Travis Pastrana goes for another World's First at age 40... right before a knee replacement

Travis Pastrana, now 40 years old, and looking at a knee replacement surgery in the next couple of weeks, decides he wants to try another World's First, a NBD (Never Been Done), on his motocross bike.  The idea is a backflip, up into a nose bonk on this high platform sitting on a scissors lift, and then a front flip out of the nose bonk, into a super-sized airbag.  Unfortunately, on the first warm-up trick to test the whole concept, he breaks his hand.  It's Travis Pastrana, and that's where things get interesting.  Just watch the video.  

There are now hundreds of thousands of people, around the world, who got into one of the action sports, or another, in the past 50 or 60 years.  All of them progressed as riders, skaters, boarders or whatever sport, at some level.  I'm pretty sure most of these hundreds of thousands of action sports people still have things in their head they want to do, wanted to do, or tried, and weren't able to accomplish, whatever their level of athletic ability.  

These activities collectively known as "action sports," called "sports" mostly as an easy way to categorize them, are all focused on personal progression.  But even among hundreds of thousands of people in the crazy action sports world, there are only a handful who sit there and think, "I wonder if I could backflip a motorcycle, then nose bonk a somewhat wobbly platform 35 feet up, and front flip into an airbag?  That's why Travis Pastrana is Travis Pastrana.  Like Mat Hoffman, Seth Enslow, and a few others, and all of their hero, Evel Knievel, he's next level.  He's actually tries shit most other really talented athletes wouldn't even think of trying.

There's a crew helping him in this video, a local crew from there, in Oklahoma, building the huge take off ramp.  Making the platform for the scissors lift, we have Nate Wessel, BMX freestyler from way back, and one of the best ramp builders in the world.  Here's Nate's section in Etnies Forward video in 2002.  Nate Wessel, in the BMX world , could do technical street riding, but he was known for going big in the 1990's and early 2000's.  So when he tells Travis to fully commit in this video, it's coming from someone who really understands about committing to a trick.  Then we have Banksy (the MX rider, not the street artist), a really good up-and-coming motocross rider, who has performed in the Nitro circus.  In this video above, the guys doing construction and roadie work are amazing riders.  That's a hell of a crew working together.  

If you've read this far, you must have watched the video by now.  Both Travis and Banksy pull off World's First tricks, and fucking insane ones, at that.  Progression keeps going.

I first heard of Travis Pastrana in 1999, when I kind of scammed a pass to the X-Games in San Francisco.  Officially, I was writing a story about the event for DIG BMX magazine in the U.K..  Unofficially, I was shooting video of the practice riding to try and get back into making BMX videos again.  I did actually write an article for DIG, but they had other guys at the contest, and my piece didn't make it to print.  And I did make another BMX video about a year later, called Animals, but wasn't able to follow it up and make more videos on a regular basis.  Life, and struggling to make a living as a taxi driver, got in the way.  

But it was that weekend on the pier in San Francisco, at one of the first Freestyle Motocross events at the X-Games, that I first heard the name Travis Pastrana.  I'd heard of Mike Metzger and Brian Deegan, and a few other freestyle motocross guys before that, but hadn't heard of the young racer turned FSMXer from back east.  During the finals of the freestyle motocross event, I climbed to the top of a scaffolding platform for the media, so I could get a wide overview of the whole FSMX area.  

Standing there with several other photographers and video people, with my dinky Sony Digital8 camcorder, a guy next to me said something like, "Make sure you get Travis' next run, he's going to jump into the bay."  I have no idea who the guy was.  I said, "Who's Travis?" and he pointed him out.  So I moved a bit, and got a view where I could see the end of the pier better, at the edge of the San Francisco Bay.  Sure enough, in his final run, the little known Travis Pastrana went charging at a berm that was only about four feet high, hit it like a jump, and launched his motorcycle off it, into the San Francisco Bay.  I got the shot, thanks to the heads up from the stranger.  I also could see the boat and the diver they had hired to pull the motorcycle back up after the trick.  I got it all on video.  

Travis ended up getting disqualified for jumping into the bay, and supposedly some environmental group got all worked up because his motorcycle might leak a bit of oil and water into the bay.  It's the fucking San Francisco Bay for God's sakes, it's a major shipping port.  There's a lot of toxic junk in that water.  But the jump never was shown on ESPN.  I planned to save the shot for some later video.  I wanted to do a BMX documentary with all my ten years footage, back then.  But the shot of Travis, along with all my other footage from my BMX days, was lost, when I lost a storage unit full of stuff in a move, in 2008.  

