Trials bikers?

https://youtu.be/eRdM_zeJHns?si=VeY4I9Yo_1Ea

ZwdA

Who's excited about trials? With winter coming in the northern hemisphere it's a great way to get some interesting riding in when conditions are questionable on the trails. Classic brakeless Akrigg vid because it's the best.

https://youtu.be/rTVrO77bS1I?si=33QanmJbSP7mASD4

Bit of a personal throw back, lots of setup hops, Ryan Leech would be disappointed. 

Max Mitchell and a ton of trials guys actually ride near me in Santa Monica at a public park where you would have been absolutely convinced the designer/architect was a trials rider. Literally a training grounds for trials riding. I've gone on my MTB but... I don't think I'll commit to a full trials bike to ride there. Still fun tho.

Here's Max riding it: https://www.instagram.com/maximillianmitchell/reel/DPyz32wDKkA/ 

I can't see it because I'm not an Instagram guy, but it sounds rad I wonder of any of that park is in the vid I linked. LA has had some cool trials stuff in the past for sure. 

my first time visiting there... on the full MTB. obviously my riding doesn't even really highlight it. someone with a lifetimes set of trials skills would feel like this place is disneyland (by the beach!) 

skip to 2:30 for the blatant trials course...

Way to get out there and have weird fun LePigPen! 

My friend Joey used to have a magazine called Observed Trials Magazine back in the 90's. We had a tight crew of about ten of us that would show up for Wednesday night trials rides in Santa Cruz either downtown or up on the UCSC campus. That's where I met Garen formerly of Santa Cruz Bikes. As we got more into street riding Joey changed the name to 180 Magazine. At one point we even got sponsorship from the then new Adidas Eyeware and RedBull for what we called the Focus Tour in '02 (Freeride Outreach Cooperative Urban and Singletrack Tour.) We rented a twelve passenger van and covered the whole roof with bike racks and eight of us drove from Santa Cruz to Whistler, stopping on the way to do school demos as well as one street festival in Seattle I think it was. We didn't get to ride with him, but we were invited to a BBQ at Ryan Leech's house, rode the north shore and Squamish and did a heli drop in Pemberton. Then we had a penthouse suite in Whistler for almost a week. Epic times, all long before Danny Mack came on the scene. 

Definitely some cool lines in the park there, looked like a great mess around ride for sure. You guys are making me miss urban riding. 

Big Bird were you ever on ObservedTrials.net back in the day? Your story sounded very similar to mine but on a larger scale. We had a trials group called 2 Wheel Technique that did demos at local festivals, bike races, and schools, we made it on the local morning news a few times and even got hired as stuntman for a local film. Was fun times for sure, I still have my BT Raven built up and have my Brisa B26D hanging around as a frame.

No. Never been on that site. Aside from the Focus Tour we did do some other shows though. I got to do shows at an XC World Cup I think at Sears Point Raceway and at the Telluride World Cup/360 Adventure festival. In Telluride I could only bring one bike so I did shore style demo's on my downhill bike. I also got flown to do a show at the grand opening of Silhouette Eyeware's new corporate office in Albany New York with Garen, Cam McCall, Geoff Gullavich and Hans Rey.

Damn that would've been cool being able to ride with those guys. I thought the early 2000s Northshore/ trials crossover was always super cool. A local freeride shop built log rides and ladder bridges all across the edges of their parking lot and everybody thought that was the coolest back then. 

ObservedTrials.net was definitely the forum for trials riders and street trials riders. A lot like this forum but with a lot more pros on it, the buy and sell page was also great and everybody was pretty stand up about it. I think the whole thing got shutdown a while ago unfortunately. 

On a separate note trials bikes aren't quite as cheap as they used to be (what bike is?) but they're still a good deal for the N+1 crowd and if you can learn a few basic moves its very rewarding riding, if that doesn't work having a seatless one to one gear ratio bike is a great conversation starter.

At the Silhouette Eyeware show, Garen, Cam and Geoff were all learning three sixties. So I found a chunk of styrofoam and told them to imagine that they were all crack heads and the first of them to land a clean three would get that huge crack rock/styrofoam as a reward. I forget now who won. But in the end I think they all did an acceptable three.