Super demonstration acrobatique
de deux grandes vedettes americaines.
That’s Belgian – describing BMXA’s very own
Squiddly Squadron. Yep, this year the rad lad’s summer tour went international. Saudi
Arabia, Holland, Belgium. Foreign intrigue. Adventure. Mystery. And, alas, no Taco Bells.
Buff almost stayed home.
Scot Breithaupt of SE Racing accompanied the Trick Team
overseas. Bob Duncan who races for Scot, invited the guys to come over to entertain
American employees at the Aramco oil company in Saudi Arabia. R.L. and Buff already had an invite from Gerrit
Does, the main mover behind the IBMXF, to come to Holland. So BMXA’s ace promotional
director, Darlene Leer, dialed the details, shaped the schedule, and all systems were go.
The Trick Team began the American portion of their tour on
June 20, accompanied by Kelly Hines (announcer) and Dave Sigler (equipment manager). They
headed to Mesa, Arizona for a show at the Bicycle Harbor shop. They’re the folks with the racing team and
the new Harbor Lite frames. Then on to El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, and Santa Fe before
returning home for the July 4th weekend. That left just enough time to suck up
soul food at Rosa’s before headin’ north for stops at Redding (California),
Hillsbora and Trilamook (Oregon) and Aberdeen, Bolsa and Renton (Washington).
In Seattle Kelly was placing a fast food order when the
squawk box asked him to slow down. So Mike went: shhh…riimmm…pppp…baaaaaa…sssketttt….and
they cut him off.
Nobody knows where the Wanted – Meaningful
Overnight Relationship sign on the van came from.
Back home the guys had time to do three shows at Magic
Mountain and be filmed for the You Asked For It television show.
Then it was off to Houston with Scot to climb on Aramco’s
747 charter jet to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Aramco schedules two charter flights every week
to shuttle employees and business people back and forth.
Our intrepid travlers’ first foreign adventure was
their encounter with their combination driver, guide, and den mother – Eric Drucker,
a San Antonio college student. Here’s the team’s description of Eric, “He
came walking into the airport in Levis, his shirt hanging out, sandals, sunglasses, a five
o’clock shadow, looking like he had just woke up.
He always looked like he just woke up.
He was great”
Eric liked to tell jokes
while he drove. He’d ask what category.
You could say butterflies and he’d come up with something. We’d be driving on two-lane highways with big
diesel trucks and he’d pull out and turn around and tell jokes and cut back in. He had it wired, his driving, but we were on the
floor a lot thinking we were dead. If it was close, he’d just go in the dirt and make
his own lane. Another thing, there were very
few traffic lights so everybody kind of races through the intersections. Destruction
Derby. It’s really exciting.
The price of gasoline
certainly doesn’t discourage driving. Buff
saw prices as low as thirty cents a gallon.
One interesting note. Car wrecks are left beside the road as a reminder
to take it easy. Guess what? The car wrecks
don’t get stripped. Hardly anything gets stolen in Saudi Arabia.
The BMX tracks over
there are mind blowers for visitors. One reportedly cost over a hundred thousand dollars. That’s because it’s all asphalt. Ten
foot tall banks, berms, whoops, jumps, double jumps. Totally asphalt. The kids crash slide on their bellies for twenty
feet, and pop right up.
Foreign travel means foreign
culture. The American visitors were given
crash course in etiquette, manners, and customs, as guests of Saudi Arabia.
The status of women in Saudi
Arabia was carefully explained. “The girls and women wear long black dresses and
black veils all the time, just like the movies. You don’t see young couples together. We were told if we stared at the girls, like to
check them out or to talk to them, their fathers and brothers would probably come after
us.”
The religious taboo on
alcohol is the law of the land. Violators are in deep whoopdy doo. Foreigners are usually
deported. The locals face stiff prison sentences short on the basic pleasantries.
Severe penalties apply to
other crimes too. Occasional public
executions and mutilations prove to be effective deterrent to crime. R.L. was impressed,
“Somebody’s head got chopped off while we were there. He stole some property and
stabbed somebody. The victim didn’t die but they executed him anyway. They used a
sword and it took a couple of tries to behead him. Another guy had to watch until it was
his turn. The yearly crime rate over there is
three.”
What about the famous Saudi
Arabian heat? According to Buff “It’s really hot, but it’s not humid so it
doesn’t bother you so much. We did one show outside in 110 degrees, but most were in
gyms. Once you start sweating, though, it takes about three hours to stop, even if you’re
in air conditioning.”
Buff and R.L. had a chance
to mix with the locals. “We played ping pong with guys our age. We had a great time
while we were there.”
Along with the roadside
wrecks, the guys also noticed empty skyscrapers. “We’d see these high rise
condominiums that nobody moved into because they didn’t have separate elevators for
men and women or they forgot plumbing or something.”
It appears that a hefty
chunk of the oil money floating around in Saudi Arabia does trickle down to the people.
The government offers all-expenses-paid college educations (in the U.S.) to all qualified
students. Citizens can apply to the government to buy them some land and then borrow the
cash (no interest) to build a home. And it’s not uncommon for the government to
forget about the loan repayment after a few years.
The guys put on shows and
seminars in four different cities in Saudi Arabia. Dhahran, Ras Tanura, Udhailiyah and
Abqaiq. Buff and R.L. dedicated all their shows in Saudi Arabia and Europe to Dana Duke,
the Trick Team’s announcer on the 1981 summer tour, who was seriously injured in a
car-train accident while they were in Saudi.
The touring trio
grabbed Aramco’s charter flight to Amsterdam at the end of their eleven-day stay in
Saudi Arabia. All three travelers raced in Europe. R.L. won 16 Over Expert at the BMX
Grand Prix of Belgium and Buff won the Open. The OM, Scott Breithaupt, tried his had at
local events an swooped ‘em.
The Dutch take their
BMX real serious. They belong to clubs which have regularly scheduled practice sessions at
tracks. R.L. was amazed by their determination, “We’d do it like 20 or 30 starts
and after about 15 I started to get tired, but these guys were racing to get back to the
gate. I beat them at the beginning, but by the 20th start in a row they were
starting to catch me.”
The talents of a
couple of younger Dutch lads, nico Does, Gerrit’s son, and another kid named Marco,
who everyone calls Wolsink, impressed the Trick Team. “They can do tabletops,
on-hander-one footers. They can jump better than almost anybody over here already. And
they’re only about 12 years old!”
After a ten-day stay
in Holland, the trio piled onto another charter and headed for Houston and home. They
arrived in Los Angeles just in time for Buff to take everybody to breakfast at a Taco
Bell. His treat. They insisted.
So, two months, 30
thousand miles and plenty of smiles Entertaining and spreading the word about BMX. R.L.
and Buff came home as levelheaded as ever. During their travels they’re showing a lot
of youth here and now overseas too that having a game plan for life and working hard to
accomplish it pays off.
Everybody at BMXA is totally proud that our dynamic duo is
able to contribute to the continuing growth of BMX. Welcome back, guys. |