News / BMX

The bicycle has been such a huge force in changing the world, yet its history is not commonly known and the impact of the bicycle can not be understated. The first roads were paved for the bicycle, cycling played an enormous part in the liberation of women, began the modern day assembly line manufacturing process years before Henry Ford,  and made personal transportation possible for the masses. Today Fairdale will begin an exhaustive several part series that will expose and explain the wonderful history of bicycling. Many hours of preparation and fact checking have gone into this informative series, we hope you enjoy.

One of the earliest known representations of the bicycle stem from drawings found in Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts. Orginally dated at 1493 the drawings were later believed to be faked.

Apparently the Leonardo was not actually designing a bicycle at all, he was simply trying to ease the laborious margarita making process with a motorized blender. Similar to the modern day Fender Blender above.

Oddly enough the first bicycle like device ever developed was created by accident. The legendarily well endowed Sir Edmund Hillary of Scotland commissioned a designer in 1825 to help him support his weighty man hood while walking. The designer misunderstood the written instructions and instead of a “loins” supporting device on wheels that was ordered he (through great pains) created a wheeled “lion” supporting device. Thus the first bicycle device was actually created for a large cat.  Eventually the mistake was corrected and Sir Edmund did indeed find the support he needed to carry on an ordinary life.

“Lions” or  Sir Edmund’s famous “Loins”. The bicycle can support them all.

The Smart Feller from 1829. This odd contraption was another early attempt to create the bicycle.

1835, this two person Segway never really caught on because everyone made fun of these guys for being on a Segway.

Camp Woodward X-games training camp opens its doors in 1858 to great popularity.

1880: One of the earliest known photos of Captain James Alibaster Fairdale, our namesake. His relentless attempts to ride his bicycle through the arctic tundra in hope of reaching the north pole are legendary. Despite repeated failures his indomitable spirit lives on today.

1885: An almost forgotten fact of history;  long before the Pope had an armored Pope-Mobile he would ride to battle against the devil on a specially designed bicycle.

1890: Bicycle shop employees have been playing the try-to-get-the-new-guy-to-smell-the-seat joke for over a century.

Because the Boneshaker bikes of the late 1800’s were so dangerous some company actually patented a handle bar that would fly off on impact freeing the riders legs so he could elegantly jump to safety. Seriously!

Few people know what a street shredder Dennis McCoy used to be. Here he pulls one of the first documented rails in 1896. Photo from BMX Plus!’ 32nd issue.

Bicyclists would often fight each other for rights to a smooth roadway. Not unlike today’s flatland riders and their rolling knife fighting battles over the center of that circle.

A women’s bicycle race from 1898. Until this point women had been forbidden to show their legs in anyway. The freedom of transportation created by the bicycle was irresistible to women of the age and quickly brought about a massive revolution in women’s freedoms.

Photo from 1899: A mere one year  after the women’s cycling revolution had begun and women all over the world were dressing like this so be more comfortable while cycling.

People often compare skateboarding to bicycling and debate which is better. Although it is true that skateboarding has given us the pop shuv-it and will someday give us the hover board, there is no match for the things cycling has given us. To top that list is with the advancing freedom and women’s liberation it has given the world the bikini. “Bikini” is even derived from the word “biking”.

The photo above from 1910 shows the now common place outfit we are all used to seeing women wearing while cycling. The bikini. Created in an effort to making bicycling more comfortable for women.

1894: Fixed gear hipster chick poses with her bike while smoking. Somethings never change….

Oh man, blast from the past number 2. There was a time (Jan 22, 1997 to be exact according to the date on this fax) that I really was not a fan of the then new trend of riding motocross full face helmets visorless. Ha… seems hilarious to me that this was faxed. Didn’t have the internet then… but I could still send stupid drawings electronically. Faxes and pagers…. 1990s!!

Anyway, Mat responded to my previous post about the stunt-doubling in the comments. He also emailed me this old drawing I sent him when I heard the terrible news that he had stopped riding with a helmet visor. Can’t believe he saved this… love that guy!

