The journey of a professional bike rider is not limited to just riding. Sure, the riding part is very important, but there is a whole lot more that comes along with it. There are highs, lows, great memories, friendships and a wide array of experiences in between.

I was recently flipping through an old Ride BMX mag and caught a glimpse of Van Homan shooting photos in the background. This set off a light bulb in my head and lead me to think that Van must have some amazing stuff in his archives, considering he was into photography at one point. So, I hit Van up to inquire about all this along with the possibility of running a feature. He said he would look around and get back to me. Sweet!

A few days later, Van called me up and said that he had come across some cool photos, in addition to a whole bunch of random things from his past. He offered to send me a package of stuff (yes, actual prints and personal belongings), and I said hell yeah! I busted out my scanner for the first time in Defgrip history and went to work.

In this feature, you will see a bunch of old photos that Van has taken, as well as some cool random stuff from his legendary career. Definitely a trip down memory lane.

A special thanks goes out to Van Homan for putting this together, writing captions and having the foresight to save some of this stuff.

Click below and enjoy.

Continue reading The Van Homan Archives →

Quintin Mexico – Teaser from Quintin Co. on Vimeo.

A teaser for an upcoming edit resulting from the Quintin Mexico trip we featured below.

This weekend pretty much the entire team will be in Adelaide to have a ride around. Come & say g’day at Little Black Bike on Saturday at 1pm then come for a roll at the city park at 3pm, should be a good day. Come along say hi & have a roll with Ryan Guettler, Alex Hiam, Zac Miner, Mick Bayzand, Tom Stretton, Cooper Brownlee, Brock Olive, Liam Zingbergs, Valvoline & myself. We will have some freebies at Little Black Bike & even some of the new Vans / Colony shoes on display for all to check out. These will be available March next year.

Here’s the final result of the Disposed we ran a few days ago. CINEMA and Fiend in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Good shit!

Features Garrett Reynolds, Ty Morrow, Chase Dehart and JJ Palmere. Ty Morrow hurt his ankle on the first day of the trip and wasn’t able to ride.

Edited by Will Stroud

Filmed by Tony Ennis, Will Stroud, Ty Morrow, Garrett Reynolds & Kevin Conners

Photography by Kevin Conners

Christian Rigal puts in work behind the camera and in front, and doesn’t slack on either. Check out the recent “Welcome Back Edit” he put together for us, and be sure to peep his DIG interview. Also, watch his recent United edit for sure!

Click below to read up on Christian discussing a few video/riding related topics.

Continue reading Multitasker: Christian Rigal →

Here’s a Disposed from the recent Cinema X Fiend trip to Tulsa courtesy of Kevin Connors, Will Stroud, Ty Morrow, Garrett Reynolds, JJ Palmere,  Chase DeHart & Drew York.

Edit dropping on Monday (11/28), so be sure to check the Cinema or Fiend sites for that… or here too.

Continue reading Disposed: Cinema X Fiend in Tulsa →

Dane Searls has passed away today. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

Image courtesy of ESPN.

Continue reading Disposed: Quintin in Mexico →

Go HERE for more info.

More info HERE. Open for embedding.

You may remember that I posted about Chris Piascik a little while ago. Well, I hit him up and he was more than down to contribute a wallpaper for the site. I’m stoked with the results.

Find your resolution size below:

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iPad

Heres’s a trailer for “Downtime”, which will be United’s new DVD. It will be available free with the next issue of the Albion, as well as online via the United site and various outlets on Dec 25th. Looks awesome.

Between mid January and the end of June 2011, following the release of our most recent full length DVD ‘This Is United’, we rented a small vacation apartment in Huntington Beach.

During this time, team riders from our pro, am and world teams flew out to visit, ride, relax, film some clips and soak up some of that Californian lifestyle.

