FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

Name: Kathy Schachel
Hometown: Teaneck, NJ, USA
Occupation:  Physical Therapist Assistant

When was it that you first threw a leg over a BMX bike?
Kathy: I started racing BMX when I was 11 years old. My first race I came in third place against the boys.

Was it easy to get BMX bikes back then or did people have to start on regular bikes because it was difficult to get the original BMX bikes?
Kathy: I did have a real BMX bike... they were hard to find at the time and that was in 1977.

Did you have a local BMX club where you lived at the time?
Kathy: We had a local bike shop called "Cosmic Wheel" in

Hopefully Sinterklaas is going to show up this weekend. I asked him a slide/negative scanner so I can go through the 550 slides that my dad took in the beginning of our BMX "career". Peer Bijnen has already digitalized his pictures and made a collection of the Powder Puffs from the year 1980. The Powder Puffs were the girls in BMX. The name got changed after a few years and I don't think the girls had a problem with the change. Powder Puffs, WTF! Flip through the pics. The girls are 30 years older now, just so you know.

Young BMX riders who do not care about the history of BMX, do not put any value towards New Oakley B-1B grips. And why would they? Well, maybe they should have caught a pair of those grips during the Nora Cup presentation because you can buy a nice 32GB iPod Touch for the amount that these grips sell for on eBay. So what's so special about these grips? Nothing really, they're just hard to get and bring

I might not be as old as some of the guys that showed up for last Saturday’s 40 years of BMX gathering in Long Beach, but still so fascinated with our BMX history and being able to have a nice chat with a few of BMX’ legendary pioneers I looked up to as a kid, is a nice treat on its own. There have been more then a few old skool meetings these past few years, including the Hall of Fame induction in San Diego and the (hopefully) annual Woodward West reunion, so it was nice to see Scot Breithaupt giving something back to the BMX community and perhaps educate some of the younger riders out there (seat posts were indeed longer then 3 inches at one point in time).

Vans had the booth setup to hand out free shoes/ shirts/ stickers/ etc, which was all gone within 2 hours time of course…who doesn’t want free shit?

I think the photos speak for themselves and all together it was a nice 3 hours before everyone got ready to go on the Giant Get a clue