The Freewheelers BMX chronicles

About 12 years ago, while walking with my family on the riverfront trail, my mom looked at me as we passed the skatepark and said “Imagine if you had a park like that when you were a kid”. My eyes instantly lit up. “We literally would have lived there”. I wasn’t exaggerating. We were lucky in that my dad had built us some wooden ramps that were setup in our driveway. A quarter pipe and a kick ramp. We rode them every single day. As for concrete skateparks, they only existed as pictures in magazines. As my mom and I talked about the good old BMX days, never in a million years would I have imagined riding that skatepark today at 53.9 years old. Middle age. It can be such a powerful wake-up call. The first still shot looks like an aerial on the big quarter given the camera angle. The truth is that I can’t go above coping when doing a 180 on that quarter. I just don’t have the guts (and/or desire) to send it like I used to anymore. As you can see from the video clip, the shot is from a flyout which are new to me really. Our old wooden quarter pipes had a very small top platform, not deep enough to be able to ride onto.

The downtown skatepark is always very crowded with skaters every evening. I really feel like I’m in the way on my bike. First day of vacation, sunny skies, I managed to get in over an hour of riding before noon. Park to myself. I just love summer mornings. Before it’s too hot. Before the winds pick up. Reminds me of summer vacation as a kid.

Summer vibes lunch ride. Sunny and 26 Celsius today. Yes I’ll definitely take it !!

39 years ago. April 1983. Before going to the car show at the Moncton Coliseum, we dropped into Eastern Sports. Me and my cousin Armand. We both bought Haro Flo Panel BMX plates. I didn’t know what number to choose. I remembered a picture in one of my BMX Action magazines of a dude riding a white SE PK Ripper like mine. I didn’t really know who he was but I really liked his style. And that white PK! I’m not 100% sure, but if I remember correctly, his name was Bubba Hayes. And he was rocking #60 as he was slaying his competition on the BMX track. I felt inspired. And decided to also go with #60 for my first full year of BMX racing. I was 14 years old. Last year, while cleaning my old bed room, my mom found my old Haro Flo Panel plate. I cleaned it up. And Luc provided the stickers including my old #60 bringing it back to life. 39 years ago. 1983. Eat. Sleep. BMX. Repeat. Yeah, that sure was a great summer…




#1983

When you only post still photos because your foot touches the ground a million times in the video. Flatland freestyle. An exercise in practice and patience. Old school bmxer enjoying this process.

35 years. I sold my 1985 Haro Master Freestyler in the spring of 1988 after my first year of university. Not because I no longer enjoyed riding it. Simply because everyone kept telling us that it was time to start adulting. We sold the ramps. I bought a car. And eventually got into mountain bikes. Then road and cyclocross. “Adult” bicycles. I have always and will forever be in love with bikes. All of them. But there is certainly a very special spot deep in my heart for 20” BMX. My roots. Today, with social media, watching so many old school freestylers riding again has rekindled this lifelong passion. My childhood heroes. RL Osborn. Eddie Fiola. Martin Aparijo. This newfound inspiration. My last chance. So begins the search for a modern old school 20” BMX bike. They are so rare right now. Sold out everywhere. It takes a while. But I finally find a 2021 GT Pro Performer Heritage 20. Old school looks. Modern geometry. Present-day technology. Just what I need to tame this mid-life crisis itch. Of all the types of bike riding that I have done in the last 35 years, flatland freestyle sure is the form that is going to take the most practice. Just for fun. And with absolutely nothing to prove…

2 photos. Taken 38 years apart. From a naïve teenager to a middle aged man. So much has changed. Except for the feeling that I get every time I throw my leg over my white SE PK Ripper. The feeling that never grows old. The feeling that never dies. The only difference is that I appreciate it so much more now. Like would say “We’ve been here for years”. Man, I wish I still had that 83 PK Ripper.




#1983

Tabletop Thursday throwback to July 1987. Freewheelers BMX Trick Team show. Shediac Lobster Festival. Luc sending it.




#1987

Throwback to close to 34 years ago. July 1st, 1987. Luc sailing above our 6 feet high quarter pipe during the Freewheelers Canada Day demo in Saint-Louis de Kent. A photographer from the local newspaper, the Moncton Times and Transcript took the shot. Back in the day, photos were much harder to come by. There were no cell phones or digital pics. Cameras were big and expensive. Film was expensive. And then pictures had to be developed. So much hassle. I forget the journalist’s name but he gave Luc this print later that summer at another one of our shows. At the time we had no idea how precious pics like this would become. Priceless treasures really…




