It was after little league football practice one fall evening at Stemmers Run Middle School, which was probably still called "Junior High" at that point. My 8 year old self was walking through the parking lot waiting for my mom to pick me up, and boom, there it was. I remember the exact spot where my whole life changed. (See red X below.)
Right where the X is, there was a large pile of dirt which may have been there to spread on the baseball fields, or it may have been there to help create the foundation for the yet to be built concession stand. Regardless of what it was there for, some of the local older kids, about high school age, had packed down a path straight up the middle, and one of them headed towards it a decent clip of speed.
He was riding a black Mongoose with yellow Tuff Wheels, Most likely the bike started out looking just like this:
In a zillionth of a second I was able to imprint the entire bike to memory. The reflectors had been removed, as well as the chain guard. Also the bike did not have the "single" stem that is seen in the picture, it had a Mongoose Double Stem...
with some kind of unidentifiable chrome aftermarket handlebars. They could have been Redline Microline bars because they definitely had a "V" crossbar but I am not sure if those bars were made that early on (1979). It also had a yellow padded seat which was a little more racey than the one in the pic.
All of this visual data locked into my braincells as the rider wooshed past and the next few seconds changed everything. When he hit that dirt pile, he flew up in the air higher than I had ever seen a bicycle jump, and he styled out just a touch of a cross-up, and landed perfectly, with the rear wheel hitting just a touch before the front, absorbing the impact with his knees instead of slamming down with wreckless abandon.
The SOUND of what had just happened had almost as much impact on me as what I saw. When he rode past me on the approach to the jump, the bike didn't make a single noise. When he landed the jump, it was also totally silent.
Now, I had seen BMX bikes before in my favorite magazine "Minicycle / BMX Action", which was half devoted to the tiny motorcycles for kids, styled to look like their full size brethren that were a big trend in the late 70's (I had an Italjet 50cc), and half devoted to BMX which was an upstart sport that the publishers didn't deem worthy of a full magazine yet. And like a lot of kids at that time, I spent a zillion hours ripping around the local motorcycle trails on my minicycle when it was working. But when it wasn't I'd join in with the gaggle of kids on bicycles pedaling their asses off trying to emulate what we saw the bigger kids doing on their full size YZ80's and RM125's, and all of the awesome 2 strokes that the local hoodlums used.
This meant that we were using our Western Auto or Huffys or Murrays or equivalent non-bike shop bikes, and let me tell you, they sounded like pieces of shit. First off the chains were usually so loose that they would rattle against the (also very loose) chain guard several times every pedal stroke. Also, after lots of hard landings, the built in kickstand would not stay up, so you would get a big "clunk" every time the crank would smack into the it as it hung down. Various other parts would be loose or broken, contributing to the noises. The sum of all this was that our cheapo bikes made a cacophony not unlike an Einstürzende Neubauten song as we hurled ourselves over jumps to wrecklessly slammed, barely hanging on landings.
So when I saw/heard that Mongoose make no noise at all, and saw the kid launch so high and far that it seemed like different gravitational laws applied, I knew I had to have a REAL bike. I knew that I needed a bike with that level of precision. I haven't and couldn't accept anything less ever since.
The next day I got rid of the chaingaurd, reflectors, and kickstand on the bike I had at the time. I started checking out books on bike repair from the local public library and learned all kinds of valuable info that has served me well to this day. Once my bike got quieter I found that I was jumping better and doing longer, more stylish powerslides, and basically reaping the psychological benefits you get when you feel like your gear is dialed in.
It would take a few years after that, and lots of struggling, to convince my folks that I needed a REAL BMX bike. When I finally got one, it opened a whole other realm of opportunity and fun, which I'll save for another post.
