What happens when you chop up five 80's action sports videos and throw them in a pot? Vision's Mondo Vision. This video sold 40,000 copies through some shady-ass infomercial/distributor, and made Vision about $800. For real. But the whole thing was a commercial for Vision Street Wear, so no one cared. At 5:10 in this video, there's a segment showing the 1987 Palm Springs Tramway GPV (Gravity Powered Vehicle) race. GPV's started with BMXers taking spare parts, and making weird little bikes with no pedals to bomb down big hills and race each other. This was one of the few semi-organized races, in the summer of 1987. I never actually got into GPV racing. But I have a big hill story that I've only told in my ebook a couple of years ago.
The single scariest thing I ever did in 20 years of BMX was riding down a big hill. For real. Now most of you know me, and you're thinking, "Damn Steve (White Bear), you were a pussy, you never really did anything very gnarly." Fair enough. But I'm telling you right now, I doubt anyone reading this would want to ride this hill today in Levi's and a T-shirt, like I did in August of 1985. Here's the story.
My dad got laid off in Boise in the spring of 1985, the year after I graduated from high school. With no money for college, I had been working all winter at a big, mainstream Mexican restaurant called Chi-Chi's. No I didn't know what chi-chi's meant when I got the job. I can still make some mean fried ice cream, though. Anyhow, my dad found a new job in San Jose California, and flew off to start it, and we kept living in Boise. In June of 1985, he moved my mom and sister out of the house they bought two years before, and down to an apartment in San Jose.
I was lined up to work the summer as manager of The Fun Spot, a tiny amusement park in Julia Davis Park, near downtown Boise. I rented a room at my best friend's house for the summer, and ran the little amusement park, day to day, which was pretty cool for an 18-19 year old. The job only paid $3.05 an hour to start, but I was in charge, had 12 employees under me, and it was great practical experience in managing people. To get high school kids to pull weeds in 90 degree heat for $2 an hour, you've got to build some management skills. In the evenings, I practiced my BMX freestyle in the parking lot near work, or the street by our house. I was still doing a few shows here and there with my trick teammate, Justin Bickel.
The Fun Spot closed down about the middle of August, and we tore down all the rides for the winter, and packed everything up. With my job over, I packed up all my stuff, which was actually a lot, into my gigantic 1971, shit brown Pontiac Bonneville. It was a true land yacht. Goodbyes to my Boise group of friends handled the night before, on a early morning in late August, I hopped in the Pontiac for a long solo drive down to San Jose. I'd never made a long drive by myself, and I was really uptight in those days. So I was both excited, and kind of scared, when I pulled out of the street where I lived all summer, and headed out of Boise, Idaho.
I took I-84 west to Route 55, and kept going west. Heading into a little burg called Marsing, I crossed the Snake River, maybe 80 or so miles upstream from the section Evel Knievel made famous when I was a kid. A couple of miles past Marsing, I turned left on Route 95, another two lane road at first. Before long, the highway widened two four lanes, as I headed up a long uphill stretch. As I recall, it was a 5% grade for 5 miles, almost long enough to warrant runaway truck ramps on the downhill side, but not quite. It was about 7 am, and I was comfortably driving in my AFA T-shirt with the windows down. The summer heat hadn't really gotten going yet.
I was barely an hour into my long journey. The huge Olsmobile 455 V8 cruised up the long hill. And then it didn't. My car chugged a little, and began to lose speed. I didn't know what to do, so I coasted to the shoulder of the road. I jammed on the e-brake and got out. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a horrible bike mechanic, and I'm worse with cars. I popped the hood, but the car wasn't overheating. I popped the pressure release on the radiator lid, a bit of steam came out, but nothing serious. After a few minutes, I pulled the lid off, the radiator was fine. That was it, that was all I knew how to handle, my dad's decades of experience as a car guy and engineer didn't make it to me. I looked around.
I was about 4 1/2 miles up a long hill, an hour into a long one day, probably 1 1/2 day trip. My giant Pontiac was dead. It was 1985, cell phones weren't a thing. So I did the only thing that made sense to me. I pulled my Skyway T/A BMX race bike, that I used for freestyle, out of the trunk. It was on top of a pile of junk, just in case. I got my tools, straightened out the handlebars, which I'd turned sideways at the stem, to fit in the trunk. Then I threaded on my pedals, the only things I'd taken off the bike to pack it in the huge trunk. I closed the trunk, locked the car up, and picked up my bike, the T/A rolling a freewheel on red ACS Z-Rims, the plastic rims that were supposed to bounce back when knocked out of true. In reality, they never were actually true, ever, there were always wobbles. Dressed in a pair of Levi's 501's, my red AFA T-shirt, worn for luck, and a pair of Nike Pegasus running shoes, a leftover from my cross country running days I took off. The hill was so steep, that I didn't have to pedal once to get going. I just picked up my feet and put them on the pedals. I started rolling down hill.
