Todd Lyons' diaries. New on FATBMX.

Jun 05, 2007

Written by Bart de Jong

Read 3311 times

Looking back in my daily journals over the years, here is one of my old journal entries and also my comments looking back now: Sponsored by GT BMX October 15th, 1993

-Actual Journal Entry:
“I Rode to work at GT. During the day, I had a meeting with Todd Huffman & Big E. Huffman liked the proposal that Big E gave him about me riding a Fueler & me being sponsored by GT. But Rich Long (owner of GT) is out of town ‘tll next week. So I won’t know for sure until then. He said I could put the bike together and “test” it. So I stayed until 7pm building the bike with Big E.

It’s fresh. It’s got brand new everything! I rode it home & left my Supercross bike there. Later John Povah picked me up & we went to the P.O.W. house. There was a little party there, but it wasn’t that great.”

-Looking Back Now:
I worked at GT Bikes in Huntington Beach for most of 1993. I was a driver/gopher who just ran errands & drove around and picked up & dropped off all kinds of miscellaneous stuff. Not really a truck driver. I mainly drove a van. And when there wasn’t any driving to do, I helped out in the warehouse. Or I took the vans to get washed. Yeah, it was a chill job.

It seemed like every BMXer from Orange County worked at GT at one time or another. This job at GT was the last job I had, before my current job that I have now at SE Bikes And if memory serves me correct, I made a whopping $4.45 an hour. I never would have guessed back then that I would go the next 10+ years of my life without having a “real” job.

The Fueler bike was GT’s first ever “dirt jump” bike. It seemed so weird back then to hear the word “dirt jump bike.” Yeah, S&M was in full swing back then making frames, but I think GT was the first to make & market a complete bike specifically for dirt jumping.

The sponsorship proposal stated that they would pay for a lot of my expenses to get me to races & jump contests. I was pretty psyched seeing as Supercross was barely paying my entries. The only thing I ever remember hearing from Supercross was “The check is in the mail.” Yeah right, sure it is…

Photo: During my short stint with GT, I rode in one freestyle contest. It was up on Nor Cal & I took the win in the expert class. Yeah, that’s right. I won and I was wearing a Dyno open face helmet!

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