So that's how I, personally, first became aware of this kid named Travis Pastrana, 24 years ago, when he was about 16.  I learned two things that weekend about Travis.  1)  If you're around in person, or if he's on TV, and he's riding, watch him!  Anything cold happen.  2) If you're around in person, and Travis is riding, and you have some kind of camera in your hand, point it at him.  You never know what he might do.  That was the only time I, personally, saw Travis ride live.  But it made a hell of an impression.  I've watched many of his antics, crazy stunts, and other sports things he's done on TV since, like the rest of you.  

Now, as most of you are reading this, he's heading into knee replacement surgery, and then into recovery.  Will this backflip-nose bonk-frontflip be his last World's First?  None of us knows.  I doubt if Travis knows.  We'll see.  But that's one hell of a send, even into an airbag, for anybody.  It's really amazing he's doing a trick that nuts at all, let alone at age 40, after all the injuries he's dealt with.  

Travis has done so many crazy things in both action sports, and motorsports, and just random jackass-style stunts, that we can't remember them all.  So here's another video with a whole bunch of Travis Pastrana's craziest stunts.  Thanks Travis for pushing the limits, and motivating the rest of us to try and push a bit more in our own lives, whatever level we live at.  Heal up, man!

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The BMX freestyle foreshadowing of Freestyle Motocross

 This is my recent Sharpie Scribble Style drawing of Martin Aparijo doing a no-footed can-can on his CR 125 in late 1986 or early 1987.  The original photo was in the February 1987 issue of BMX Plus! magazine.  Sean Ewing commissioned me to do this drawing, and he always finds really unique photos for me to do in my weird, Sharpie style.  Thanks Sean.  He also posted the photos from the original photo shoot on Facebook that I'm using below.

If you've been around BMX a while, or have watched Mark Eaton's Joe Kid on a Stingray documentary, you know BMX started in 1970, and was inspired by motocross racing.  Back then motocross bikes had a couple inches of travel, and only got really big air when guys like Evel Knievel or the other distance jumpers flew ramp to ramp.  The first big BMX jumping variation, the classic tabletop, came from BMXers imitating motocross riders.  

But then BMX took off, bikes improved, and jumping evolved.  By 1983-1984, BMX freestyle, trick riding, was becoming an actual sport, and BMX air tricks evolved well past what motocross free riders were doing at the time.  So the guys at BMX Plus! decided to do a photo shoot with some BMX guys doing tricks on motocross bikes.  

This February 1987 article in BMX Plus! opens with Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola doing no handers on their motorcycles, side by side.  You can also see several other tricks done by them that day.  You can NOT look up this issue's scan on Old School Mags, they don't have the scan of this issue, unfortunatelty.

Here's the next page, and we see Martin Aparijo again, busting a scary looking nothing, and a small black & white photo in the upper right, of the no footed can-can, again.  The drawing I did above was from a color poster of the trick that came in the magazine.  

So in this article, published in the February 1987 issue of BMX Plus!, we have Martin Aparijo documented doing a nothing and a no-footed can-can on his motorcycle.  Then we have Martin, Brian, and Eddie all doing no-handers on motocross bikes.  In addition they're doing a surfer, a framestand, and a "riding body varial," climbing in a complete 360 around the bike while riding.  

Here's the cool part, freestyle motocross wasn't "invented" for about 7 or 8 more years.  Even better, Martin was best known as a flatland freestyler, though he had been an avid jumper, rode pools, and did the first front flip jump (no photos or video) on a BMX bike. I believe Matt Berringer was the first guy to land a BMX front flip on video, around 2000.  You can see him doing a blackflip followed by a front flip, over doubles, at 10:27 in this video.

So we have Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola doing freestyle motocross tricks, 6-8 years before freestyle motocross was invented.  Now, there were, in 1987, and have always been, off road motorcycle "free riders."  I don't know what tricks they were doing in 1987, and couldn't find any clips on YouTube of tricks from that era. 

