Air Supply Requiem

When I rode up to this sign I thought I was going to see Air Supply Extremely Difficult. Instead I got this shot to the gut.

 

After our first trip to Nelson in 1999, Brent Upson and I rode a trail called 719 that was all jumps. We had never seen anything like it and we made a commitment to build an all air trail on the shore when we got back. Our first attempts were pretty weak. We cut up pallets for slats, used rotten deadfall for stringers, had some lame dirt jumps and made no consideration for drainage. I decided I needed experience and knowledge so I apprenticed under Dangerous Dan on his infamous trail Circus. I also enlisted Digger to give us tips. He came up with the boxed-in landing that we used for our new transitions. From what I have seen, this design

is the standard on trails where machines can’t go. The trail went through many changes over the years. What I loved about the trail was hearing guys talking about how they were gonna hit a particluar jump for the first time. They had eyed it up, maybe took some bitch runs or just obsessed about it until they couldn’t take it anymore. I was on the trail for many a first hit and the screams of jubilation were always inspiring. For me I had the adage that if I built I had to ride it so there was never any getting out of it – but I always worked with Eamonn and Brent to make sure all the stunts were do-able – by me anyway.

I was a little shocked to see the chainsawing.. I can’t blame the DNV for taking apart the stunts since the three builders have not done a bit of maintenance on the trail in the past four years. I am hoping the new upgraded version will keep the the trail’s original theme intact. Some photos of the wreckage with a few memories below:

 

The first stunt – an adaptation of the air to table to drop that we found on an old stunt-fest called Overflow.

This air to rock was originally a dirt to rock ride that Digger built (without asking us – but hey it’s Digger he can build anything, anywhere…right?). We were training this hit with Gullevich and his 14 year old posse one day. I landed off the rock, put my foot down to turn around and watch the rest of the train and Gully landed on my ankle giving me a third degree sprain that put me off riding for 6 weeks – the upside was a solid 6 weeks of building time.

Big Gap and little gap. The first time we set this up it was 22 feet of gappage. We sent Brent off it first, he cased hard, we said thanks Brent and moved it in to 20 feet-the biggest gap on the trail. Baby gap is the broken kicker to the left – a little jump to practice my two tricks.

This is the third big gapper on the trail. My favourite memory of this one is a day we were shooting an NSX vid with Digger. We trained the first three, I went over the bars, slid head first into a tree, shook it off and kept riding. It wasn’t until that night that I realized I rode the rest of the day concussed.

This is a shot of the Air Supply record cover that I search high and low for. I found a couple of copies at Black Swan 5 blocks from my house after checking in every city I was travelling in that summer.

Eamonn got a pile of cedar from a tug boat driving friend of his. We used it to enhance this landing. Not sure why DNV trashed this landing – it was bomb-proof..I think.

In addition to all the air we built the lower section as a stunt supply back when we were into skinnies. There was a swivelling teeter totter based on the one that threw me on my ass when I first rode it in Slocan. The pivot was a continuously evolving construction process.

We used this door from the old wrecked car on the trail which gave the original XC climber  trail the name Peugot. The door acted as a counter-weight for the double-totter’s return.

Sideshow: this was our last big project. I wanted a big drop with a large landing I could see on the approach – all as training grounds for the bigger drops on the Shore, particularly the Lobotimizer 2000 on Circus. I spent an entire week working on it then Eamonn and Brent showed up on the day Digger was shooting it, put a few hours in completing the rungs on the approach, shot it (I couldn’t ride it due to injury and catching a ferry that afternoon) and Eamonn’s quote from the movie was,”The thing about living on the Shore is you build a stunt, ride it, then go home.” Classic Eamonn. Ironically, the biggest stunt on the trail was left alone by the DNV.