On The Pegs February 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 2 | Page 99

On The Pegs
VOL. 5 ISSUE 2 - FEBRUARY 2020
99
Did they have expanded metal on the obstacles so you could get traction?
No. That’s the other thing. It was pretty much all painted. Obviously, the logs
have good grip. One section had kind of more natural-type rock. It was all still
pretty square, but it had grip. The rest were almost all the painted concrete with
no texture. So that was pretty hard to judge. The more it gets ridden, the rubber
gets onto the paint and it has a little more traction. So, if you’re going last you
get the best chance of traction. I was even watching some of the other guys spin
in certain areas and I was just really worried about that. Everything’s square so
you don’t have a lot of room to slip the clutch. You got to land right in the perfect
spot or else you’ll spin and slide the skid plate or spin and go over the bars. Not
as much traction. You think indoors is going to have a lot of grip, but it is actually
not always as you would expect.
Obviously, you got more comfortable as it went along, right?
Yeah, definitely. Once I was able to make it through some, and then just talk-
ing to some of the other riders, they were actually really cool. Even Bou and Raga
would come up to me and say, “You’re the level to ride this.” They could see that
my fitness wasn’t great, because the first round you have to ride all six sections in
six minutes, and halfway through I’m getting arm pump just from all the pressure
and the difficulty of the section. You’re riding really tense and holding on really
tight and not breathing well. So, I was pumping up really quick. They were like, “I
can see you have the level, you just don’t have the fitness.” So that was really cool
of them to watch that closely. Really nerve-racking for them to be right there, but
at least they were able to give me some inspiration to continue.
Bou is actually a big fan of your videos, right?
Yeah. All of them were like, “I watch the videos.” Even Raga’s like, “You have very
nice videos.” I’m like, yeah, but the video you get as many tries as you want, and
here you got to do it on the spot. So, it’s a little bit different. But Bou was really
cool. I told him I rode in Spain. He’s like, “You should have called me. We would
have done a video together.” They were all really nice to me and made me feel a
lot more welcome and not like I was just an American outcast, like I used to feel in
the past over there.
What was the most amazing thing that you saw?
The second night three riders tied on score. They all had two points at the end,
so then they did a timed race and it was really cool to see the difference that