In honor of Mat Hoffman’s new documentary I was remembering some stories.

I don’t think many people can claim this, but its true that I was once (twice actually) Mat Hoffman’s stunt double. Back in the 90’s when I rode for Hoffman Bikes Mat got a few offers to do some TV commercials. Around that time was more or less the peak of my vert riding career and it also just so happened that I wore the same size clothes and shoes as Mat. That made me a perfect stand in for Mat… but stunt double? Well, that’s what the commercial people called me.

TV commercials are usually shot in a hurry. It takes so much money to have all that film equipment, lighting and crew on hand, so they try to get all the filming done as fast as possible. There’s so much pressure on those 2 or 3 days of shooting they can’t risk something happening to Mat and then having to shut down the shoot. So, they need a stunt double just in case.

Hollywood is f-in weird. I don’t know how people could be into acting… even that little bit of being in that world that I had turned my stomach. Well… I’ll keep my opinions to myself I guess but it seemed like I ran into every stereotypical Hollywood character you could imagine. Smoozers, losers, druggies, hanger’s on, and crazy ego douche bag directors.

I actually watched the hip young director (straight from MTV) meltdown and scream at his assistant, ” I don’t pay you to think, I pay you to do!!). It was nuts… Maybe, lets hope, on films with higher artistic value then TV commercials people aren’t so shitty to each other.

On set it was mostly sitting around for Mat and I. Even more so for me since I was never the main talent. We would just wait and wait and then someone would come running for us needing us to ride right away. On one commercial I was really bored. Sitting around for almost an entire 12 hour day. I was itching to do something. Also they had me set up on a pay schedule where I got paid a base rate to be there, another rate if they asked me to ride, and and even higher rate (and residuals) if they used footage of me in the commercial. When they finally called me out I was charged to ride. Mat had just landed a 7 or 8 foot high tailwhip on vert and they asked me if I could do that. I kind of could, or, I could only do downside whips and I had never really tried them quite that high. They threw me on the ramp and off I went. Trying downside whips the highest I had ever done and eating shit!!! I pulled maybe 4 out of 20 and was getting my ass kicked. I was exhausted and beat quick but I kept getting up and trying more and more. On a particularly hard crash I knocked my head and slid across the flat bottom on my stomach. I laid there catching my breath with my head ringing when I heard the director say, “Ok, we got the lights set, bring out Mat.”

Ha! All they had needed me to do was normal airs so they could focus and set the lighting.

On another commercial shoot they filmed Mat for what seemed like hours. They just kept asking him to do the same thing over and over. He was finally so exhausted he had to stop riding. The director was clearly frustrated but we couldn’t understand why. In typical Mat fashion he was going way higher and riding way better then he could have ever needed to. Finally the director came over to us and explained that he had been waiting for Mat to crash. It was part of his plan to have an amazing slow motion shot of Mat slamming. Mat was shocked. “Look, if I crash you can film it, but I’ve spent my life trying not to crash. I’m not going to do it on purpose and I don’t want you to make it look like bike riding is all about crashing.” The director argued with him for a bit, but Mat wasn’t budging. There was going to be no on purpose crashes. They asked me too, but if Mat wouldn’t do it I sure as hell wasn’t going to. We took our break and went to lunch.

When we walked back into the studio what we saw was fantastically comical. There was a “real” stuntman (who had never ridden a bike) wearing Mat’s clothes standing on the top of a 12 foot ladder on top of a vert ramp. He had Mat’s bike in his hands and he was preparing to jump into the ramp to his doom. He was visibly shaking.

Mat shut that down quick and the stuntman was understandably relieved to not have done that stunt. I think later on Mat finally did crash and so everyone was happy. I don’t believe that they ever used the crash footage anyway.

I think I’m going to put on a premier for Mat’s documentary here in Austin. I don’t quite have a date worked out, but stay tuned.

First up this weekend we got the Vclub video premier.

