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MikeCarruth

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About MikeCarruth

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  • Birthday 10/26/1966

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  1. DS--love that photo. What was the deal with everyone stopping on the third straight? Thanks for the kind words on the interview Steve. The part about Supercross was definitely a very "Greg Hill" moment. My mic was muted, but when he said "BMX Supercross straight-up sucks" I gave a good belly laugh. Best, M
  2. Lately, I have been taking old BMXA coverage and contrasting it with the current race of similar name or location. Just posted a BMX News feature taking a fresh look at the BMXA coverage of the 1980 ABA Midwest Nationals in Elkhart, IN. So many of us remember that race, and I was lucky enough to get Greg Hill (who won Pro Money) to join me on a podcast talking about the weekend. It's a great interview and the BMXA coverage has some riders who are still making a name in the sport to this day. Check it out now Got any stories from that one? Enjoy! M P.S. Big thanks to SBros for letting me post this up.
  3. Just posted a podcast with Eddy to get an update on how he's doing after the terrible MTB crash that rendered him paralyzed from the waist down last October. He has made a lot of progress in the four months since the accident, and I know all Eddy King fans will enjoy hearing, from his own lips, how he's doing. Listen Now Best, M *I cleared this post with SBrothers first, but if I posted it in the wrong place, feel free to move it to a more appropriate forum.
  4. I agree, Steve. I think about it all the time--the fact that guys our age can go back to old boxes of photos and memorabilia, pull out BMXA issues and get lost in the way-back for a while. The lack of media permanence will be/is a major problem for BMX racing, in particular, which does not have newsstand magazines (in the same way we did). Because of digital media, those memories may never see the physical world, and kids these days are less into "collecting" memorabilia than we were (heck, I saved gas receipts from some of our trips from "exotic" places like Tucumcari, NM and London, Ontario). This is why I plead with people all the time, as I know you do as well, to post their photo sets to BMX websites, rather than Facebook. Facebook, while a "quick high," does not provide much permanence or archival promise from a BMX history point of view. Let's face it: web sites (or whatever we evolve into over the next 30 years) will be the place our kids will need to go to view this kind of content. It's not going to be easily found on a 2025, 2035, 2045 version of Facebook, since the whole world of content is there. And there still are not very good tools and methods for generational archiving of digital images. So, yes, like you said, much of that will be lost along the way, which is really sad. With established BMX sites, committed to the history of the sport (even the history we are making in the modern era), site owners who care are going to be the stewards of the legacy of BMX for our kids to revisit decades down the line. You guys do a great job here, and my mind is on that "preservation" goal as well for the long term. Best, M
  5. Great thread. Here are a few contributions: ^ABA National (#81, right), Plantation Raceway, St. Louis 1981 ^South Shore BMX, 1983 ^At Naperville BMX, circa 1984. ^Itasca BMX (second from Right), 1984 ^BMX Underwriters "Transport." Early morning trails session with Randy Tischmann, spring 1983 Plenty more. Best, M
  6. That is way-cool, Don. We raced there a few times in the 80s. Indoor on concrete always had a "special race" feel to it. Paul Depauw is doing races like that again in East Moline, IL and though I haven't been to one in a year or so, they were hella-fun. It is great to see them including BMX racing in the "legacy" mural in Ft. Wayne. Best, M
  7. Definitely Advanced Trickery. I think that is either Roman Soprych or Billy Champman *Mods: if you'd rather have this non-Sundance stuff in a "Chicago BMX" thread, feel free.
  8. Those Bimmerle stories are classic. I could totally see him doing all that, especially laying you off after sacrificing the family vacation. He always struck me as the guy who would put a tack in an old lady's tire, outside the market, then offer to fix it, for a price. Anyway, enough about that sour puss. I definitely remember Lance--he rode for The Bike Rack in St. Charles--the absolute headquarters for Campy hubs back in those days. And you are absolutely right, Lance had his whole situation fully-dialed. He was more "Toby" and Toby, sometimes. Here are a few random Chicago BMX Photos RL gettin "big air" at the Sundance BMXA Trick Team Show Me getting put over turn one at Elk Grove. I think it is Todd Novak doing the honors :D Donny Atherton poses with my moms at Schaumburg Schwinn the day after the Itasca WOS Denny Owens (RIP) at the 1981 ABA Land O Lincoln Nationals in Springfield (the day after I quit High School in order to go to this race) I have a few more, but don't want to gum up the works here (it's a Sundance thread, so apologies for the mini-hijack) Hope y'all enjoy them. Best, M
