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Krys: The one and only. That’s about all that needs to be said about that.

Bike shop show summer tours were the big thing back then. How many did you do?
Krys: I did quite a few both for GT and for a few other projects I was involved in. I was never allowed to officially tour with the GT guys because somebody somewhere though it might be a bad idea for a 15-16 year old girl from Ohio to tour around in a van with a bunch of rowdy teenage boys for months at a time, but I would end up getting flown out from time to time to do a video or a series of shows. It was probably better that way because GT had a habit of touring it’s riders to death, and my situation prevented that from happening to me.

Did you tour with Gary Pollack, Josh White, or who did you ride with when you were on the GT team?
Krys: The GT team as I knew it was: Martin Aparijo, Josh White, Gary Pollack and Me. We also partnered very closely with the Dyno team so there was usually Dave Volker and Dino Deluca around too.

Do you remember one good story from being sponsored and spending time on the road?
Krys: ONE? You want me to narrow it down to one? Okay. It was a the New Jersey Masters and the GT and DYNO teams went into Manhattan after the contest to do a little site seeing and adventuring. This is after the contest where McGoo drove like a friggin’ maniac on the NJ Turnpike and my hot pink bike flew off the the van and cartwheeled down the highway as cars swerved and braked to avoid the chaos. I don’t think he even stopped, just said “oh that’s not good” and kept driving. I ended borrowing a bike to ride that day. So after the contest while walking down the street this old battle-axe of a car comes careening around the corner and smashes into the front of this store right next to this movie theater. The theater was playing “Surf Nazis Must Die” and I have this great photo of Martin, Dave, Dino and Josh all posed in ironic and very silly forms around the smooshed car and the Surf Nazis photo. Right next to this was this sex shop called “The Pink Pussycat Boutique” and the guys decide they wanted to do a little shopping. I didn’t feel comfortable hanging outside on the corner if you know what I mean, so I went in too trying my best not to be terribly embarrassed! It turns out that I was the only one who bought anything from the store that evening. (A handmade black leather rose.)

What was it like to ride BMX in the men’s world?
Krys: You have to realize that the guys I rode with in the basement of this little church in Wadsworth, Ohio, we never even considered that there weren’t any other girls in the sport. We just figured we hadn’t met them yet. So when I started competing and getting into magazines it sort of sunk home that for some reason the girls were steering clear of this sport. There was certainly a measure of being the “token Barbie doll” for the male masses but there isn’t much you can do about that as the only 16-17 year old girl in the sport. I just focused on stuff like the fact that I was able to be sponsored allowed me to have lots of bike parts. I know when my friend’s bike got stolen; he ended up riding one of mine for almost a year before he was able to get a new one. And when I worked at Woodward, I used to give my bike away every time GT used to throw down a new box of equipment. Remember that bike I borrowed that the NJ Masters after mine flew off the top of the van? That was one of my old bikes that I had given away the previous summer. Some kid had it and let me ride my old set up during the contest. I loved being able to give some kid my bike because they were working really hard and deserved it. So being the only girl had its drawbacks, but all in all it was a fantastic experience.

You basically stuck to flatland riding, but did you also get on the ramps sometimes?
Krys: Ha! I was a horrible ramp rider back then. Awful. When I first started, and I mean very first, I wasn’t scared at all, but we built this horrible 6’ ramp from plans out of the back of one of the first issues of Freestylin’ Magazine. The transition was in three distinctly separate sections so you would hit it and go ka-thunk-THUNK. And you would do the same thing coming back down. One day I hit it and with all my grace and glory I pushed the ramp back about a foot, so when I landed, the transition was nowhere to be found. Forks bent, bars slam forward and that was the day I broke my first set of front teeth! After that, I was always too afraid to be much good around ramps. Funny thing is now that I’m older (and much more brittle) I get ramps much more and feel much more secure on them.

As far as I remember you had a synchronized swimming background. Did you use that to make up some of your own tricks on the bike?
Krys: Wow. You have a great memory. Synchronized swimming, eh? Yes. Before I rode bikes I spend a lot of my childhood in the water. I swam competitively from the time I was six until the time I was almost twelve. I did really well and won my events much of the time, but I developed an allergy to chlorine when I was eleven and had to stop training in the water for 6+ hours a day, so my swimming career drew to an early close. I came across freestyle later that year and to me there were a lot of similarities. I also have a background in dance so dancing, in water or on a bike, is just a natural extension. So yes, some of my own tricks extended from my somewhat unusual background. The “Invertebraetor” was one of them (coined by McGoo himself) and I was at an old school reunion last year where one of the challenges was to do one of them and I almost split my sides watching the boys try to figure that one out!