Check it out here: http://do512.com/event/2010/04/24/vclub-ftsv-video-premiere

And then, Sandy Carson and I have been playing bike polo which is lots of fun (and doesn’t seem to require too much back strength so I can actually play sometimes).

A few random Polo events here:

Bike Polo Mallet Building Party

http://do512.com/event/2010/04/26/bike-polo-mallet-building-party

Hardcourt Bike Polo (Sunday)
http://do512.com/event/weekly/sun/hardcourt-bike-polo

Hardcourt Bike Polo (Thursday)
http://do512.com/event/weekly/thu/hardcourt-bike-polo

South Side Bike Polo
http://do512.com/event/weekly/tue/south-side-bike-polo

Thanks to the power of science and design we will soon be able to introduce a fantastic new product. What gel seats, suspension and even recumbot bikes can’t do the Back-A-Ratus can. The Back-A-Ratus will once and for all eliminate all lower back stress from bicycle riding by safely and comfortably removing all stress to the area. A carbon fiber support rod lifts all of the riders weight in the ever crucial lumbar area. Back-A-Radical!

It seems that as BMX increasingly becomes more and more technical many riders are feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty. At the same time it seems like many young rider are making it all look just too easy. Today Fairdale introduces two new concepts to solve both problems.

First up is the Nose-Peg nosewheelie learning device. We took the normal axle peg and fitted it with a small “learning” wheel. The peg can be rotated on the axle to find the optimum balance point. In this way a rider can learn to roll around on his front wheel.

If like many of today’s young riders you find BMX to be just too easy we introduce the “Ironing Board” BMX to Uni-cycle adapter. Our engineers claim a 500% increase in riding difficulty with this adapter over a normal BMX. The scissor like device can be adjusted to fit any BMX bicycle by simply attaching to the front and rear dropouts. An ordinary BMX rear wheel is fitted to the device and a chain is connected to provide locomotion.

“Smooth out your BMX style with the Fairdale Ironing Board BMX to Uni-cycle adapter!!”

A little over a year ago I hurt my back pretty badly and ended up having a surgery to try and fix it. I documented the process on my old blog over at Transworld BMX. A  number of people have been asking me lately how things are going so it seemed like an update was due.  I also posted a little re-cap of some of the old posts below for those who are interested.

Well, it’s been over a year since I’ve been able to ride. I guess I’ve been putting off this post-surgery update hoping I would have something very positive to post. Hopefully something about how I was all better and back to riding. The reality though is that getting back on my bike is going very slowly. I’m still keeping up with all my physical therapy and rehab and for the most part I’m functioning like normal. I can sit again, don’t have any weight restrictions on what I lift and can ride around on a bike no problem. I still can’t “really” ride though. If I so much as hop up a curb shooting pain hits me right in the surgery area. Its pretty frustrating and been this way for about the last 5 months. I get the same pain if I pump a ramp at all as well. The result is that I can roll around, but really can’t get off the ground without my eyes watering from the pain. I saw the doctor again a couple weeks ago and he now wants me to wait another 5 months before he possibly performs another surgery that would take me out for an additional 6 months! Not really sure how that will work out. In the meantime I have been making an effort to push myself harder in the gym and that seems to be helping a tiny bit. I went and rode the new Empire ramp the other day and I actually got about 15 minutes of below coping riding in before I got too sore. All I can really do is to keep working on getting stronger and more flexible to compensate for the fused together disc.

One of the possible causes of this is that the discs above the surgery were also damaged. Not nearly as severely as the one that was removed, but still significant enough to be causing some of this pain. Especially now that they are forced to move even more to compensate for the fused one that can not move at all.  I guess its not abnormal for recovery to take several years too, but hopefully it won’t take that long for me.

I have been riding around more and more. I can really feel the difference in my back… its even changed my riding position ever so slightly. I’m sure part of it is that I am protecting the painful area, but also because I simply can not bend my back the same was as before.

Here’s the recap of how I got here:

May-22-2009
I haven’t been riding a whole lot lately because of my chronic back problems. Its been a real trouble for me for the last 4 or 5 years. For a while it went away and maybe I solved the original problem, or maybe it was just hidden.

