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

up with some sodas. We were chilling on the curb when the attendant came out and made a stink about the “No Loitering” sign posted to the wall. A few yards away at the gas pumps, a drunk was filling up with petrol and overheard the attendant. He took this as his cue to chime in. “Yeah, son, you need to get home,” he slurred aloud to our group. Dennis stepped to the guy—he approached him and piped up, “Okay, Dad, I’ll get right home. But first I got to ask a big favor. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I was wondering if I could
borrow
those really tight corduroy pants that you’re wearing, just one night. I’d be a hit with the girls …”
    The drunk wasn’t quite aware of how he’d been burned, but we were all laughing at that point, so he grunted and lurched over to challenge McCoy to a fight with his fists raised and thumbs pointed straight up in the air. Dennis loped around him, mocking his unorthodox boxing stance, prancing and dancing like a dork. Dennis maneuvered his opponent into position while Thorne had crept up from behind, down on his hands and knees. Dennis shoved the drunk backward over Rick and he hit the ground. We mounted up on our bikes and could barely ride straight; we were laughing so hard. The drunk hopped in his car, a thrashed old Cutlass, and chirped his tires after our crew. We crossed the street into a huge parking lot, where we clustered in the lot of an empty business park. The guy charged across the lot and spent a few minutes trying to mow down targets with his Cutlass. Finally he got frustrated enough to stop with a screech and hopped out of his car to continue the chase on foot. Bikers were shooting around him, just out of his reach, and he’d run a few steps at one target before somebody would attract his attention by throwing pebbles or making noise. It was like being trapped in a pen with a mad bull. While this was going on, Rick snuck over, leaned in through the guy’s open door, and shifted the idling car into drive. The car slowly began rolling forward, and we started cracking up again. The drunk abandoned chasing us and had to chase down his runaway car. Then he got inside and revved the engine. We scattered, Dennis leading the way. He used a tried-and-true BMX Brigade emergency exit, which they’d been using for years to elude pursuers. All you had to do was bunny-hop over a planter box, and drop down off a three-foot-high wall into the parking lot below. Anybody following in a car would have to stop. However, the emergency exit had never been tested with a determined drunk guy in a jacked-up Cutlass.
    We were already in the parking lot below and taunting the drunk. He stuck his head out the window and hollered at us. Then he floored it, slammed over the curb, and jumped his car down the drop-off—sparks flew and the guy momentarily lost control. So did we. We had tears in our eyes by the time we realized the drunk had recovered from his gravity slam and was steering his wrecked, barely functioning car at us. I was the last guy in the pack, and the drunk chose to take out his frustration on me. I had to ride as fast as I could and barely got out of his way. I ended up losing him by throwing my bike over a fence and cutting through a backyard. After the BMX Brigade met back up at Dennis’s house, we had a good laugh and stayed high on adrenaline for the rest of the night.
    The outcome of any chase depended on a lot of factors—what city you were in; how many people you had with you; how well they could ride; and what the ramifications were if you got caught. Cities began putting police on mountain bikes. They were new at it and didn’t really have the skills built up yet to ride down stairs or bunny hop up tall ledges. But the cops would see a “little kid” on a BMX bike jump down a six-foot drop-off and assume there was nothing to it. We evaded some big tickets before the cops learned the art of urban riding.

    Just in case I forgot, the rest of the Haro