It’s crazy to me how many things I’ve checked off of a list I never realized I had in this crazy world.
It’s crazy to me how many things I’ve checked off of a list I never realized I had in this crazy world.
The story has been told a time or four but for the uninitiated, my path into the world of Moto and more specifically the commingling with the top names of the elite class of professionals, was birthed with a simple email:
The email that started it all.
I was an early adopter of podcast listenership and Steve’s home-brew style was quaint but itching for a little polish. Luckily, he was accepting of my offer and over the course of a few weeks we tightened it up and before either of us really noticed, a working relationship was forming and I was essentially becoming “Jerkie number 1”.
I never thought anything would come of the offer to put my old bands music on the front of the podcast, least of which would be flying to Tim Ferry’s house, staying there for a week and meeting some of the most genuine people I’ve known in life. Going to Chad Reed’s, Ryan Villopoto’s (both more than once), getting passes to any race I desired, all expense paid trips, a paid gig for what is nearing 9 years and this most recent escapade; goign to Pastranaland for a quick shot at catching PulpMX Show producer, Travis Marx, pull off the never before done: the one-day backflip-to-dirt Clinic wirth the man himself, Travis Pastrana.
Meeting Chad Reed was pretty surreal, meeting Travis Pastrana (not my first time but definitely my first time interacting with him on level not completely trivial) was surreal on a completely different level and for different reasons. More on that later as the timeline plays on. Lets get into the chronological telling of this tale.
Anyone who has listened to the PulpMX Show is aware of Cory Moser (or maybe you’re not familiar with the name), if you’ve been listening for a few years, you know that Moser and I are in a group text with Matthes, JT and Weege and if you’ve been listening for a “superfan” amount of time, you know that the fact that Moser and I have never actually met, is a recurring joke amongst us. I convey this abstract story because I have met Tits Legendary and now Travis Marx, yet still no Moser in my life. Moser and I exchange Christmas cards for going on 7 years now yet we have never shaken hands but Travis Marx and I shared a room in his first year on the job. Moser needs to put down the Vodka and pick up the gear bag or apparently we’ll never meat(intentional).
So Travis and I fly into Maryland and meet at Dulles International. Shockingly we get along as well as you could possibly hope. We are both fine with what some would consider uncomfrotable silences. Our sense of humor mirrors each other quite well and there was honestly not a bit of awkwardness from the first moment. This in itself bucked the typical PulpMX Show meeting trend as anyone who has met a PulpMX Show fan knows, most of us are pretty awkward people. I fall on more of the anti-social end of the scale than awkwardness but they are relative to one another.
Pastranaland
We head to Pastranaland straight from the airport becuase after all, this is a fly in, sleep, backflip, fly out schedule of chaos. The expressway system around DC is a frigging nightmare. We missed turns due to traffic density probably 3 or 4 times which put us in the position of needing to U-turn to get back on track. During our troubled-travel to Pastranaland we did come upon a Domino’s Pizza and figured we might as well feed our driving misery. Randy Richardson of Michelin motorcycle was essentially our go-to guardian for this adventure and he called us to let us know a few PulpMX Show superfans had showed up at Travis’ looking for the OTHER Travis, the Dune Goon from the show! Now that’s something TP199 prolly doesnt hear everyday!
We arrived probably about 1.5 hours late which was bad enough but then Randy spotted the empty Domino’s box in the backseat of our rental and although he gave us some good natured ribbing about it, we felt pretty selfish for having…. Not planned ahead and thrown the box away. Seriously though, I was hallucinating I was so effin’ hungry when we spotted that Domino’s. So we met Travis, the PulpMX Show super fans (yup they were still there), Hubert, Steve McCann and a few other real nice guys and got right into Marx-dog signing the Pastranaland waiver of liability and saddling up the bicycle for ehhhhh, 3 jumps into the interior scaled down foam pit. The highlight of this session is when just before Marx dropped in for the first time, TP asked “you ride bikes right?” Marx-dog says “yeah, I used to”, then proceeds to slip a pedal and nearly crash, which then TP responds with “coulda fooled me!”. A classic zinger, perfectly timed that I’ll never forget.
