Remember making bmx jumps out of dirt piles around town.

Used to have a few in San Clemente state park before they fenced off the area near the cliffs. No one even went off, they're no fun at all.



My son used to raid the scrap pile and build jumps in the cul de sac we lived on. There was a grouchy lady next door who liked to back into her driveway, she'd have a shitfit when she couldn't do her u turn / back into the driveway cause our kid had made a jump, fuggin bitch was miserable

i had a group of 3 other friends and we lived on our BMX bikes for years. we'd build jumps in empty lots out of the big dirt piles from clearing the lot, ride them for a couple weeks before someone realized what it was and tore them down. i remember building small lips over irrigation ditches and gapping them. one ditch landing was on an old ornery ass' lawn and he'd come running out of his house with a broom screaming at us, lol. we'd laugh our asses off and take off only to be back the next day.

i can't pay my step-son to go out and ride his bike around the neighborhood. he'll ride with me or his mom, but he won't go jam with his friends. those were some of the best days of my life. morning 'till night on my BMX

Finding spots like that where you lived; bad @$$. All you needed was your BMX bike and enough change in your pocket to get an soda and a ice cup from the Circle K. Those were the good old days.

Many a young man has lost his soul to the old 2 cinder block tall by 20” long 2x10 kicker. Still got a big chip in my bottom tooth....

.59 to 1.03 good stuff for us teens back then.

Anyone recognize this guy? One of the baddest dudes to ever throw a leg over an RM80.

Orange County CA-Circa 1970's


RIP Bruce Bunch!

My son making use of an empty lot in our neighborhood back in 04'. I don't think Specialized intended for their flagship XC race bike to launch 5-6 foot drops to a flat. The Stumpy took a beating in the hands of my kid. Somehow it survived.

I see your cinder block ramps and raise you a borrowed shopping cart.

im relatively young (29) and that's all we did in the summer. had a few spots around town and looked for anything to do something cool with. I agree that the phones and technology has killed that. sucks.

some good new along these lines. the town I live near has been dead and filled with drugs for the last 8-10 years. there's a huge movement going on to turn that around and the latest includes a huge grant for a skate park and separately a group of ppl including myself are building mountain bike trails all over around here and have plans for skills parks in the downtown area, some pump tracks, dirt jumps, ect.. in the local state park.

After a 15 year break. I built up a bike and hit the trails again at 40. Cheap thrills

I grew up in the 70's in small-town Georgia. As kids, we worshiped the west coast moto gods, and emulated them as best we could on our bicycles. No Mongooses or GTs mind you, we were taking our department store Schwinn Stingray clones and putting BMX bars and seats on them. If a dirt pile happened to pop up in town, you can bet your ass that we would migrate there on our bikes and it would be our playground until the dirt was scooped up for its intended purpose.
If there were no dirt piles, then concrete blocks and wooded ramps would just have to do.

There was a running competition between the guys in my neighborhood and the guys from across town as to who were the best riders. Usually we had one guy who was the wheelie god, and then the we had the best jumper. We actually had jump-offs and wheelie-offs between us and the guys across town. It really was like the Sandlot, except for bicycles.

We had a communal bike salvage under my parents crawlspace. We would cannibalize good parts off of trashed bikes (and considering the stuff we were riding, there were plenty of donors) so we could keep riding. We became pretty good bike mechanics, a skillset I still utilize to this day.

At the age of 10-12, we would leave our houses on a summer mornings and not come home until the end of the day. Except maybe to go home and eat a ham sammich and some Koolaid. Oh, and there were the midday public swimming pool trips. Those were some of the most cherished, innocent, times of my life and I feel blessed to have lived them.

Wheelie competitions were always a good time.

Am I the only one that transitioned from Skateboarding to riding? haha I was TERRIBLE on a bicycle. I could do like two cinderblocks max.

Hell yes I remember being on my bike until dark (always just long enough to get yelled at).

I'm staying young at heart as long as possible

I was always predominantly two wheeled but always tried skateboarding. Until skateboarding over to a friends house one day and caught a small pebble in the road.... from a bystanders perspective it probably looked like I had ran over an IED in the middle of the road. After that it was two wheels and two wheels only.

I'm 50 and still skate my local park regularly..

love this thread, completely captures my youth. here is a frame grab of me back in the day!

one time I was riding to my local trails/jumps and along the way came across a few kids making a wooden jump on the sidewalk. I hardly scouted it out, and just decided to head back up the hill a bit, then come back down and send it one time and head off into the sunset towards where the actual jumps were.. turns out the ramp was held up with a stack of newspapers which exploded as soon as I hit the ramp. I ended up with the wind knocked out of me and major scrapage..