The Dirt on Freestyle BMX-ing

I was a young boy in the mid-1960s riding my blue Schwinn Sting-Ray with chrome monkey bars and a banana seat through the woods and fields that were our backyard. Growing up in suburban New Jersey there were endless acres of undeveloped land to ride and explore. The neighborhood boys would spend summer days riding on trails, jumping our bikes over mounds of dirt, trying to fly over streams, or skidding breathlessly down steep slopes. Cuts, scrapes, and bruises were our merit badges.

I wish I could say that the new motocross racing movement in Europe and Southern California influenced us. But, this was long before the era of 24/7 TV sports. The only sports we watched on television (in black and white!) were football and baseball. Occasionally, ABC’s The Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoons might feature a brief clip of motorcycle racing, but motocross and bicycle motocross (BMX) were as unknown to us as the dark side of the moon. In 1966, the Swedish champion Torsten Hallman who introduced motocross to the United States in Simi Valley may as well have been one of those crazy ski jumpers for all we knew in distant New Jersey. We missed the beginning of BMX when kids began racing their bicycles on dirt tracks in Southern California, drawing inspiration from the motocross superstars of the time. But we rode and jumped hard every day.

We didn’t know it but we were dirt BMX-ers, one of several different styles of BMX. Here in Santa Barbara you’ll see a lot of dirt and street riders. Dirt is a great place for young riders to get their start and gain confidence and experience. On dirt, you can ride slow or fast, and take the jumps or ride around them at your own pace as you develop your riding skills. If you fall as you progress to higher jumps, dirt is softer and more forgiving than concrete or asphalt! You can ride the dirt trails on Ellwood Mesa or lots of other places around Santa Barbara with almost any type of BMX bike.