Did you see other girls on BMX bikes back then doing the freestyle thing?
Krys: Yes, I did. That’s why it amazed me that I didn’t see any of them competing. I used to race at Akron Derby Downs and there were always girls just goofing off between motos doing this trick and that. Where I rode downtown the girlfriends or hang-abouts that would be with us on our downtown midnight missions would jump on some guys bike and learn how to do this or that. There are some distinct difference in male and female rider and how they approach freestyle. I wish I understood physics better back then. The upper body strength and the center of gravity on a male is just not the same for a female, so they have to modify some things to amplify their assets. I was in a BMX Plus article called “The Girls of Freestyle” and there were around 6 girls featured. I ended up being pen-pals with many of them. Even now, I hear from some female riders and know the great work Angie sKwirl McEwen has done with her “notfreestylin'” website and she still does the  "Trick Chicks" team.

What made you decide it was time to quit riding BMX around 1989?
Krys: Two parts. I was 19 and just starting university, so some of my time riding was dedicated to school. I had graduated from high-school early at 16 and spent the next three years just being able to ride. You can’t imagine how awesome that was and I’m so glad I got to experience that and see of the nutty things I did. At the same time the “street” scene was developing and riders were cultivating their inner asshole. We’d go to national contests and get the AFA and 20” bikes banned from entire cities because by the end of the night there would be packs of guys on bikes being tailed by helicopters with searchlights as the ransacked these cities. Entire hotel chains were saying “no way can you stay here,” and convention centers didn’t want our business. At the same time riders were taking the “contests suck” mindset and so the AFA and the Masters circuit gave way to the street meet-ups and sessions. This was the beginning of that “dark time” in freestyle when no companies could afford teams or sponsorships and no riders were able to make much money aside from promoting our shows at the county fairs and the strip malls.

So I was sad and disillusioned by the fact that the sport I absolutely loved was getting sort of trashy. I quit competing in 1989. I still rode for several years after that. I got lots of enjoyment riding with just a handful of people. No flash, no fanfare. Just good people doing good stuff on bikes. It was uncomplicated and immensely enjoyable. I still enjoy it. There is this great parking lot across from my house, a funeral parlor, and it’s got great night lighting too, so there will be days that I go to work, do all my freelance stuff and kid responsibilities, take care of the laundry and all the other glorious things that go along with being a working mom, and then to wind down I take my bike outside and just ride for an hour. I don’t do anything mad, I’m sure it’s quite boring to most, but I still get a phenomenal satisfaction by just rolling around on my bike. Its second nature to me. It was years before I got another bike, but I’m really glad I did.

When you turn on your TV and you see BMX, do you keep watching?
Krys: Absolutely. I had a brilliant time these past X-Games being at my corporate job and finding that our firewall somehow allowed for me to still stream ESPN. I was watching and was on Twitter with some of my BMX buddies and we ended up having the running “old farts commentary” going on. It was hysterical because we can keep up on the general idea of what’s happening but I don’t know any of the names for many of the new tricks, but I can certainly make them up on the fly as I’m watching. Maybe I should do that as my next career; Krys’s Clueless Commentaries.

Any advice to the BMX girls out there?
Krys: Yes. Don’t be intimidated, there is absolutely no reason why a girl can’t ride a bike. Know that your body is different. It has a different set of strengths available to it than a boy does. Learn those and use them to your advantage. Know that any obstacle can be overcome. My legs are 28” long and standing on my back pegs while I straddle the head tube doesn’t work for me. But I can stand on one and put the other on the seat tube to get what I need done. I used to get really frustrated sometimes because I would try to learn a trick exactly the same way my guy friends would do it and it just wouldn’t come to me. I now know that I needed more fluidity into my style to let my skill set emerge and put just a slight spin of variation on what I was trying to achieve. There are, and probably always will be douchebags who claim that Freestyle has no place for females. I wonder if these are the same guys who wear the white sheets or carve swastikas on their foreheads and won’t share the water fountain with the colored folk. It’s kind of ridiculous that some seemingly very progressive riders come out with stuff like that. When I hear it I can’t help but think they are just joking with me, because it’s really difficult for me to take someone seriously when they carte blanche negate the validity of any females 1) being able to ride, 2) enjoying riding or 3) having any right to ride.