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I did. All of the above, just for the reaction I got out of everyone and the crowd.
What should have been career suicide is suddenly beloved by the crowd, and that drew them to the events. I didn’t care. I craved that, and I remained true to free riding and why it was invented in the first place.
The officials, the sponsors, they wanted the bad boy without having to deal with him. They wanted me to pretend to be a bad boy with the image, like Shade, but on race day, I was supposed to conform.
No, thanks. If they wanted the bad boy, they were gonna fucking get it all the time. Though I had a reputation for being able to perform despite the occasional psychotic episode, I’m surprised I was even asked on the tour. Most of the time spent on these tours I’m on a rock-star-style binge. I party and generally am a narcissistic fool.
So some would even venture to ask, if you hate it so much, then why even do it? Self-destructive by nature, I’m cursed with an addictive personality. The freestyle motocross world is a fairly gnarly place too. Most riders are into drugs or generally risky behavior, but then you have a few straight-laced ones. The gnarly ones, that’s who attracts the crowds and give it that extreme they thrive for.
For me, it’d be hard to explain the feeling of exhilaration freestyle competition gives me. I’m invincible on a bike. You’re rolling your eyes, aren’t you? If you understood the thrill of riding outweighed the risk, you’d understand being invincible. You’d understand the noise, the dirt, the speed, the feeling of flying, it creates. I’d risk the fall to know what it feels like to fly.
At competitions like After Dark, there are five judges to critique your every move. They’re sometimes ex-riders but they don’t have to be. Despite the panel of judges, freestyle competition is about throwing the best trick and getting the crowd pumped. Something I’m pretty fucking good at. Defying the laws of gravity only to land a trick no one else has, and even for a second, my mind is finally at peace. I don’t think about anything. Nothing at all. And it remains the only time in my entire life I feel at peace with myself. That’s why I do it.
At After Dark, you have ten tricks to perform with a potential score of 10 on each trick and a cumulative score of a 100. The rider with the highest score at the end wins.
The freestyle competitions are set up a little differently from, let’s say, motocross where you have heats, qualifiers, and main events. At freestyle events, there’s a lot of downtime and shit talking going on.
We’re checking out the course in the waiting zone (a section of the course riders wait in for the run). The course is built in the streets where they bring in ramps and landing pads and basically created a jump-show in the middle of the city. On the other side of the seventy-five-foot ramp, there’s access to the stands where you can ride up the stairs and then down the backside of it because it’s basically a slide. The layout got Shade and me talking.
Hanging his goggles on his bars, he nods to the stands. “Think you could roll up that and down the backside?”
“I can. You couldn’t.”
He cocks his head to the side, offended. “Why can’t I do it?”
“You’d piss off your sponsors. Crowd endangerment.”
Shade thinks about it. He overanalyzes everything before he hurls himself through the air on a bike, let go of it midair in hopes he’ll be able to find it again, and land the bike without killing himself. He wants to know what’s the risk?
Life or death, that’s not a metaphor for freestyle riders. It’s a situation we put ourselves in constantly, and we do it because we want to. That’s thecrazypart about it. And when I do, it’s unlike anything I can accurately describe.
“You’re right. Not worth it. You’d never get away with it,” he finally says, shifting on his bike as he rides away.
I’m just going to point this out for you now. You heard that conversation, right? You should blame Shade for what happens on my run.
Rolling into the launching zone, Parker rides past me, gives me a nod and then I’m staring at the flag marshal, waiting for my turn. I’m nervous and quite possibly reckless before every run. That’s just me. While Roan is the levelheaded of the three Sawyer brothers and Shade’s the show, I’m the unpredictable one. Even I don’t know what I’m going to do until I do it.
My blood rages in my veins, adrenaline spiking. Breathing heavily, I look down at the tape on my handle bars outlining my list of tricks. I’m going for a no-handed double backflip to start with. Reaching forward, I adjust my steering stabilizer before I take off.
Taking a deep breath, I shift into first, rev the bike and then ease off the clutch rolling onto the track. I don’t particularly like doing double backflips but FMX has reached a level where a double backflip is standard. If you don’t do it, there’s no chance at a podium finish. And while I still don’t want to be on the tour, I still have the edge to win inside of me.
I land the double backflip, move onto a backflip seat grab, a 360 nac nac and a bunch of others. I end with another combo backflip to no-hander landing over the ninety-foot gap and then ride up into the stands. Because I feel like it. If they’re going to make me do this show, I’m going to do it how I want.
The drunken crowd amped of theatrical adrenaline loves it, and then they start fighting with one another over who gets my jersey I rip off and hand to them. Sliding down the backside of the stands with a one-handed front endo.
You’re probably wondering what the point of that was? I prefer interjecting orchestrated rowdiness into everything I do.
And your conclusion here is probably, wow, he has a lot of repressed anger and hate in him. Or stupidity.
There’s really no explanation I’m going to give you.
I’m heading back to the staging area, removing my goggles and hanging them on my handlebars when I see Doug Johnson, FIM (Freestyle International Motorcycling Federation) race director waiting for me in the rider paddock.
“You’re disqualified,” he yells at me, his hands on his hips sternly suggesting he’s in charge.
I smile, but I don’t say anything. I leave my helmet on, for a few reasons, which I’ll get to later. Have I mentioned Doug is Amberly’s dad? If I haven’t, it’s because I don’t care. He hates my guts for no particular reason at all, if you ask me, but it might have something to do with I’m his worst nightmare. I’m that rider who’s always pushing the limits and as a race director, those are the riders you can’t stand.
“Why is he disqualified?” Ricky asks, standing next to me with Greg, my bike mechanic. Another official, or rather a group of officials including Rod and a representative from ESPN approach us.