#1987

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Michel Fougere from Mike’s Bike Shop gives Luc a call in the winter of 1986 asking if we would be interested in doing shows as part of the Shediac Lobster Festival that summer. Without a smidgen of hesitation, Luc answers “YES !!”. We need to go meet the organizing committee to make it official. Mike Fougere sets it up and both Luc and I head to Shediac an evening the following week for the meeting. They tell us that it would be for 5 days, from Wednesday through Sunday. Two 30 minute shows per day. And they would pay $1000. Luc and I agree without hesitation. Actually, we’re trying to control our enthusiasm at this point. $500 each to ride our bikes! Something that we would technically have done for free! HELL YEAH!! Where do we sign! They’re working on the schedule / brochure and ask for the name of our performing duo. Now, at this point we don’t really have a name. We had used “2-Hip Trick Team” a few times in the past. We’d stolen it from a few of our BMX magazine heroes, Ron Wilkerson and Rick Avella who did demos under the name in northern California back in 1983. It was so far removed from New Brunswick Canada that we figured they wouldn’t mind if we “borrowed” their name. Actually, we more likely figured they would never know since they probably had no idea where New Brunswick was. But to be honest, as cool as Ron and Rick were, they weren’t us. Or maybe I should say we weren’t them. We had wanted to find something new and original, but couldn’t come up with anything. As creative as we were with our riding, our teenage brains weren’t wired to come up with a creative and fitting name. Then, after a short pause, we simultaneously blurted out “The Freewheelers”.

Fast forward to early July, after one of the Shediac Festival afternoon shows, we’re sitting on our bikes next to the ramps chatting with a few kids who came to talk to us and take a look at the bikes. Just as we’re ready to head inside to get changed and put the bikes away, we hear a voice behind us. “The Freewheelers eh?!?!”. The voice seems familiar. We both turn around and come face to face with this cool dude with flowy long hair and California surfer vibe. MIKE PLUME! With our BMX racing friend Rick Snyder behind him. Dudes !! Mike was home on vacation from Alberta hanging out with Rick. They had just caught the end of our show and wanted to stop by to say Hi. We knew exactly what Mike meant by his Freewheelers comment and to be honest we kind of felt guilty that we had borrowed (or stolen) his name. He wasn’t pi**ed. He was actually happy to hear that his name idea had not gone to waste. Mike wasn’t riding anymore. His focus was now completely on his music. And as much as the Freewheelers was a cool name for a BMX Trick Team, it wasn’t really a good name for a band. He said the name literally stopped him in his tracks when he heard it announced in the Lobster Festival radio promo a day earlier. He smiled and figured it was us. It was real nice to see Mike again and to catch up with Rick as well.

The Freewheelers, sponsored by Mike's Bike Shop in Shediac at the time. Today, close to 35 years later, Rick C. Snyder the president of that same Mike’s Bike Shop, now in Dieppe, still supporting the Freewheelers as we get back into riding BMX again ! Man, I just love it when life comes full circle like that !!

Late July or early August 1985. Luc and I drive to Moncton in his dad’s Ford LTD. The first summer that we have our licenses. The freedom of driving to the city unaccompanied by our parents. Music blasting, Vuarnet’s covering our faces, Vans covering our feet, we head over to our friend’s house. We have never been there before, but Luc has the address.

We had met MIKE PLUME three years before through BMX. My very first memory of him is the dude who rode the red Race Inc. I was blown away by that bike. Frame built from massive alloy tubes. Thick clean welds. It was the very first real BMX bike that I had seen that was in the magazines. Mike was always very nice to us. We always felt a bit intimidated by the Moncton crew. They were city kids and we lived out in the country. He didn’t speak French and we sometimes struggled with English. He was very cool and never made us feel like BMX outsiders.

Mike has recently gotten into music and Luc wants to go see his electric guitar. A beautiful instrument even if I know nothing about guitars, but there is also his GT Pro Performer BMX Freestyle bike. Recently purchased from Mike’s Bike Shop in Shediac, pretty much the only bike shop around that still carries BMX. Luc and I are still riding our old race bikes at the time that we have converted to Freestyle. But Mike’s GT has been designed from the ground up for trick riding. Pegs, platforms and a curved downtube to clear the front brake when spinning the bars. The exact same bike that Eddie Fiola rides at the Pipeline Skatepark in California. Hanging out, Mike also lets us know that his mom has accepted a new teaching job and that they are moving to Calgary in a few weeks. Not that we spend much time together since he lives in Moncton and we live in Saint-Antoine, but it still feels like the end of a certain era.

Wondering if or when we’ll see Mike again, our conversation now seems different. It has a certain sense of urgency to it, making the discussion sticky. Before leaving, Mike tells us that he has come up with a cool name for a BMX Freestyle Trick Team that he wants to start in Alberta. The Freewheelers.

We leave Mike’s house after saying our goodbyes. This is before social media. The only way to stay in touch is expensive long distance phone calls or snail mail. We don’t exchange phone numbers or addresses. Probably because Mike likely doesn’t even have this information at this point. Mike moves out west, sells his GT and really gets into music, eventually making it his life career. Without realizing it at the time, Luc and I become The Freewheelers.

We had a date. We had a time. We had a location. We had permission. The only thing that we hadn’t really thought about was actually getting our ramps to the Saint-Antoine Save Easy parking lot on that Sunday afternoon in September of 1984. Our small wedge ramp wasn’t too big or heavy. We could easily transport it in my dad’s small wooden trailer. The distance from my parents’ house to the supermarket was about 1 to 2 kilometers. We loaded it up and my dad drove it to the show venue. That’s one thing with every single BMX Freestyle demo that we ever did. Our parents supported us by helping with what we weren’t able to do. Like ramp transportation before we had driving permits. Everything else was on us. From the beginning, the whole thing was our idea. We booked and set up all of our gigs. We went looking for sponsors. We were the ones driving the dream.