After about 100 yards, I hit my front and back DiaCompe MX-1000 brakes, I couldn't slow my bike down to a stop if I wanted to. So I let off the brakes, realizing I was going to have to roll it out, all 4 1/2 miles of the 5% grade hill. That didn't really make me nervous. It should have.
Within a half mile, my hubs were making a loud sound, a sound I've never heard before or since, and I was already going far faster than I could pedal. At some point, I crossed over to the downhill road, I can't remember exactly where. I honestly have no idea how fast I was going, but it was a lot faster than I've ever ridden before... or since. I've ridden 45 mph on a mountain bike with a speedometer, and I was going a lot faster than 45 on my Skyway. The only really scary part was when the side of the hills next to me would open up, into a little canyon, and a strong crosswind gust of air would push me sideways suddenly. I just held on and rode down the hill.
Route 95 that morning was almost empty. I did see a couple of cars heading uphill, and saw their heads double take at the sight of me, whizzing down the opposite side of the road. I just kept buzzing along. As luck would have it, I was at the Palm Springs Tramway GPV event in 1987, two years later, in the video above. That whole road, about 3 1/2 miles long, climbs 1800 feet, and had a 9.6% overall grade. I also later worked with Pat Wallace, the motorcycle cameraman at the event. He personally told me that Tommy Brackens, near the bottom of the GPV race course, passed the camera motorcycle, in a turn, when the motorcycle was doing 85 mph. So the fastest GPV's, in the race above, hit at least 90 miles per hour in spots. The total section of the road used for the GPV race was about 1 1/2 to 2 miles long.
So... in jeans and a T-shirt, I rode down a hill half as steep, but more than twice as long, as the GPV riders in the video clip above. And I did it two years before that race. They topped out around 90 mph. I'm sure I was doing at least 55-60 on my Skyway with Z-rims, and 70-80 mph would not surprise me at all. Actually, thinking back, if I hit100 mph on that ride, it wouldn't really surprise me. I'll never know just how fast I went. But I was going really fast on a stock Skyway T/A race bike, with sketchy ass Z-Rims, and smooth "stadium" tires. So I'm pretty sure I clocked the unofficial Z-Rim world speed record that day. If anyone wants to check out the Route 95 hill, let me know. I doubt you'll want to ride down it, but just a second opion on just how gnarly it looks would be cool.
I hit a long flat area, maybe 1/4 to 3/8 of a mile long, coasted the whole thing at speed, then coasted up another hill, maybe 50-75 feet in elevation, and at the top of that I tried to pedal, and could just barely get my sprocket to catch. I was still going too fast to really pedal. I coasted down the other side of that hill, and a few hundred yards onto the flats, before I had ot pedal the first time. So I coasted at least 5 miles without pedaling once. Then it was another six or so miles into Marsing, where I found a small garage, and two guys straight out of Mayberry RFD. They took me back up the hill in an oversize tow truck, and towed my car to their shop. The downhill run towing my car was actually scarier than riding the hill. The old tow truck only had two of five gears working, and he couldn't downshift for a while on the hill, and scared the shit of of his partner and me. But we got back down into Marsing safely. They guys were pretty surprised when I told them I rode down the hill on my "little kid's bike."
They spent a few hours pulling my engine apart to find the timing chain had broken. I wandered around all day, including climbing to the top of nearby Lizard Butte, across the Snake River from Marsing. I had lunch and a great piece of peach pie at a diner there. Shortly before dusk, and about $250 lighter in the wallet, I was back on the road. I made it into north Nevada that night, got a motel room, and then made it safely to my parents' new apartment in San Jose the next afternoon.
So that's the story of my Z-Rim unofficial world speed record, and the single scariest thing I've ever done on a bicycle. If any of you from Idaho or eastern Oregon want to check out that grade on Route 95, let me know just how gnarly it looks today, to ride a bike down. My car broke about half a mile from the top. Let's just say I don't think there will be any GPV's riding that whole grade anytime soon.
I'm doing most of my new writing on Substack now, check it out:
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