  9. ^^^ That's way cool that Grant found his way back to the track. His family was very involved in volunteering at all the local tracks, and I am pretty sure his dad, Jerry, ran the Elk Grove track. It's funny, because that Elk Grove track was always kind of a "B" track -- Not as cool as Itasca, nor did it have the rider count -- BUT, looking at the tracks today, we need a track like Elk Grove for the beginners and dads our age who want to get back into it, but still have to work on Monday. Got a chuckle out of abozny's reference to Westchester Wheels. I am pretty sure Bill Bimmerle hated BMX, and everything it stood for. He would kick us out out the CABDA (Chicago Area Bicycle Dealers Association) trade show every year (he was their President). We'd get in, through some kind of crack in the system, and he would put his security team on a mission to run us off the property. Years later, maybe 1986, I was at the CABDA show as Associate Editor of BMX Plus!, and a bunch of us were standing around talking BMX, and here comes Bill. We each looked at each other, and I extended my hand and said "Bill, I don't know if you remember me, I'm..." He cut me off like a guillotine , and said "Yeah, I remember you. I don't need to shake your hand." Wow. That dude was one cold slice. Back to Sundance, Jim McMahon is a Facebook friend of mine, and Dylan married Sundance Team rider and ace mechanic, Ed Schulz. They live out in Murrieta, CA, very close to Mike Redman, Maris Strombergs and Marc Willers. Ed is still Mountain Biking, and lookin legit doing it. I would love to do an Itasca/Sundance/Chicago Area BMX Reunion, where we really root out some of the old schoolers. Maybe as part of Ed Nowdomski's winter event next year. Ed, if you got your ears on, Jim McMahon would be an awesome guest speaker for 2013. Chicago BMX had some of the best times. I'm sure all of you, from whatever part of the country, can also say that of your local scene...but it just seemed a little more special in the 312 (when it was ALL the 312). Best, M
  10. Itasca BMX Track - 1980 Itasca BMX Track - 1982 Naperville, IL - 1983 Cool thread, Red! M
  11. Renny told me a funny story when I interviewed him a couple months ago. Seems the dust from the track was making its way to the casino floor, and causing some irritation for the players at the tables. He was summoned into the office of a very loud, very surly casino manager, straight out of the movie "Casino," and told, in no uncertain terms, that the race would be shut down if they did not do something about the problem. Renny said he and Merl Mennenga had a very intense couple of hours before they got the problem sufficiently resolved so the dust was no longer making its way to the casino. I love the behind-the-scenes stories of the old days.
  12. Is it just my connection, or was the sound going in and out? It seemed like every time they were announcing a gate of riders, each rider would be chopped off. "The Num r ike f Travi ger" It was a great race to cover...and awesome to re-live 29 years hence. Thanks for posting that M
  13. Well said in both posts, Steve. I definitely feel a tinge of pain to see good BMX content on Facebook and not on one of our dedicated sites. I post links to my new school news on there, to help get the word out on whatever I am reporting to readers who may not happen by on their own. But the content is always posted on our site, and linked from FB back to bmxnews.com, or wherever. Maybe that's one way people who are inclined to post to FB can get the best of both worlds; post on a BMX site, then post a link on your FB wall to that content. The modern generation of BMXers (well, racers, at least) will not have it as good as we had it in terms of remembering their BMX roots when the time comes. In our day, we had full-time BMX magazines putting out new content every month, year in and year out, for decades. Those magazines were/are used as valuable reference guides to people looking to rekindle their knowledge of the sport, and passion for what came to be known as "the hobby." Today, that tome of printed history does not exist in BMX racing, save for the small amount of race coverage in BMX Plus! The sanction papers do not really count, IMHO because their content is more around the nuts and bolts of the races--great for supporting documentation 25 years from now, but not in the same way of the "Complete Racer" features BMXA ran, a product analysis on Pro Neck Stems (BMXA December 80) or the or the annual Buyers Guides of both magazines. No Sir we, collectively, are "it" nowadays. Your memories, opinions and minutiae are the reference material of tomorrow. I like to look at sites like BMX Society and Vintage as the "katra" of BMX (for you non-Star Trek fans it is, basically, the transference of all knowledge from one (usually dying) person to a survivor so the experience, knowledge and memories of the departed can live on in the other person). I think I can speak for most site owners when I say that those of us who run dedicated BMX sites feel a responsibility to preserve the history and legacy of what our pages contain, whereas a site like Facebook is really not thinking of your content in that way, beyond matching you up with University Of Phoenix if you have the words "take+classes" in your status. It is way early morning here (couldn't sleep...excited to hit the road to the Christmas Classic today), so forgive me if I have expressed some half-formed thoughts. But this is a topic I have thought a lot about too, and I was stoked to see SBros giving it its due. Best, M
  14. Ryan Crupi is a hair stylist in Hollywood/Beverly Hills area last I heard. http://www.ryancrupi.com I saw his mom & dad at the 2009 Hall Of Fame banquet. Ironically, they and Greg/Richel Swingrover walked up to the check in table at the same time, but were not there together. They both said "Crupi" at the same time--funny stuff. M
  15. LOL, Rick you did it right, my man. It was me who was over the foul line!
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