From the Todd Lyons Diaries: March 1996 - The Miracle Boy & Wildman Roughing It

Feb 04, 2016

Written by Bart de Jong

Read 3914 times

Actual Journal Entry from March 16th, 1996: Woke up real early with Melissa. She dropped me off at the LAX & I flew to Brownsville, Texas. Got in at 5pm & drove to South Padre Island for the ESPN “Destination Extreme” Freestyle Contest. I got there & hooked up with Dave Mirra & the Hoffman Bikes crew. We went to their room & drank & hung out. Then the whole crew walked to a huge club. There were people everywhere (It’s Spring Break here). But it was mostly full of lame “jock” types. We walked back & Mirra & I tried to sneak into the Hoffman crew’s hotel but security chased us out.

Funny. So we walked back to the car & slept in it. I slept in the trunk & Dave slept in the back seat. The trunk wasn’t too bad to sleep in, actually.

Looking Back Now: Yeah! Spring Break freestyle contest in South Padre Island! Any freestyle contest at a spring break location right on the beach was always a guaranteed good time. How about the name of the contest? “Destination Extreme” Man, that sounds so cheesy. I remember seeing Tony Hawk skate at this contest. I thought he was only an old school 80’s skater. But after a few years of winning the X-Games, he quickly became one of the action sports richest dudes.

Dave Mirra & I were both sponsored by Haro in the mid 90’s. I’m not quite sure why we didn’t have a room reserved this night. I guess the Haro budget was a little slim. But it’s kind of funny that we actually slept in our rental car. It’s safe to say that I haven’t slept in the trunk of a car since then and I can only assume that Mirra hasn’t slept in the back seat in quite a while. We did have a hotel for the rest of out trip.

I think Mirra went on to win the contest. And I went on to crash a whole bunch in my runs & didn’t qualify to the finals. But I did score a photo on the cover of BMX Plus doing a handplant over a handrail. That’s right. A handplant back in the mid 90’s. I pulled my first one back in 1991.

Photo: I wasn’t scared to huck myself back in the day. Peep my flair transfer at the Destination X-Extreme contest. You won’t catch me doing those nowadays.