Our first set of ramps were overbuilt. The small wedge ramp was supported by an old pallet underneath additional support boards topped off with a sheet of plywood that stuck out on both sides. We had built it ourselves, in stages with whatever wood we could get our hands on. It flexed when you hopped on it which made it kind of sketchy, but it did the trick (pun intended). We learned how to do kick turns and rollbacks on that ramp. About 4 feet high, we had also launched it a few times. But never on pavement. Even on grass or dirt, the flat landing was brutally hard.

The quarter pipe was another beast altogether. Built the year before by my dad, my uncle and our neighbor, Paul Arsenault’s father. For plans, we followed a rough sketch in a BMX magazine. It weighed a ton. The first version didn’t come out as planned and had a rather bumpy transition leading into the top foot of straight vert. The plywood used was very thick and we had to cut grooves into the underside in order to get the wood to bend. This made the transition noticeably lumpy. After a few months, we fixed it by adding spaced boards and another layer of thinner plywood on top of the first in order to smooth out the transition up to the last few inches of vert. It worked much better for aerials, but like I said, it was a lot of wood and made the ramp very heavy.

My dad’s trailer was fine for the small ramp, but too small for the monster quarter pipe. But, what other choice did we have? We balanced it on top of the trailer laying on its back, the top and bottom sticking out on each side. It wasn’t the safest set-up, but we didn’t have to go far. It was also Sunday, so traffic was very light. My dad would drive really slow and my friends would follow on their bikes watching to make sure that our setup didn’t collapse. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was our only choice other than renting a big flatbed truck. I’m not sure why my father agreed to this? I guess he really didn’t want to disappoint us after putting in so much effort with all the other details.

We leave my parents’ house, turn left after the church. It’s taking forever. My dad is driving so very slow. Everything seems to be going to plan. Until, my dad suddenly starts losing his s**t. The engine light on his Chevy S-10 is flashing. I’m sitting in the passenger seat. I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. I’m pretty sure, actually I’m quite certain that we were above tow capacity. We stop to let the engine cool down and recover. The light turns off again after a bit. My dad is still very distressed. He tells me that he’s worried that he just wrecked something in the transmission of his truck. I’m sitting there silent with my head down. We can’t leave the ramp there, in the short side street beside the church. So after the break, my dad decides to hope for the best and to keep going. Stopping every minute to let the engine recover. In what seemed like an eternity, we finally make it to the Save Easy parking lot. We setup both ramps and the show happens as planned. All of our families and friends are there to support us. But deep down, I’m sure my dad is wondering how the hell we were going to get the quarter pipe back to our house now that the route back was mostly uphill...

The whole BMX racing scene in our area died at the end of the summer in 1984. We all had our reasons to be done with it, but the reality was that the fad that had started a few years before had simply run its course. BMX freestyle on the other hand was booming. Laid back. No rules. Complete freedom to ride how and where you wanted. A liberty of sorts to flaunt your own style. A fun and flashy two wheeled BMX revolution. Race coverage was taking up less and less space in the BMX magazines. This new trick riding trend was taking over at breakneck speed. Our magazine heroes were RL Osborn and Mike Buff, the BMX Action trick team from California. They spent their summers touring, traveling to perform shows, introducing the world to this new way of riding BMX bikes. They were living the dream. Our dream.

So very far from the epicenter of this new BMX movement, we also wanted to start our own trick team. But how could a small bunch of kids living in a tiny Atlantic Canadian rural town like us make that happen? We didn’t have any money. We didn’t have our driver’s license. After carefully contemplating our options, we approached the owner of our local supermarket asking for permission to use his parking lot. He gave us the go ahead. Now, all we needed to do was to plan our demonstration and hope that some people would show up to watch. Luc seems to remember it as being part of the official opening of the new Saint-Antoine Save Easy. My take is that we followed the BMX Action trick team’s lead and simply made hand written posters and put them up around town, kind of like posted signs announcing a yard sale.

The thing that we both remember for sure is that our very first demo was on a cloudy Sunday afternoon in September of 1984. Back when stores were closed on the last day of each weekend. I’m really not sure how many people came to see us because they saw our posters or even from word of mouth. Save Easy was on Main street and I remember people driving by and simply stopping to see what was going on. That and the fact that kids actually played outside in those days, naturally migrating to where others were gathered. Add each of our families and we had a small audience worth performing for. We were so pumped!

Luc, Paul Arsenault, the late Danny Cormier (RIP my friend) and I rode in that show. We had practiced our routines and planned out the sequence of our tricks. A local photographer showed up. I’m not really sure how he knew about what we were doing. These pictures were all purchased from him. In the next year, Paul and Danny would slowly lose interest in BMX. But for Luc and I, a seed had been planted. We definitely wanted more of this. We had become BMX freestyle artists...