Martin Aparijo: Dirt Jumper

 Blog Post: Martin Aparijo- dirt jumper

 

The first photos I ever saw of Martin Aparijo, back in 1983.

 

Martin Aparijo, who most of us Old School BMX freestylers remember as a pioneering flatlander, here as a BMX Plus test rider.  This is a Champion 24inch cruiser test, from the February 1983 issue of BMX Plus.  That was the second or third BMX magazine I ever bought, the first being the December 1982 issue of BMX Plus with Stompin' Stu Thomsen on the cover.  This issue has Bob Haro doing a wheelie on the cover, and a Bob Haro how-to inside for the Haro bar-hop, the first trick I ever learned out of a magazine. 

Somebody shared this two photo combo on Facebook a couple of days ago, and it instantly took me back to my earliest days as a BMX rider in 1982 and 1983.  I knew without reading the caption, that the rider was Martin Aparijo.  Yes, Martin is best remembered as the pioneering flatland rider, one of the two riders of the early and mid-1980's that focused on flatland, the other being Woody Itson.  Like Woody, Martin could jump well, too.  In fact, Martin was the first jumper to do a front flip off a jump, also in the early 80's.  You can ask him that story if you meet him sometime.

The trick above is called the Hannah, after motocross legend Bob Hannah.  In this case, obviously, Martin pushed it and popped his visor off with the front tire.  I knew the name Bob Hannah, because it got thrown around at the trailer park.  Motocross showed up on TV maybe a couple of times a year back then, and if people knew one rider, it was Bob "Hurricane" Hannah.

This magazine came out during the cold Idaho winter, while I was living in Blue Valley trailer park. But we didn't have snow all the time, and we rode when the dirt was frozen, we rode on the ice on the pond, and even made jumps out of snow that winter.   

There were Jeep trails heading out in several directions from Blue Valley, and often we'd just go out riding, by ourselves, or with a couple other guys, and just ride the Jeep trails for a mile or two in one direction or another, and then ride back.  It was all BMX to us, jumping, racing each other, trying to do early tricks like bunnyhops or endos, or riding the Jeep trails like a mountain biker would now.

The locals at Blue Valley were the Damon Brothers, Mike, Steve, Brian, Andy, and their step brother Greg.  Mike and Steve were the best riders, but were in high school (like me), and were more into girls and parties, than BMX.  I was more of a dork, so I hung with the younger guys and rode my bike, a Sentinal Exploder GX.  Any collector got one of those?  I doubt it, it was a "Kmart special" bike.  The Damon brothers (except Greg) had all ridden BMX while living in California years before, I think.  So they all had BMX bikes and a bit more skill than the rest of us, who had none.

Andy, the youngest, had a classic Mongoose with Motomags, a 1980 or 81 model, I think.  I jumped it once, off our "big" jump, which was about 2 1/2 feet high... to flat.  I landed back wheel first, and the next thing I knew, both of my heels hit the ground, the handlebars were still in my hands, but the bike was rolling away, 8 feet in front of me.  Like a cartoon, with a look on my face that made everyone laugh, I slid on my heels, and fell right to my butt, handlebars still in my hands.

Like all ghetto BMXers, we had a "you break, you pay" rule, when riding other kid's bikes. All I could think was that I suddenly owed Andy a bunch of money for whatever broke.  It turned out he just hadn't tightened the gooseneck, and the bars and stem slid right out of the head tube when the back wheel hit the ground.  Nothing broke, my ass hurt from the hard landing, and everybody laughed about it for a while.

Brian and Andy were the main Damons riding every day.  The there were Scott and Rocky, from the other side of the pond (in the trailer park, not England), and Buzzard, Me, and occasionally Shane from our side.  Yes, we had a friend named Buzzard.  He had a real name, but I have no idea what it was.  He got made fun of for a buzz haircut a couple of years before, and got nicknamed "Buzz."  then someone mentioned that, with his hair short, he looked a lot like a buzzard (turkey vulture), and he did.  From then on, he was Buzzard.

Our trails were about 40 yards long, a dirt area with one foot high berms on each end.  A motorcycle rider, a couple of years earlier, had roosted the berms, and rode them for a while, and we kept them shaped.  On one side there was an 18 inch high jump to flat, which I jumped 18' 2" off of once, when it had just rained and the dirt was hard and fast.  A little past that were our doubles, six inches high and three feet apart.  When we all improved a bit, we added a third jump, making them a six foot long set of triples.  Then we'd hit the left hand berm at the bottom (it sloped a tiny bit), and head back up to a one foot high jump to flat.  That was our "style" jump.  It was over that little jump that I spent a couple of days learning to pull the bike vertical and do a Hannah, inspired by that photos of Martin Aparijo above.  The was the first jump variation I ever learned, and it's all thanks to Martin on that Champion 24" cruiser bike test, in the photos above. 

In the middle of our jumping area was our "big jump."  It ranged from 2 feet to 3 feet high, depending on how thrashed it was.  We rebuilt it time after time.  Like the others, it was a jump to flat.  that's the jump I hit on Andy's bike, where the bars came out.

So thanks whoever shared those pics of Martin on Facebook, those took me back to the time I was just getting really stoked on BMX.  There wasn't much else to do in the trailer park.  There were three cute girls and one ugly one.  One cute girl was 16, my age, and had an older boyfriend.  No play there.  Of the other two cute ones, one had the same boyfriend the whole time, and one was prude/shy, and didn't make out with anybody.  So all of us horny, frustrated, young guys rode our BMX bikes all the time, and took turns making out with the ugly girl.  Hey, it was a trailer park.

When I started getting more into freestyle in 1983, and into 1984, most freestylers rode coaster brakes.  I always hated coaster brakes, since my first crappy BMX bike had one that never worked right.  So I decided to freestyle on a freewheel, which was unusual at the time.  Martin Aparijo rode a freewheel, and so I figured I could learn tricks on a freewheel bike, too.  If other riders asked why I didn't ride a coaster brake, I's say, "Martin rides a freewheel, and look at all the tricks he's invented." 

When I originally wrote this blog post, in the fall of 2019, I was working on one of my drawings of Martin Aparijo to sell.  Homeless and struggling to get my act back together at the time, Martin helped me out by letting my draw a picture of him, and sell them.  I first met Martin on a FREESTYLIN' magazine photo shoot in 1986.  He's a first class guy, and helps a lot of people out behind the scenes, but he'd never tell you that.  We've talked a lot over the years, and he's given me advice many times. 

  Here's the 11" X 14" drawing I did of Martin, my take on a classic photo from his GT days in the 1980's, done in my Sharpie Scribble Style. 

To insure the drawings actually sold, Martin offered to sign each one, and it this was the best selling drawing of the six Old School BMX Freestyle drawings I've done.  This is Martin with one of the drawings, right after he signed it.  Most of them went to diehard fans of Martin, around the world, including Europe, Australia, South America, and even one to Taiwan.  Martin Aparijo is global, these days.  Thanks again Martin, that was a huge help, at the time.