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

entire CD collection—the grand total was $18,000. I found out through the grapevine who’d ripped us off and drove over to pay Earl a visit, blaring my N.W.A. CD. My blood was pounding in my temples in sync with the drumbeats. I had a broken wrist, but I was pissed enough to use my cast as a blunt instrument should the need arise. We pulled up and caught Earl rolling my bike out his front door. Busted. Earl ratted out his accomplices, and we stopped at two more houses and caught the conspirators with other bikes. Cops were called, and in the end, insurance paid for most of the gear. I’d always been raised to trust people and believe in friends. Getting Earled made me a little more cynical, a little wiser, and brought about a new era of tighter security at the Ninja Ramp compound.

    The building of the Secret Ninja ramp.

Chasing Fun with the BMX Brigade

    The first time I hung out with Rick Thorne, he’d just gotten his ass kicked. The beatdown was courtesy of a group of skinhead U. S. Marines who’d taken an instant disliking to Rick’s smart mouth, his passion for hardcore music, and riding bikes. Rick bore his welts and bruises like a badge of honor. He was from Kansas City, and a charter member of the BMX Brigade. The BMX Brigade was a salty assortment of riders who ripped. They sometimes referred to themselves as “rogues” because they cut a path of destruction through whatever environment they chose to session. Dennis McCoy was the lead rogue, and Rick was his sidekick.
    Steve Swope and I took a trip up to Kansas City to go riding with Dennis and Rick. We hit some local ramps but quickly found out they were way into street riding. The reason was chases. They lived for getting chased—by the cops, security guards, gangsters, or irate hicks. Sometimes, if it was a slow night, they would call the cops on
themselves.
The BMX Brigade guys were different from Steve and me—we were innocent, naïve,
very Leave It to Beaver
compared with the rogues. The guys from Kansas City were all tight friends, but they expressed it by constantly cracking on one another, trying to cause as much havoc as possible. This was epitomized when Steve and I got introduced to “Swap Rock,” a Brigade-created hybrid sport that’s like hockey, or war, on bikes. Using the front wheel as the hockey stick, the puck is anything found in the street—a rock, a hunk of asphalt, an old champagne bottle, a dirty diaper, and so forth. The object was to “swap” the “rock” toward your opponents and try to take them out with a kill shot. If you get hit hard enough to fall over, you’re out. If your foot touches the ground, you’re out. Swap Rock was a fast-paced game, and the rogues were ruthless at it. “Doof the innocent!” was their battle cry, the doof being the sound of a rock connecting with a target. Steve and I foolishly let these sharks talk us into a game, and within seconds Dennis had masterfully sent a rock into the spokes of Steve’s brand-new, high-dollar, hard-to-come-by, graphite Tuff Wheels. Steve was aghast at the outcome—a ruined front wheel. Dennis just shrugged his shoulders and suggested to Steve he get a little faster on the defense. The more we rode with those guys, the more Rick and Dennis opened our eyes up to a slightly more evil, deviant style of friendship. We began making regular trips up to ride with the Kansas City crew.
    If there’s a major negative of the current popularity of the sport of bike riding, it’s that we’re accepted by society. Now you ride down the street, and people want to see you do a trick. They want to see something like on the X Games. But back in 1988, the most common response when people saw bike riders out after eleven at night was, “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
    This was the magic question for McCoy. He’d perk up and begin to expertly provoke the situation until it had evolved into a chase. It was after midnight and we’d gone to the corner convenience store to hook