70,000 Page Views!

Time to break out the Homer Woo Hoo! beer coolie.  OK, I can't, I sold it, and I stopped drinking years ago.  But this blog just surged passed another big milestone, 70,000 total page views, with the help of yesterday's "Josh White tailwhip" post. This is my second most popular blog ever, trailing only the original Freestyle BMX Tales in views.  I seriously didn't know if anyone would read this blog when I started it, just under two years ago, in late June of 2017.  Thanks for reading everyone, I'll try to keep putting something worthwhile out here (and elsewhere) as time goes on.  I've started about 50 blog ideas over ten years, most of which faded soon after.  My top four blogs have raked in about 275,000 total page views in their lifetimes, which I'm pretty proud of.  For obscure niche blogs, that's pretty good.

More thoughts on tailwhips
I answered a ton of comments about Josh White doing the first tailwhip on dirt yesterday.  Like I said in the post, at the time I shot it, I truly believed it was the first tailwhip jump ever.  I was reminded that back in 1984, Mike Dominguez was trying alley-oop tailwhip flyouts out of the Combi Pool at Pipeline skatepark, before a contest.  That's true, there's one photo sequence, and I've talked to riders who were there that day about those.  I don't think he ever landed one cleanly, that's what I heard.  But he was super close.  But that is the first recorded tailwhip jump attempts in freestyle.  Then Joe Johnson invented the tailwhip air in 1988, I believe, and did his first double, which I did get on video, in Kitchener, Ontario Canada, in the spring of 1989, at the 2-Hip King of Vert.  Here's a still from my video of Joe doing a single that day:

I also was reminded that Mike Krnaich (still can't pronounce his name) did tailwhip jumps in Bully's Slow Ride video, which DID come out in 1990.  So Crazy Red, you get the boot, Mike K. had the first tailwhip jump in a BMX video.  And he was the ruler of tailwhip jumps in that era.  I think Bully Slow Ride came out that summer (1990), and I didn't see it for quite a while, a year or two later.  To the best of my memory, I shot Josh landing the tailwhip (with my camera shutting off) in the Spring of 1990.  I definitely hadn't seen video, or heard of, anyone landing a tailwhip jump.  So at the time, I thought I missed the shot of not only Josh White's first tailwhip jump, but the first one ever.

The riding progression was jamming at that time, and it wasn't unusual for two different people to come up with the exact same trick, totally separate of each other, at nearly the same time.  I wrote about this subject specifically in my 2-zine pack, "The Spot" earlier this year.

And for the guys who ordered those zines and never got your copies, THEY ARE COMING, as soon as I make enough money to print and ship the remaining orders.  I'm just starting to stabilize my life and make a little money right now.  I'll get them out as soon as I can, I swear.

I'm glad the blog passed another big round number in the page view count.  The new Block Bikes Blog, which I'm doing for Rich Bartlett at Block, just passed the 2,000 page view threshold, about six weeks into its life, which is a great start.  I'll keep the stories and content coming!  Thanks again everyone!  Now I gotta get back to work...