Lucky suns and ditches
A dark morning with good company and a simple plan.
We plunged zombie-armed into the fabric of night. Wading through the homogeneous, untouchable, lightless velvet that cloaked the pines we groped for a spot to pee, fingers extended, ready to touch god or be obliterated against blackjack trunks.
We felt our way back to the truck with cautious steps until we jammed our digits into steel then slid them along the quarter panel in search of a door handle.
A last look at the sky through the window revealed towering silhouettes, pine shaped cut outs in the stars. So many stars. None of them ours.
Next to Betelgeuse, the largest star in the night sky visible from the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun looks roughly 40,000 times larger. And compared to Sirius, the brightest star we can see, the Sun is more than 10 billion times brighter. But, neither of these are absolutely true. Betelgeuse is at least 700 times the size of the Sun, and Sirius is nearly twice as bright. And if our Sun eclipsed the biggest and brightest stars it would vanish, lost as a low watt speck of amber incandescence in a solar system sized sea of blue LED light. But, at the same time, that little mote of orange could swallow about a million Earths. That’s our star, and it was rising soon.
Meanwhile, 60 miles north, the Grand Canyon sprawled silently in the dark. A wonder of Earth, a shelter, a grave, an ecosystem, a ditch carved by weather and time. But, it’s our ditch and we weren’t going to miss the chance to watch the orange speck rise above it. We rolled out of the Coconino under twilight and headed north to catch the show properly from the South Rim.
After the solar ritual at the South Rim our pilgrimage took us to another ditch. Man made. An overlooked feat of civil engineering that quietly spares the city from snow melt and monsoon floods. A heroin den or wayward home for some. A bordello, prophet’s tablet or canvas for others. For us, the megalith beneath the street was a shrine to the carve, where we paid tribute in turns, offering sweat for joy until lunch.
Heather’s first feral full-pipe.
Head over heels in the Tunnel of Love.
Meet Me in the Hills
It was 2019, mid-September, the long taper of a summer without demarcation. It was the evening. My phone rang.
It was 2019, mid-September, the long taper of a summer without demarcation. The last steam bath days of St. Louis heat stretched on like foamy slobber strands dangling from a hound’s jowls.
One night, I was noticing the Moonish qualities of the street lamp outside my window when the phone rang. It was Jackson. He pitched a rendezvous. In ten days meet FBM, Profile, and some of the extended ménage in Colorado to hitch along for a leg of the 6th Maiden America tour for roughly 48 hours of riding in the Rockies. It was short notice and a short trip—a blink.
Street Lamp, surrogate for the Moon.
I extended my right arm and my elbow creaked like a door in an abandoned Victorian, as it had for months. The tendonitis reduced gripping my bars to a symbolic gesture, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. I might get in a few airs before the rusty hinge pulled off the door like viscera velcro. And prospecting for transition gold in the mountains with friends was worth it even if I couldn’t ride. I decided to cut work and booked the flight to Denver.
Other than the brushes on Bohren’s Midnight Radio summer boiled off without a hiss, but Jackson’s call promised fall wouldn’t evaporate the same way. So, before dawn on the equinox I threw on my backpack and tugged my bike bag 6 blocks to catch the 5am Red Line for Lambert.
A few hours later Jackson grabbed me from the Denver airport and we were off to meet the others west of the city. When we pulled into the motel parking lot the renegade BMX nobility we were joining were starting to gather around the vans. It was mostly familiars.
Jackson and I were close friends from when I lived in Santa Cruz. I watched Garrett grow up ripping Ramp Riders in Saint Louis with his brothers, Zach and Adam. Steve Crandall became a friend after years of crossing paths on the road. Others: Stew, Dolecki, Seamus, Holladay I knew from prior FBM meet-ups and the typical currents of BMX life. The Leeper Bros, Jay from QBP, Vic from Circuit, Matt from Profile, and the bizarrely skilled Declan Murray were new to me and—
A cosmopolitan vagabond approached the van, ”I’m so horny!”
Eric Holladay was grinning behind black sunglasses as he strolled up in a billowing un-buttoned short sleeve, khaki shorts and slides, banana in hand.
”I’m horrnyyy,” replied a voice from the shadows of the van interior, Seamus I think.
”Man, I’m so horny. Is anybody else horny?” called Garrett.
Pockets of voices spread around the asphalt returned,
“I’m horny,”
“Whooo’s horny?”
“Sooo horny.”
The call died off as suddenly as it began—this was a pack of coyotes.
The trip was two days, and that’s being generous, but it felt like a week in the best way.
On the first day, I did manage a few carves at The Hook and a few airs at the Milliken park on the qwedge. That earned me six more months of frayed cable friction in my arms. So, I was sidelined right away but happy and shot tons of photos.
Me at Milliken, by Jackson Allen
Garrett Guilliams at Frisco.
None of us had a clue leading up to it, but this trip marked the conclusion of FBM operating as a handmade in the USA BMX bike company. Steve made the announcement while everyone was taking a break at Frisco. But, he also made clear this wasn’t the end of the road for friendships or road trips.
FBM was always more people than product anyway.
The road—we met there, we meet there, and if we see each other again, that’s where it’ll be.
(Edit:July 18, 2026)
Check out Steve’s new ventures:
Radshare - A not-for-profit getting kids on bikes and in helmets.
Drop In Coffee - Coffee that supports the Radshare cause.
Steve’s Youtube - Where he’s sharing footage old and new.
The Good waiting
The good doesn't care how you get there, but it’s waiting.
JOYMACHINES - Various vessels to find the good out there.
“There is always so much good out there for us, waiting.” a friend wrote in response to some travel photos I shared in our years long, but intermittent email chain.
I agree, but I’m sure he played some role in shaping my opinion when in 2004 his BMX company put out a world tour video.
The riding in the video was raw, powerful, and inspiring, but the context of the riding was the belle of the ball, not the progression of tricks, the promotion of products, not even the riders.
The spirit of exploration imbued every part of the trip.
A world tour seeking out ruined ramps in vast, desolate landscapes, immaculate architecture calling for a carve betwixt esoteric sculptures in ancient cities, improbable skateparks lacquered in vibrant graffiti embedded in equally vivid cultures in stark contrast to our own, and plenty of bizarre, shreddable, infrastructure monoliths rising from distant no man's land horizons that act as anchors, beacons, portals, and corridors to an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. Many of which became pilgrimage sites for following generations.
In that context the bike is just the vessel ferrying us, and our friends, through our experience.
How rad we get, or how much fun we have along the way is up to us, and if we make these experiences entirely about the bike and how we're riding it, we risk making our vessel into a cardboard boat, permeable, soggy with time, and easily sunk by the waves and rain from the inevitable storm of entropy.
26 years into my own riding, I still wake up with this electrostatic feeling in my skin, a hunger for a carve on the edge of traction, the cresting arc of a good air, wall rides, and the buzz of discovering new ridescapes.
But, I know the bike is just a vessel, an avatar, and it could easily look like a skateboard, a pair of shoes, walking your dog, a guitar, a pen, a camera, anything, any activity.
It can take any form because the power isn't in the vessel, it's in the understanding that "There is always so much good out there, waiting."
When you know that, the vessel appears in a form just for you.