Synchronicity

Just for the record, that recent post about the AFA Oregon Pro Ramps video I produced came up as a consequence of the two rider-made video posts I did just before it.  I wrote those two posts to kind of set the stage for going through my 1990 bike video, The Ultimate Weekend, section by section, telling the stories of how it came to be.  So that's coming soon in this blog.

In a complete bit of synchronicity, last night happened to be the 2018 induction ceremony for the BMX Hall of Fame.  In the industry category, my boss at the AFA, and the guy who started me making videos, Bob Morales, got inducted.  He totally deserves it, his story goes through the entire early history of BMX freestyle.  Not only that, he's the guy who made BMX freestyle an actual sport, he put on the first skatepark contests and then the flatland and quarterpipe contests. 

Months ago, I heard Bob, and my one time P.O.W. House roommate, Brian Foster, were both getting into the HOF this year.  I did a congratulatory Facebook post  for them, and then went on with my life.  I've had more than enough to deal with the last few weeks to pay any attention to today's official BMX world.  So it was a complete surprise when Bob's sister Riki, my co-worker and friend from the AFA days, told me Bob gave me a shout-out in his acceptance speech.  If you go to the USA BMX facebook page, a couple of posts down, you can watch the entire 2018 BMX Hall Of Fame induction ceremony and speeches.  I watched those by both Bob and Brian Foster.  To be honest, it's kind of surreal for me.

On one hand, I'm simply struggling to survive day to day in a new city.  My life, in the financial and material sense, is sketchy as hell.  But since landing very unexpectedly in Richmond, I've been reconnecting to the BMX scene in a real world way.  It's like I'm coming full circle in a sense, with BMX, and I'm now an old guy who some younger people actually want to hear stories from.  When I worked in the bike/skate industries in the 1980's and 1990's, the idea of us being in our 50's and someone actually having a Hall Of Fame, and a big event, seemed ludicrous.   But now it's real.  And I got a personal shout out from Bob Morales as an AFA worker who helped him, and from Brian Foster, who shouted out the P.O.W. House posse as a group.  Both of those bring back a ton of good memories.  I don't waste time on the not-so-good memories any more.

I don't know where things are headed in my life.  But I'm getting back in touch with the BMX world, and it's not me trying to, it's just happening.  In the last crazy couple of decades where I went through some really crazy shit, and was focused mostly on trying to figure out the whole point of life itself, I've learned that life is like that.  For those of us who've spent a fair amount of time following our intuition, and doing things that seemed stupid to most people around us, we know about following a strong hunch, the gut feeling, the "still small voice," that draws us in weird directions.  Sometimes it seems the whole world is against us, and we get tested to our core, to see if we're serious about following our dreams.  At other times, things just start happening, fast forwarding us into the next level and place we seemed needed in, by the world.  Since my leg infection and major allergic reaction to the medicine a couple of weeks ago, I seem to have reached a turning point.  I'm getting drawn back to the world of BMX, and that's just fine with me.  We'll see where it takes me.  It took me some really cool places 30+ years ago. 

But right now, I want to congratulate Bob Morales and (future physical therapy doctor) Brian Foster on getting much deserved props from the BMX establishment.  I'd like to thank them both for the shout outs as one of many people in their lives along the way.  As for me, I have a BMX rider drawing to get back to work on, which is another piece of synchronicity, as you'll soon see on social media.  Props to all the BMX people who got recognized last night, now, back to work.