I’ve been in Cleveland for the last month and I got a gym membership to work on rehabing my back. 5 or 6 days a week in the gym working really hard and doing every exercise I’ve learned for core strength and I felt stronger and in better shape then I have in years. I got back to Austin for a couple week visit and after 10 minutes of riding in a ditch down the street my back was screwed. Odyssey really needed a photo of me for an ad so a couple days later I took a handful of advil, got Sandy Carson to bring a camera and tried to get a photo done. Everytime I hit the lip of a nice hip I found I got a bright white shot of pain radiatiing from my lower back and curse word would shoot out of my mouth.

May-29-2009
Just got back from the first visit with my new doctor. All went well. He is a spinal surgeon, but he didn’t seem to think that surgery was the guaranteed way to go.

Of course, the usual drill ensued… “Go get an MRI and come back”.

June-3-2009
Just back from the doctors and just went over my MRI results. Heavy news for me. Looks like we are going to do the fusion surgery of L5-S1. Surgery won’t take place for almost a month, but when it does Its only like a 2 day stay in the hospital, but it means that after surgery no activity for 3 months and no riding for real for 6 months! Yikes. I didn’t really expect it to take that long to heal.

The crazy part is they go in through the front of your abdomen to do the surgery. Its a relatively small incision, but two surgeons are present. One to do the actual screw and plate and bone graft surgery, and one to monitor and control the extremely vital arteries that run right in front of the spine. Basically they screw and plate the vertebrae together so they can’t move, and then fill the area where the disc used to be with bone grafts that will fill it in so the damaged disc can no longer put pressure on the spine.

Next step is to meet with the Vascular Surgeon to go over his procedures in the surgery and check to see if my splenectomy scars are going to be an issue for this surgery. After meeting with him I’ll be able to schedule a surgery date. The earliest possible time being between 3 and 4 weeks from now.
I’m pretty freaked out by all this, and dreading being laid up for so long, but at the same time I’m really itching to get this taken care of. Guess I’m staying in Austin for a while to deal with all of this.
June-15-2009
I met with the Cardio-Vascular surgeon and got a date for surgery. July 9th they slice me up. He described in detail how they will make an incision from my belly button straight down about 4 inches. Then he pushes all the intestines and stuff out of the way making a hole visible all the way to my spine. The really dangerous part is that he then must move my aorta blood vessel out of the way by gently flexing it to one side. While he was telling me it really started to make me a little bit queazy.

June-18-2009
Jamie Bestwick was kind enough to set me up to talk to his doctor about spine surgeries. Dr Gregory Bailey did the fusion surgery that Jamie had done a little while ago and had him riding again in 5 weeks. Dr Bailey confirmed that based on my symptoms and MRI surgery did seem to be the right path. He also made me feel pretty confident about my surgeons. Definitely nice to get a good second opinion. He also restated that a six month recovery time is to be expected with the type of surgery I’ll get (which is substantially different then Jamie’s fusion which was more in his neck).
July-3-2009
So this is what they are going to stick into my back. As far as I can tell its a piece of PVC pipe with a big gnarly stainless screw in it. There will actually be 2 more screws too. One going up and two going down. Just like toe-nailing a rib on a ramp or something. This little do-hickey will take the place of the disc they are taking out and lock the to adjacent vertabrae in place. The docs tell me I’m not supposed to lift anything over 10 pounds for three whole months!
July-15-2009
Well, I had surgery on July 9th. I spent 3 days in the hospital and the Westlake Hospital in Austin was by far the nicest hospital I’ve ever stayed in. Had my own room and a 50″ plasma TV. The surgery went smoothly and easily and only took an hour and a half. About 3 hours after surgery I was awake and feeling pretty decent. I had the doctors take me off the pain medicine and I found the pain to be fairly mild. All I wanted to do was drink some water and I mistakenly had it in my head that if I wasn’t on pain med they would let me drink sooner. I made it about 16 hours with no pain med at all which I found to be really amazing… they had just sliced me open and drilled holes in my bones! For the first 24 hours they were taking my blood pressure every 30 minutes and I noticed that it went up every time. Right before I gave in and took some pain med it was starting to get dangerously high. I guess that was how my body was dealing with the pain.
And, I was wrong, pain meds had nothing to do with me being allowed water. What it was is that the doctors wanted me to fart before they gave me anything to eat or drink. The reason being is that they moved my intestines around to get to my spine (since the surgery was performed through my stomach) and there was a chance they may have punctured an intestine. I guess if you drink and eat and have a hole in your intestine its very painful and dangerous and requires a emergency surgery to correct the problem. SO, I had to wait for 2 days for my body to naturally um, er…. pass some wind and prove that I was still air tight. It was harder then it sounds because my ab muscles had just been sliced in two.