Featuring:
Nathan Williams, Ryan Lloyd, Corey Martinez, Alex Valentino, Ashley Charles, Ryan Metro, Luke Peeters, Geoff Slattery, Roy Van Kempen, Dan Boiski, Jimmy Rushmore, Christian Rigal, Kye Forte, Leo Forte, Dean Hearne.

click to enlarge

Featuring daniel Johnson. Check the sequence HERE.

Christian Rigal recently got his VX back in working order, and decided to celebrate with this edit. Features a slew of awesome people.

Click below to check it out.

Continue reading Welcome Back Edit →

Today, I witnessed Jason Enns’ technique for temporarily discarding his banana peel (before throwing it out). Ingenuity at its finest.

DON’T LITTER KIDS!!!

Ha, I feel like Corey’s been on Etnies for ages. Anyway, any excuse to watch the man do his thing is ok by me.

Hit up ETNIES for the goods.

Tony Neyer for Verde.

Filmed and Edited by Will Stroud
Additional filming by Chris Long

A few years ago when Brian was midway through filming for his Props interview, he suffered an ACL tear in his knee which sidelined him for a little bit. Being the trooper he is, BK was determined to finish the project and took the necessary steps to keep riding despite this injury. Keeping his leg muscles strong and his Cti knee brace allowed him to keep kicking ass over the past few years. However, this year his knee started to bother him enough that he met with his doctor to start getting things sorted out. In efforts to get his knee back up to 100% and prevent further damage in the future, he recently had surgery to repair his torn ACL.

Brian will be off his bike for the coming months but David Leep recently caught up with him to see what he’s been doing to cope.

From Kachinsky:
“I have some time off my bike this winter due to a very recent surgery and am already on the road to recovery. I have an awesome doctor, physical therapist, fun projects and great friends who keep me occupied. On top of all this I have plenty of silly things to keep my spirits up.”

Click below to see how BK is keeping busy during his recovery.

Continue reading Brian Kachinsky: Recovery →

Here’s an edit from Demolition’s Northwest Trip. Check the flipbook from the trip in case you missed it.

Filmed by: Christian Rigal and Chris Long
Edited by: Chris Long

Here are some cool snapshots from Andrew White’s trip to NYC to document the WTP crew.

Last September, WeThePeople sent some of their crew to the greatest city in the world, New York City, to clock clips and shoot photos. As is the case with most trips, there was zero plan besides ride. Banking on the hope that some locals would show us some spots, but knowing that if that didn’t happen you couldn’t go one block without finding three spots, we were ok with no plan.

Pete Sawyer flew in from Britain, Andrew Jackson from Los Angeles, Codie Larson from Portland, while Mike Brennan only had to catch a ride from Animal in Jersey City. Tagalong flow rider ‘Smallfry’ joined us for the second half of the trip while truanting from his High School in Jersey. A bit of a random group no doubt, but we all meshed well enough and managed to shred the city every day. And despite some initial uncertainty (Chester emailed me the day before my flight saying ‘I hope you’re not in the ghetto’), our rented flat housed us just fine. The following images are snaps from our weeklong experience in the Big Apple.

- Andrew White

Click below to check out the pics.

Continue reading Photogallery: WTP in NYC →

Demolition just posted a sweet FLIPBOOK from their recent trip up to Oregon.

It features Christian Rigal, Chris Doyle, Brian Castillo, Dennis Enarson, Rob Wise, Dave Dillewaard, Joey Cobs and Aaron Smith. Good times!

I’m only really posting this because he’s got clips riding in some kind of sombrero. I guess the riding is amazing as well too. Boy’s good.

After hooking Nathan up we decided to give him some time to film his welcome section. In between various other trips and commitments Nathan took the time to film this section for us, most of it was filmed in his hometown of Nashville and with the help of Dakota Roche, Shane Weston and Christian Rigal behind the lens. Thanks and enjoy.

I haven’t played a video game since Super Mario 2 and I probably still won’t, but this trailer is incredible.

Christian Rigal for United.

Ummmmmm, so yeah…. this is really good.