Well I have to admit I find it a little bit hard to come up with new content when I’ve spent the last few weeks doing nothing but laying down watching TV. So unless you wanted to hear my opinions on network TV shows or how shitty it is to pay medical bills all I can come up with is this: an iPhoto clean-out post. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted most of these photos at one point or another over at T-1, but as a lot of them are years and years old and I can’t actually remember. I took a scroll from top to bottom through my iPhoto library and pulled out ones that caught my eye for one reason or another…. here you go….

This is one of Kimler’s babies. The pacifier is so disturbing to me and it makes me giggle uncomfortably. The shirt reads, “Hung Like a 5 year old”.

This is me and the ring bearer at my friend Bryan’s wedding. He made us matching embroidered goat shirts too.

You have to love Povah… he’s always down for a laugh.

Texting and driving is dangerous, but what about focusing and shooting photos? I don’t think there’s any laws yet anyway.

This was my trip to Berlin. Tiny little slice in my shin that would not stop bleeding. Had to get it burned closed.

German Chinese food is sketchy.

Shovel art at trails on Vancouver Island.

Sandy and I humiliating ourselves.

This was a show in England where Black Sabbath played to like 150,000 people! I got knocked the hell out on the ramp and lost some memory.

Mutiny sent this for a birthday card a few years ago. Check me out fufanuing that tower!

Dave Fiemuth at the center of everyone’s attention at one of the Backyard Jams.

Sergio’s manualing in the background, but this little kid is slidding down a cement quarter on his stomach. He must be made out of nails ’cause that cememnt was rough.

Roscoe looks understandably mortified because I had just hacked the head off a stuffed dog about his size. Used it for the head on my halloween Roscoe bike.

Gary Young getting tweaked during our X-games ramp warehouse photo shoot.

Parrick at Empire discovering he has the power of the palm.

This is pretty much hands down the best bruise I’ve ever seen!

I built these curved floor risers in my little condo and I thought they looked cool.

I was really bummed to miss out on the annual trip over to Cologne for the worlds this year.

Eduardo is in the top 3 for toughest guy on a bike.

While in Cologne I managed to catch this strange event; naked girl writhing around on top of a box jump while skateboarders and BMXers jumped through her legs on normal TV.

Garrett Byrnes…

And Garrett Byrnes bike box…(remember how the old T-1 Garrett frames had the welded on seat?).

A good moment behind T-1. Lucero on the ramp for the 2nd or 3rd time. Always a good way to bring the Austin family together for a night.Bass player is up chilling on the deck on the left side of the photo.

Sandy and me as little rodent kids.

Jamie McParland rocks some freestyle segwaying.

The mini in Van’s garage was so absurd. Jason Enns and John Heaton try to figure it out.

The big wheels we had at T-1 were so fun! Kort and Sheps putting them through their paces.

Neil and Roscoe enjoyig the ride.

The orginal incarnation of the T-1 ramp was so simple.

Thanks to Ryan Corrigan and Paul Buchanan the first big change materialized.

Man, that fresh Hemp-Lite Skatelite on the back section used to look so clean! Over the years its weathered and looks the same as the normal stuff.

Ron Kimler looking pretty 70’s with the hair-do.

Sophie was a cat who lived at the office and hated Roscoe.

I was staying out at Woodward West all alone one off season when there was a knock at my door late at night. When I opened the door this guy was there.

This is one of my favorite Roscoe photos… he’s the blur on the right in the middle of a half flip frisbee catch.

I miss having a film camera for moments like this. There’s something about film that digital just doesn’t capture huh?

What looks like a blurry mess is actually the brightest northern lights display I’ve ever seen. Somewhere in Wisconsin.

Roscoe wallride at height.

I don’t have any good drawings or photos to go with this post, so how about a true story from yesterday typed out in green italics…

Had a nice relaxing memorial weekend and hope all you did too, or at least I hope you rode bikes a bunch and it was awesome. I watched a lot of TV and drank beer. Not sure if this is an appropriate back therapy, but it was peaceful enough.

We were on the edge of the woods and Roscoe and Monty were chilling. As usual Monty was sniffing around to see what he could find…

I’ve been getting lots of letters with ideas for my back so thats been good. Tom Stober wrote me back and it sounds like he is in a similar situation to me. On going issues with his back and contemplating getting the fusion surgery. Basically they “fuse” a couple of your vertebrae together to resolve the issue of the crushed disc in between them. The disc is what flexs around and allows your back to bend. On the x-rays it looks just like the little donut part in a skateboard truck and honestly kind of works the same way. However, when you explode it they don’t really heal on their own, and put pressure on your spinal cord. Or, like in my case, allow your vertebrae to touch each other. That pressure can cause incredible pain or make a leg or part of your body not work right. In my case the pain is not super intense (though it sucks) but I loose all the strength in my lower back. Tom’s had a number of epidural shots to help ease the pain and help speed up the healing of the inflammation. This is usually done with cortizone/ corticosteriod shots. These aren’t the kind of steroids that make you big and strong (Tom just works out a lot), but they can help in healing and reducing inflammation (i’ve had it in pills a few times during my annual poison ivy allergic reaction). They always make me really grumpy and stressed. There’s some serious consideration for long term side affects as well, so you don’t want to go this route too many times. And jeeze, needles in the spine sounds gnarly!

