Me riding bikes...

Balancing on my first quality BMX bike, a Skyway T/A, rocking red Z-Rims.  Boise Fun Spot, where I was the manager, summer of 1985.  Photo by Vaughn Kidwell

My name is Steve Emig, if you don't know, and I'm the guy who publishes this blog.  Like many kids of Generation X, I learned to ride a bike at age 5 1/2, in 1971, it was a Schwinn Scrambler clone that my dad pieced together from garage sale bought parts.  In today's world, we'd call it a rat bike.  My first new bike was a red, white and blue banana seat bike, which cost $50.  That was the first bike I jumped, brick and piece of wood jumps.  Then I had a 26 inch ten speed, as we called road bikes back then, I jumped that bike, too, on little vacant lot jumps.  

 When the bike thing changed for me was in the summer of 1982, when my family moved to a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho.  There wasn't much to do there, several miles outside of town, out in the desert.  So us teenage boys got more and more into jumping our BMX bikes.  Jumping turned into BMX racing, and then into the brand new, emerging sport of BMX freestyle.  That became the driving force in my life for the next 20 years.  BMX freestyle gave me a place to focus my energy, and my creativity, which shaped my whole life.  

As pathetic as it sounds, I've been fighting to just get back to where I can go out and ride a little daily, for several years now.  Life's been really weird for a long time, but I'll get there eventually.  Here's most of the few photos I have of me riding over the last 35 years.

Shingle shuffle during a flatland session under the Huntington Beach Pier, 1987.  I'm on my Raleigh Ultra Shok, technically I was "factory sponsored" for about a year. 

Carving tile in the Nude Bowl, 1990, on my Aurburn.

One of the weird little tricks I invented, footplant to 180 on flat, in a 2-hip Meet the Street contest in Lo Jolla, CA, 1989 or 1990.  This was a trick the skaters did in H.B., called a no comply, that I took to BMX.

Wall ride over my sister's head, 1990, at the Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach.

Riding backwards on my Schwinn BMX cruiser, 2009, trying to get back riding again.

Trying to get my infinity rolls back, on a borrowed Eddie Fiola Former Pro, One Love Flatland Jam in Newport Beach, 2020 (right before the craziness shut life down).