Jared’s Game of BIKE experience
“I received a text from Kyle Carlson a week before the VitalBMX 2013 game of BIKE was going on, asking if I would like to participate. Right away I replied of course I’d be more then happy to attend. Looking at the list of riders, thinking “wow! it’ll be hard to hang with these dudes”. BMX is all about fun though, and especially playing a traditional game of BIKE. The weekend approached and I drove up solo Saturday morning, arrived at Woodward West around 10 when things were suppose to start. Everyone slowly started to roll in one by one and in groups. Start riding around with everyone and saying our hellos to each other. After riding for a bit, we all stopped to eat some food, then the event was set to kick off after. There was about 33 riders total, making the battles off set. To solve that situation, Drew Benzanson was lucky enough to chill and not have to go up against anybody the first round. The first game started, and went by pretty fast as well and the second game. Seemed like it would all go by pretty fast, but after the first two games. Every game seem to take twice as long, which wasn’t a bad thing, definitely kept it interesting by making the games last long. I was towards the end of the list, so it was cool getting to watch a lot of the other riders go through their games. Helping with ideas for yourself if you wanted. It finally reached the game I was in, Mike Gray vs. myself. I met Mike about a year ago or more, know that he is plenty capable of difficult lines, tricks, and combos. I didn’t know what to expect out of it. Only thing I knew is that it’s definitely not fun doing tricks that the other person has no chance at. It’s easier when playing with your close friends, because you know what they can do, almost do, and are scared to do. It’s cool to push each other in that sense and learn. Riding with a crowd that you never really do on a regular, makes it hard to find things to help push them, scare them, and overcome certain tricks/obstacles in a game of BIKE. Thats usually the way I always look at a game of BIKE and play. Right away Mike and I were back and forth pretty fast, he started pulling away from me by stacking letters up on me, but I was able to hang on making it last as long as it could. We both had B-I-K, it was his move to do something. He did a ice pick down a round rail, drop down manuel, to nose bonk over a flat square rail. That’s what he got me out with, I was glad he did something I stood a chance at doing. I just needed more than two tries we learned haha. It was a fun game, and really glad to be apart of the whole event, thanks to Kyle Carlson and VitalBMX again, thanks to Mike Gray as well for making it a fun game.”
Jared