Marxdog jumped about 3 times, TP went over some mental stuff with him and then we hung around the lounge with the guys for a while before TP retired to his house and the rest of us headed out to the Tilted Kilt. While eating Marxdog found out about this game with the TP crew where if you use the word “mine”, you have to do 20 pushups and if you use the word twice before you get your first 20 done, you have to do 50 pushups and Marxdog just happened to use the term two times in one sentence! He was on his face in the Tilted Kilt counting down just as our food arrived. I’m glad I didn’t make that mistake because I would upchucked my burger.
We head to our hotel for the night and were probably sawing logs before the door even shut. Flying always tires the shit outta me and even the worst hotel bed feels like a million bucks after a day of flying.
Marx isn’t good with getting up when the clock isnt showing double-digits before the : but we had to be at Pastranaland by 8:30. Sorry Dunegoon, this aint no leisure trip. We grabbed some rental and body fuel from the gas station and got to Travis’ place on time. Hubert had a pit bike ready for Marx to start on and by the time the 199 arrived it was showtime. TP gave Marxdog all the instruction he deemed necessary before Dunegoon’s first shot at the foam pit and off Marx went. He looked prety solid from his first shot, even Pastrana thought so. He didn’t think going from first try ever to an attempt to dirt in one day would really be possible but having seen Marx commitment right off the bat, he started thinking “maybe”.
Marx moved up to the 250 two stroke and then from the attached quarter-pipe to the actual ramp he’d be making the dirt attempt on pretty quick. Once TP believed Marx was in control of the bike and not just a lawn dart, he asked Trav if he thought he was ready for dirt. Marxdog thought so but wanted two more shots at the pit to see if he could get two dialed in, consistent attempts before heading out back. He nailed them and confidence was high.
Hubert transported the ramp back out to the main Pastranaland dirt compound area while TP199 checked on things at the house and Marx drank some water and tried to supress the nerves. He really did great with the nerves, I was shocked that he genuinely never seemed to have even a tiny bit of nervousness or anything.
We headed out back, took our positions and readied our cameras. It was glorious. A one shot deal and it was only 1:30 in the afternoon! Marxdog, THE DUNEGOON started his backflip quest at 9:45am and had landed a backflip to dirt before 2pm! It was really something so OF COURSE we had to celebrate the accomplishment with lunch at Chik-Filet! That was even more glorious than the backflip (Sorry Boss!)
When we got back to Pastranaland, there were a few different areas of interest but one of my highest was Hubert working on Travis’ Polaris Razor. I didn’t know if Travis was planning on ripping it later or not but when he started offering chauffeured rips around Pastranaland to Marxdog, Randy and I, you bet your ass I was all in. Marx dog returned and said he regretted saying no to the “big jump” and I knew that by the look on Randy’s face wehn he got back that he had indeed said YES! to the jump, that I was absolutely going to say yes as well. It was so crazy because on one hand I’m like, this guy is multi time rally champion driver and knows this property like the back of his hand but on the flipside, I’ve seen all his movies and when he eats shit he EATS SHIT!!! The dude is just so good and so at home when shit is going crazy around him. Now this Razor ride made the trip for me. It was cool to come and document this flip deal but to actually get some adrenalin burned off for myself, that was the real bucketlist for me. Unfortunately, this video doesn’t come close to doing the ride justice, but here it is.
The video doesn’t even come close to the intensity of the actual ride.
As we prepard to depart Pastranaland, Travis of course broke the “mine” rule again and quickly knocked out his 20 pushups. Here’s a shot of that in closing.
Never say “mine”.
I gotta be honest, initially the idea of this whole ordeal coming to fruition sounded just unlikely and crazy enough to sound like a good time. With 4 kids and building a house on my plate, as departure for the trip drew near, I was pretty overwhelmed and not super excited to go (I know this sounds totally jaded and ungrateful) but after the flight I was on board with getting the deal done. Having seen all the inner workings of Pastranaland and more than anything, seeing how genuinely gracious and patient Travis was with us on what is one of his very limited “off-days” (not to mention that utterly incredible Razor ride in the dark of night), I am so glad I was invited and followed through on what is absolutely an experience I will never forget.
I wonder what opportunity will present itself next as another tree bench stemming from that simple offer of a song for a podcast intro…
Follow your passion. Not for monetary gain or validation but for your own inner satisfaction and see what comes your way.
