Boozer Mike Memorial Jam 2019- #11

 Sheep Hills, located in the sketchy oil lands between Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach California.  Personally, I first walked over wobbly rocks across the creek, and back a little rabbit trail that headed into the brushy lands in 1988, looking for a mini-ramp some of the skaters of Vision Skateboards told me existed.  I never did find that ramp.  But I walked through the 10 to 15 foot high, small, brushy trees, down a skinny trail, hoping I wouldn't step on a rattlesnake.  About 100 yards back on that trail, the trees suddenly opened up into an open area.  My first thought was, "Man, this would be an awesome spot to build jumps." 

Back then, in the 80's, the main problem with building jumps was that whoever owned the land would usually plow them within months, or maybe a couple of years.  There weren't that many BMXers, and we tried to find little chunks of land that nobody wanted to build jumps on.  Back then, most jumps were small, a foot high, two feet high, or a ditch jump where we'd roll in and flyout the other side to flat.  We'd find a little piece of land, build a few jumps, and ride them while we could.  Most places (in Idaho and then California, for me), we'd show up one day, and the jumps would be gone.  So when I saw this big open meadow, in this piece of bottom land nobody cared about, it seemed perfect to build jumps. 

I actually went to the HB swap meet the next weekend and bought a shovel.  While I worked in Costa Mesa, up on the mesa above where Sheep Hills is, I lived off of Warner Avenue, on the opposite side of Huntington Beach, so I built up a flyout jump in the Bolsa Chica wetlands, close to my apartment. 

In 1989, I rode my bike down 19th street hill after work, past the little skate ditch at the bottom of the hill, and through the wide area that leads to Sheep Hills.  I rode right by, and would hit a whole series street spots on the ride home.  There was a little tabletop jump by the creek, I'd hit that sometimes.  But I never got a shovel to that area. 

Two years later, hanging out with the P.O.W. House guys, they told me there were some new jumps in Costa Mesa.  I rode down there with them, and this new spot, Sheep Hills, was exactly the spot I had walked into a couple years earlier.  The jumps had been around a year or so then.  That was when the three berms were the set up, before most of today's trails had been built.  On any given night back then, a dozen or so riders might have been there.  It was a great place to build jumps.  But it still blows me away that Sheep Hills still exists 29 or 30 years later.  These photos are a look around at the scene as I walked into Sheep for the first annual Boozer Mike Memorial Jam last Saturday, October 26th, 2019. 

 Mike was one of the earliest riders and builders at Sheep, and an integral part of the scene.  I didn't know him near as well as the riders hanging and riding every day.  I'm a Has Been freestyler, who would roll by now and then and hang and hit whatever little jumps existed, if any.  Sheep Hills played a huge roll in BMX dirt jumping becoming an actual sport.  The P.O.W's, the SHL crew, the guys like Cory Nastazio and Chris Duncan, many of the most influential dirt jumpers of the 90's and early 2000's rode at Sheep or were locals.  During all that time, Boozer Mike was one of the guys there all the time.  So it was cool to hear about this jam happening, to honor Mike after his death in August, and to help his mom with the bills and everything involved.