Free The Ride of My Life by Mat Hoffman, Mark Lewman

unbelievably close, and totally inspiring. Mike had attempted 900s before at KOV contests, but now he was getting real close. Just by trying it, Mike got every serious vert rider’s brain working overtime.

The Secret Ninja Ramp

    Eddie Roman, my old Skyway teammate, had a home video camera, some nunchakus, and a vision. He wanted to make a movie, an epic riding adventure, filmed on location in the Secret Ninja Ramp and in areas around Edmond. It was a no-budget underground production, and the plot changed from corny comedy, to random riding drama, to flubbed-overdub laden kung fu action several times in the span of forty minutes. Probably the best part of making Aggro Riding and Kung Fu Fighting was that it quickly led to a sequel, Aggroman, in which I played a golden-suited superhero who battled ninjas. I love ninjas. Hence, the name of my indoor ramp.
    The Secret Ninja Ramp was a curved slab of nirvana. The joists were solid, and I even sanded the transitions to make it smooth as glass. The thing was twenty feet wide, which sometimes wasn’t wide enough. When coming down off a thirteen-foot air into the ramp, you were going fast. We quickly learned [the hard way) that the roof’s support posts at the edges of the ramp needed foam padding.
    The ramp was ten feet tall, and we were hitting the ceiling with our airs, so the roof had to be raised to thirty-six feet. This turned the room into a big metal cave that stayed ice cold in the winter and hot in the summer.
    The warehouse became our clubhouse. We added a few custom touches to give it a little homeboy charm. The sanitary white walls were begging for creative expression, so with a few cans of Krylon and some ladders we threw up aerosol slogans, creatures, skulls, and slang words on the interior walls. We built a catwalk from one deck to the opposite side, for photographers, deck monkeys, and coping loafers. Beneath one transition I kept a graveyard of broken bike parts—the price of progress was extracted in smashed rims, fractured Haro frames, or exploded forks, at least once a week. I kept a stockpile of brand-new replacement gear on hand as well.
    There was a thrift store couch under one of the transitions that had miraculous properties. We dubbed it the Healing Couch, and after a bad slam, a fifteen-minute rest on H.C.’s nappy tweed cushions could mend aching flesh better than any pain reliever. A megawatt sound system was needed to bring the noise, so we lugged huge Peavey speaker cabinets right up onto the decks for maximum sonic enjoyment. Steve, Travis, our riding friends, and I rode the Secret Ninja Ramp day and night. A steady rotation of out-of-town guests stopped in to session, too. Dennis McCoy and Joe Johnson were frequent flyers.
    A lot of history went down on that ramp. I stood on the deck and watched Joe pull the first tailwhip airs. Another casual session between Joe, Dennis, and I yielded a whole new style of lip tricks. We were just dorking around and I came up with icepicks (rear peg coping stalls), while Joe invented toothpicks (front peg coping stalls). Serendipity was flowing that day.

    Rocking it at Rockville BMX on the Haro Tour.

    The Secret Ninja Ramp began to get pretty famous, so I don’t know how long the “Secret” part lasted. In the beginning, on Friday and Saturday nights, five or eight people was about as crowded as it got. Then word got out. Skaters skated, riders rode, and hangers-on hung out. When I was out of town it was Steve’s job to keep the peace; there would be twenty or thirty people we vaguely knew, wandering around the warehouse.
    Eventually, we had to make up some rules. Rule number one: No Earlin’. Earl was a dude we knew from the wrong side of the tracks, and when I met him he seemed cool. He rode. As it turns out, Earl was also hanging around so he could pull an inside job. One evening, he and a small crew of local dirtballs broke in and made off with ten complete bikes, helmets, the sound system, and our