on a smaller bike then everyone else. Its kind of like an optical illusion kind of thing. Another bonus is that because its smaller I can whip it around easier then a big bike. I could probably do a front flip bunny hop on this thing… its amazing!

K-Rob’s going to have his work cut out for him in 2010. Rumors of quintuple front flip no-footed can can one-handers are already buzzing.

So what does the future hold in store for you?
Well, I’m trying to keep an open mind about the future. I’m only 2 weeks old so I really still have a lot of options left. First thing I have to do is just work on my motor skills. I’m still having some trouble getting my arms and hands to do what I want them to do, also, I can’t quite figure out what I’m seeing a lot of the times. Its just like coming back from a big injury you know… it just takes some time and some work, but I’ll get there.

Once I’m up on my feet I guess I’ll probably head out to Woodward for some foam pit training. Of course I have tailwhips mastered but it will be good to work out some of the contest bangers like triple flips and 1080 whips and my secret show stopper called the Wallet Stuffer. After that, I don’t know… I guess the usual Dew Tour stops, X-Games and maybe some commercial stunt work too. To be honest, a lot of its up to my agent and who pays the best.

Olympia Nelson Bike Check.

Frame: Custom built 9″ frame. Constructed entirely out of 3/4″ oak plywood. It has a good stiff feel, but is still very light.

Fork: I don’t want to say we ripped off Odyssey’s Director fork design, but lets just say I’m glad they helped me out with components and that they are on my side.

Headset: Two 1/4″ galvanized fender washers.

Stem: Four bolt gooseneck/ titanium drywall screw system.

Seat: Odyssey T-shirt wrapped around an old knee pad and super glued to the frame. I think BMX is all about not having a seat post… c’mon, this is a trick bike, we’re not riding the Tour De France here. Lower the flag pole grandpa, you lost the war!

Grips: None. We were really trying to save weight with this bike so we skipped the grips. They’re really kind of unnecessary to tell you the truth.

Wheels: 6 inch by 1.5 inch wheels from a lawn mower. They are really fast and light. 1/2″ through axles front and rear; Its not worth skimping on safety.

Brakes: No way!! So 1990! Its all full speed ahead at all times.

Gyro: Yeah right. I like my bike to look smooth, not like a spaghetti factory exploded out of my head tube.

Pegs: None: I like to push myself to think out of the ordinary. Having no pegs makes me have to think of new and different ways to grind. Its really a good exercise in creativity.

Any last words?
Thanks a lot for the interview and look forward to seeing you all out shredding. You probably won’t see me ’cause I like to keep my stuff fresh and under wraps until the big comps, but I will see you!

Someone suggested I put together a post of all my old video parts. It seemed like too much work until recently when a few of the more obscure titles got posted by someone else. Joe Rich helped me rip the few old VHS titles that weren’t already available and I posted them on Youtube. And, don’t worry, I was sure to get permission from the owners of the videos first. So, thanks Primo, Fox, Etnies, Props, Anthem, Hoffman Bikes and everyone else. I’m terrible with dates and I don’t even own a VCR to try and figure out when some of these were made. If you happen to know I would be grateful for the info. It’d be cool to put together an actual timeline as some of these may be out of order. I’m thinking that this post will be updated periodically as I find more old videos or new ones or get more information on the videos.

Its also got me thinking how much I would like to see some full archives of some other riders. Jay Miron, Mat Hoffman, and many others would have amazing histories to watch in chronological order. That’d be a good Ride Magazine article too, a timeline with highlights from every BMX video they could think of. Be cool to see who did what first and how other riders bridged off the previous videos riding.

-A Few Good Men. For some reason I think this video came out before Happy Days, but I’m not actually sure. This is the first video effort by the guys who later started Props. Oh how video editing technology has changed. I used to think wearing a Santa Claus hat was really cool… I’m actually serious.

Taj Mihelich - “Happy Days” from Krt Schmidt on Vimeo.

-Standard Bikes, Happy Days. This kind of makes me think I should have gotten a Vimeo account… or maybe I’m doing something wrong on Youtube. The quality looks way better on Vimeo, huh? Thanks to Krt Schmidt for posting this.

-Dirty Deeds. When I moved to Austin in 93 or 94 or whatever James Shepard just sort of started taking me out riding and bringing a video camera. I never really understood what I was filming for, but it ended up being such an honor to be in a Dave Parrick video from back in the day. The long rail at the end sits right in the center of UT’s campus here in Austin and is actually curvered but the cameras lens makes it so you can’t tell. Such a bust now!

-Poorboy, Heavy Metal Thunder. To be entirely honest I was always a little embarrassed by this video part. It was one of those parts where my friends just got kind of scabbed it together out of footage from us riding and contests. Not a very serious part since I rode for UGP instead of Poorboy. Pretty funny clip of me falling on the deck of a ramp and mashing poor Mel Cody’s groceries though.

-Props Interview Issue #4. This is an interview I had in Props #4. Not quite sure when this is from, but its probably before you were born. I still get embarrassed watching this… so corny.

-Hoffman Bikes, Madd Matt. I think it was a week after I got on Hoffman Bikes that this video was due so we were really in a rush. Still, for just a few days filming I remember thinking it turned out ok.

-UGP, Face Value. These were my rail days I guess. My favorite part of this video is the first clip. At the bottom of the rail is Pete Augustin making sure I don’t flip over the edge. Pete was so cool to ride with and he acted as my coach for some of this video. I still remember him telling me, “You don’t have to do what everyone else does, you can do stuff they can’t think of”.