Anyway, while waiting for some wind and water other uncomfortable things did start to be removed. Got my catherder out the first day which was awesome (ha! good example of the pills… spellchecked this and look how I spelled catheter… Cat Herder!!) . I also got to get up and walk around when I wanted. Moving around for sure made me feel like my blood was starting to move and things were starting to get better.
On the beginning of the 2nd day I went back on pain pills, partially because my blood pressure was racing and partially because things were simply starting to hurt like hell! Now that I’m home (starting my 3rd day home now) I’ve been sticking to a schedule of pain meds. I find they make me kind of silly and stressed out at the same time. Weird things like I dreamed the refrigerator was leaking and couldn’t quite separate dream from reality. Had to get up and actually see if it was leaking before I could sleep again. Been sleeping a lot and feeling zombie-fied when I’m awake, but every so often I feel pretty clear and with it. Already cutting back on the pain meds now and I can tell that each day I am making steps towards healing. The only thing that really hurts badly is the incision in my stomach. I’m sure that will heal quickly since its no different then a normal cut. The doctor warned that my back would hurt badly for 6-8 weeks as a result of the “construction” in the area, but as of yet I haven’t felt it.
My mom is in town for a couple weeks taking care of me. Yesterday her and Sandy Carson went bought a Lazy Boy recliner chair that I found for cheap on craigslist. It is seriously the best and most comfortable thing ever for my situation. I can lounge in it all day and its amazing. I’m so lucky and so happy.

Pain pills are starting to kick in and its getting harder and harder for me to type. For the next 3 months I’ll be taking it easy not lifting anything heavier then 10 pounds. Once I can concentrate again hopefully I will start drawing or something. Take care everyone!

I’ve gotten to do a lot of things in my life. Been around a while now as I enter my 77th year. One of the things that people always get a kick out of is seeing me in my youth starring in a BMX video.

You can watch the whole thing here. It was really fun working with Dave Parrick and Taj and shooting everything in super 8 film. I really prefer working with film. Its so superior to digital.

I also used to have a line of signature shoes. I never had much use for shoes myself, but, you gotta make the money you know? Etnies was always pretty cool anyway and I was really glad to get to design them. Of course I made them 100% vegetarian…. more cows for me! In my contract it was actually agreed that I should get raw hide bones equal to exactly how much cow hide they saved by using synthetics for my shoe.

Anyway, back to my video. Although I really wanted to do all the stunts myself union regulations kept me from doing most of the work. In hindsight it was probably for the best, but at the time I was so pissed at that dummy version of me… Out there having a blast while I spent hours in a stupid make up chair doing nothing. I did get really good at riding the cart though during the less dangerous shots. It might look easy, but really it takes a lot of body english to keep that thing on track.

At the end of filming the crew let me destroy my stunt double dummy. It was a huge release. Kind of one of those Office Space printer beat down scenes in real life. Not to get all metaphysical but I kind of felt like I was taking my life back with my lifeless clone out of the way.

I would have to say that film work isn’t for me (long hours and sitting around to racing around in seconds flat), but I am glad to have gotten the experience. As you travel through life its the one off things like this that lead to good stories later on.