 Motorcycles were invented in the late 1800's, and there were races by the late 1890's.  Motorcycle "scrambles" in Europe go back to the 1940's or 1950's.  Motocross had been happening in the US. since the 1950's.  Then there was Evel Knievel, Gary Wells, and a few other motorcycle jumpers performing in shows in the late 1960's and 1970's.  That was when motorcycle distance jumping first blew up in popularity, thanks to Evel.  Then there was kind of a lull in motorcycle jumping during the 1980's.  By 1989, and into the early 1990's, daredevil Johnny Airtime was doing super technical jumps, like this jump, over two moving semi trucks, in 1991.  Robbie Knievel was also jumping again, beginning in 1989, even doing no handed distance jumps later on, in the 1990's.   

In the free riding world, motocross racers Jeff Emig,  Phil Lawrence, and Ryan Hughes were three of the top free riders, known for jumping big on natural terrain, in the early 1990's.   Then the first Crusty Demons of Dirt video, in 1994, sparked the free riding explosion, and ultimately leading to the birth of freestyle motocross, or FSMX, as a competitive sport.  

Taking it back to the BMX Plus! article above.  When Martin, Brian, and Eddie did that photo shoot with Scott Towne in late 1986, Jeff Emig* was about 17 years old, Phil Lawrence was about 16, Brian Deegan and Seth Enslow were about 11 or 12, and Travis Pastrana was 2 1/2 years old.  So Martin, Eddie, and Brian were way ahead of the curve of motocross tricks at that time.  At this photo shoot, all three guys got photos doing no handers on motorcycles, three of the first documented no handers.  I can't confirm they were the first no handers ever, but they were definitely three of the first no-handed jumps documented on motorcycles.  Then we have Martin busting out both a nothing and a no-footed can-can, which was originally done on a BMX bike by Mike Dominguez, a few years earlier.  It looks like Martin Aparijo may have invented both of those tricks on a motorcycle.  The next documented no-footed can-can I could find was Larry Linkogle, on the cover of Racer X newspaper, in 1994.  So BMX freestylers Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola all have a spot in the roots of freestyle motocross, for the tricks they pulled at this BMX Plus! photo shoot above.

When it comes to variations that were invented on BMX bikes, and then went to motocross, we have to look at Mike Dominguez, Eddie Fiola, and Mat Hoffman.  Either Dominguez or Fiola invented the can-can, and Mike invented the no footed can-can.  Fiola invented the opposite one hand one footer, to the best of my knowledge, and the "over and out," the can-can to one footer.  Then, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, we have Mat Hoffman, seen here in Aggroman in 1989.  Mat stands as the single most innovative vert BMX rider ever.  He invented dozens of variations, among them, the Indian air, and Superman seat grab on vert, which later became standard FSMX tricks.  So several basic, early, FSMX tricks were invented by BMX freestylers, and no handers, no footed can-cans, and nothings, were actually done on motorcycles by BMXers, years before freestyle motocross began.  

Like the late night infomercial guy, here's my "But wait!  That's not all!" part.  The crew at BMX Plus! did another odd article featuring an MX cycle in the 1980's.  Here's the cover of the September 1988 issue of BMX Plus!  Notice anything unusual?  

Yep, you're seeing that right.  There's a guy on a motorcycle doing an air, on a huge quarterpipe, in 1988.

In this 1988 issue of BMX Plus!, a guy named Kerry Day is doing airs on a specially designed, 15 foot high quarterpipe, on an 80cc motorcycle.  That issue came out 29 years before Moto X Quarterpipe high air first appeared in the X-Games in 2017 (with an 18 foot ramp to dirt landing).  Kerry Day did actually air out of this ramp on his motorcycle, and landed back on the ramp.  

 

Here are the photos from the actual article, with Kerry doing a bit of a tabletop, and then a turndown table.  You can find this article on Old School Mags, that's where I stole these photos from.  Kerry was a motocrosser, but may have ridden some BMX in skateparks.  He had seen Tinker Juarez doing airs at a skatepark years earlier, and always wanted to try it on a motorcycle.  This fifteen foot high monstrosity, at a time when BMX quarterpipes were 8 feet high, and halfpipes maybe ten feet high, cost him $3,000 and three months to build.  This huge ramp was built about 4 years before Mat Hoffman's 20 foot high mega quarterpipe.  Kerry could do some variations on his MX on the ramp, including a no footer air.  Check the article at the link to read the whole thing.  While this isn't a BMXer doing airs on a motorcycle, it is the BMX idea of a quarterpipe taken into the motocross world for the first time.   