Suddenly from the edge of the trees a tiny little baby deer sprinted out and with knobby knees and all leapt right over little Monty.

Ben Ward from Odyssey gave me a call to let me know that Rich Hirsch actually didn’t have the fusion surgery (as I reported last post) but had a different thing. Ben thought it was something where they removed a part of the disc that was pressing the spinal cord. I imagine that means they removed the little blown out part that would be creating pressure? I don’t know. Also got a number of doctor recommendations from different people for all over North America, so thanks everyone for the help!

All this happened unbeknownst to Roscoe who had his own business to attend to. The baby deer saw his opportunity and aimed his attack.

I figure when it comes to wisdom in BMX there’s few who could offer better advice then Brian Foster so I’ll include his text to me in full. He wrote: “I say all bodily pain can be cured by stretching your hamstrings. Figured the opinion of one more “specialist” couldn’t hurt. Good luck.” I agree that is good advice for all BMXers and we should all take it to heart. Because we are always pushing down with our legs our quads tend to get overly strong, but the opposing muscle doesn’t get anywhere near as developed. The result can be a tendency for your lower back to arch a little bit more than its supposed to and pelvis to tilt down. That’s true in my case and doing situps and stretching hamstrings is the best way I can come up with to relieve the stress on my spine (and relieve some of the pressure by better aligning my spine).

Blammm! The baby deer charged with all his speed and might right into the side of poor old Roscoe’s head.

I have an appointment with a back specialist/ orthopedic spinal surgeon on friday. Going to go over all my mri’s and x-rays to figure out what he thinks we can do. I hope he seems cool and can convince me he knows what’s best to do. Thanks again everyone for all the help.

Poor Roscoe was left dazed and confused (but unhurt since the deer was hardly the size of a cat). As he watched his attacker skamper off into the woods he wondered why baby deers were such little bastards.

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”.

-Anthem. Ok, first off, Stew Johnson (Anthem’s creator) is not really into his video being online. He is however planning to release a remastered version that will come with his upcoming Anthem 2 release. I can’t wait. I ride around Austin and see the spots the Sean Burns has destroyed for that video and I know its going to be amazing! Anyway, I talked to Stew into letting me post my part from Anthem for some food. He really is a push over if you know how to work him. When I watch this video I can tell how heavy those old bikes were. Looks like I’m working so hard.

-Hoffman Bikes, When Monkeys Fly. Monkey boy????? I seriously don’t know what to say about this. Monkey boy! Clips cut off in the middle of tricks I’m obviously not going to pull. Monkey boy! If only you could have been there (to stop us).

-Primo, Made In Taiwan. I got to be in another Dave Parrick video here which is always a treat. I always liked this part and the song by Team Dresch. 9th street is so small. The funniest part is the shot where I land a tailwhip and for a split second my back tire pulls my pants down.

-Fox, Expendable Youth 2. There was a few Expendable videos, but this is the only one I had a real part in. Pretty good fun… makes me miss the east coast trails thats for sure.

-Etnies, Forward. This was probably the most focused video part I’ve ever had. Dave Parrick behind the lens again and the quality shows (when you aren’t watching it on crappy ole’ youtube).

-Etnies, Forward Roscoe bonus video. On the DVD release of Forward Parrick wanted to have as much bonus footage as possible. There is some really good stuff on there too including a re-edit of Rueben’s part and a much longer Edwin part. We filmed this little short of Roscoe and me all on real film. And, I always feel compelled to point out that we used a stunt (stuffed) dog for all the dangerous parts.

-Terrible One, You Get What You Get. This isn’t technically my part in the video since the video didn’t really have parts, but I’m playing bass in the whole section and I have the last 20 seconds of footage or so.

-Joe’s Etnies Commercial. Joe Rich made this Etnies commercial of me but it never got used. I guess some of the clips got used for a different commercial, but this is the only one I can find. Joe has really has a good eye like Dave Parrick for making bike riding look as cool as it feels.

Etnies Grounded Taj Mihelich - watch more skate, snow, surf, and moto videos

-Etnies, Grounded. This was a really hard video part to film. Injuries and bad luck and bad timing seemed to plague this video. Ruben Alcantara managed to put together one of the most epic video parts ever though for his Grounded section. My part is laid back but I think it has a decently fun feel to it so I’m happy with it.

-Odyssey Electronical

Ray’s Odd Couple Video