- = The Tour Diary = -

Alrighty. I’m sitting at the Phoenix airport typing this, awaiting my connecting flight to Burbank after another successful run of shows for the Darryl Starbird’s Car Show. This time we were in Oklahoma City. It was almost one month to the day that we started in Wichita for the same show and it was all too familiar as we had to fly into Wichita and drive to OKC due to our freebee plane passes only flew there. No big deal, we stored the ramps in Wichita so they had to be picked up there anyways.

So, after a 4 ½ hour wait at the lovely Wichita Mid Continental, Bob Kohl and Billy Gawrych pulled up in the van. The first funny event happened almost immediately, as we were greeted by a man we now know as "Kenny Kidwell", a taxi driver who saw the bikes and remembered he used to ride. This character of a man started riding Billy’s bike around in true cabby fashion, pausing only to pull a gnarly pop a wheelie. Jason Richard pulled out his video camera and got some footage of this legendary athlete. I tried to do a mock interview with him and asked him to talk about his life as a BMX’er, he panicked when he thought he’d be on TV, started laughing hysterically ran off yelling " I drive a cab for a living, I need to get to work!" Thus, the unfortunate end of Kenny Kidwell.

We set up on a Thursday for a 3 day weekend run at the Myriad Convention Center. This car show a was a bit smaller than Wichita, but the set up went much faster as we had all the masonite and stuff, ready and pre-drilled from last time. The surface was pretty smooth, plastic/wood type sheets that were put over an ice rink…so, it got pretty damn cold in there.

We had barely enough room to land, the set up was the same, an 8 foot tall ¼ pipe, 41/2 foot tall launch box and a 4 foot spine. We had about an 8 foot aisle, that was about 8 feet from the landing ramp, with vintage polished cars surrounding every where we looked. The car owners needless to say were freaked out, thinking we would smash up there prized possessions, but no worries… only thing that happened was a small mishap to a barrier and a bike dude named Joe.

Another added bonus to this trip was the Hoffman Bike factory was near by, which included an extremely wide 13 foot tall vert ramp, compete with a 23 foot roll in, foam pits on both sides and even a resi. Time to try some new tricks for all. Sessions got thrown down in between shows, after shows and we even stayed an extra day to ride. BMX superstars Jimmy Walker and Koji Kraft were in town as well, to practice along side some of our team, Bob Kohl and Joe Tecca, for some upcoming X-Trials events.

The shows went flawless, highlights include Bob Kohl’s (BMX) amazing no handed back flips, Jason Richard’s (In Line) 540’s and ankle scraper back flip, Joe Tecca’s (BMX) signature big airs, Billy Gawrych’s (BMX) kaotic flatlanding and I even pulled a few Madonna’s on the ¼ pipe and sal flipped the spine. Also, Art Thomason (BMX) drove up from Texas to ride in our last show Friday night and all on Saturday. Art ruled the flatland as usual and blew ‘em away with his technical style.

So, another fun road trip, with any luck we will be back to terrorize car show people in Wichita and Oklahoma City next year! Thanks to Scott and OKC Skate shop (LINK) for hanging out and supporting us all!

= Jeff Ferris