Years Riding:
Practicing hard to progress my skills: 1986 to 2002
Riding Experience: I was introduced to Flatland riding by my long time friend, Chris Scarberry, in late 1985. Since my family had moved away from the South Side of Oklahoma City to a town on the outskirts of the city called Mustang, I would practice alone in Mustang during the week, and on the weekends I would go spend the night with Chris, and we would practice together, occasionally riding with new friends that we had made in OKC. We didn’t call it “riding”, we called it “practice”, because every day was about advancing our skills and bettering ourselves.
Favorite Bike & Trick: Favorite bike:
Hoffman Bikes “Big Daddy” f/f. My favorite trick was coasting a trick called an Elephant Glide at high speed. My peers say that that is the trick that I was best known for because no one else was doing it.
Favorite Music, Bands and/or Cultural References: Metallica, Social Distortion are my favorites, though in the early years we listened to a lot of 80’s rap music.
Accomplishments:
I competed in numerous competitions, both locally and nationally on an amateur level. I was eventually asked to be a member of the Freestyle Fly Boys freestyle team where we performed shows all around central Oklahoma in places ranging from the parking lots of bike shops, pizza shops and car stereo shops, to the main streets of small town festivals. In 1996 I put together a BMX video titled Full Metal Sprocket that showcased talented riders from around OKC, Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin.
More From Greg:
I don’t really know where to begin, but I guess I’ll start when I started competing in 1987. I was a young amateur who was entering the local freestyle contest that were being held by Charlie Long around different bike shops throughout the city. At first I didn’t do well. I learned quickly that once I mess up my nerves to get the best of me. But I kept at it. Slowly, but surely I started doing better and then the first place trophies eventually started pouring in.
I practiced hard and my progression continued to get better and better, so much so that in 1990 I was asked if I would like to be a part of the legendary Freestyle Fly Boys freestyle team performing shows around the Oklahoma City area. Terris Renfro, Chris Walkonen and my self would ride flatland and Mark Owen and Andy Wright on the quarter pipe the first year, then Andy moved away to go to college. The biggest show each year was the annual Onion Burger Festival in El Reno, and the other big show was the annual Redbud Classic in OKC. It was an honor to be part of that team, and to this day, I’m proud to be a member of the Freestyle Fly Boys.
I kept at it, practicing and progressing. In 1996 I decided that the Oklahoma City locals needed to have a proper video that showcased the local talent, even though I had never done anything like that before. For the next six months, I filmed as many talented riders that I could get in front of the camera, even traveling down to Dallas and Austin to film their local talent. Keep in mind that this was still in the age of VHS videos. So I had to figure out how to edit all of these videos, dubbed them from one VCR to another, lay music over the video without damaging the video footage and add opening and ending credits. I shipped the master copy to a place in Colorado to be mass duplicated. When the copies returned I packaged all of those up in a white box sleeve, added a decal to the front of each cover that contained the title and artwork, and then had them sent out to be shrink-wrapped. It was challenging, but I got it done. The title was Full Metal Sprocket. Hard work really pays off and the video was well received.