I'm not done, there's still more.   Many of you Old School BMX freestylers know this one already, but most freestyle motocrossers and young BMxers are not aware of this.  Not one, but two BMX guys did backflips on motorcycles long before Cary Hart made his famous, if sketchy, "first" MX backflip in 2000.  What Cary Hart, and pretty much no one else knew, is that both Jose Yanez and BMX vert rider Bob Kohl had both landed backflips on motorcycles several years earlier.  I'm not dissing Cary Hart, no one in the stadium in 2000 knew backflips had already been done on motorcycles, and it took a lot of balls to try that backflip.  Here's the video.

Thanks to Jan from Frez Productions for compiling this all into a 5 1/2 minute video.  This shows the actual story of motocross backflips in a few minutes.  

Gymnast Jose Yanez decided in the 1980's to learn to do a backflip on a BMX bike, after seeing some freestylers ride in San Diego.  In 1984, he became the first guy to do a backflip on a BMX bike, which landed him a magazine cover.  Jose wound up going off and joining Ringling Brothers circus, doing the BMX backflip in their show, for several years.  It would be six years before another BMX freestyler learned to flip a BMX bike.  Southern California freestyler Jeff Cotter learned it next, and several other riders, like Mat Hoffman (2:13 in this clip), Dave Clymer (5:14 in this clip), Todd Lyons, and Bob Kohl, learned the flip in the next couple of  years.  By that time, Jose had already done double backflips into water, in 1987.  Another few years later, Canadian vert rider Jay Miron became the first BMXer to land a double backflip ramp to ramp, in 1997, followed by Dave Mirra landing his first double backflip in 1999, then doing it in the X-Games in 2000.  

As I said at the start, BMX racing was an offshoot of motocross racing, and it began in 1970.  But in the years since, BMXers have created new variations that were later taken to motocross bikes.  In some cases, BMXers actually landed tricks on motorcycles before freestyle motocrossers did.  And then we have Kerry Day, decades before it became a competitive event, taking the BMX quarterpipe into the world of motorcycle riding.  I've tried to compile all these photos and videos in one blog post, so all the BMXers and FSMXers who aren't aware of these events can check them out all in one place.  I can't verify the Aparijo, Fiola, and Blyther did the very first no handers on motorcycles, or that Martin invented the no footed can-can and nothing on motorcycles, but as I've showed, they were the first I know of to have those tricks documented.  If you have any more information or photos and videos to add, check out my Facebook page, where I'm sure the discussion will continue on all these events and tricks after I publish this post.  

I'll end this post with a link to a cool documentary I found about the Crusty Demons of Dirt video series, and the birth of freestyle motocross as a competitive sport.

How a group of misfits PISSED OFF an entire sport (Crusty Demons)

Blogger's note: 9/9/2023- I just retitled this post, after watching the freestyle motocross documentary below.  Early freestyle motocross included several BMX variations, like the Indian air, Superman seat grab, the nothing, and others, but the early riders that built the sport and lifestyle of freestyle motocross didn't know about the things I wrote about above, in this blog post.  Those events were already kind of lost to history, just as guys doing 25 foot jumps and backflips on bicycles in the 1910's and 1920's were unknown when us Gen X BMX freestylers first did tricks on our bikes. 

So I retitled the post, because these things above, tricks done by Martin Aparijo, Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Kerry Day, Jose' Yanez, and Bob Kohl were foreshadowing things that would happen later, when the right group of crazy guys (and some gals) came along to take motocross riding to a new, highly creative, highly progressive level.  I wrote this post to bring these two BMX photo shoots, and the early MX flips of Jose' and Bob, into one place, for anyone interested learning about them.  Below is the real documentary about the birth of freestyle motocross.  Check it out.

Unchained:  the Untold Story of Freestyle Motocross (2016)

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* Yes, my name is Steve Emig, and I might be related to Jeff Emig, but I'm not sure.  Randy Lawrence tried to introduce us at a Supercross race once, in 1991, where Jeff was racing, and I was working as a TV production assistant.  But we kept missing each other.  I never ended up meeting him.  Someone in my family said my dad and Jeff's dad were cousins, but no one ever verified that for sure.  So Jeff and I might be distantly related cousins, or we might not, I honestly don't know.  I have no idea if either of us is related to Matt Emig, either, but he's badass, just like Jeff.