Camp Strieby.
Diversity. It's a word I learned to fear more than a decade ago during my college years, primarily because it combined bulletproof buzzword status and the raw promise of imminent idiocy better than any word I had heard before or since, with the possible exception of "carbon fiber forks", and that's not even a word, it's a phrase... but I digress. I soon learned to recognize that "diversity", in academic circles, was a brief way of expressing a much longer thought process, which went something like this, "It doesn't matter what results you obtained from your experiment/research/on-campus mountain bike race, we are going to turn you around and kick you in a particularly sensitive area because you failed to make sure your team/group/organization/whatever exactly resembled, in racial and boy/girl balance, this year's Benetton catalog. As a result, we are going to, in the words of Winning Through Intimidation's Robert Ringer, reach for your chips." And to think that, before I realized this, that I was the Diversity Coordinator for my freshman, excuse me, "first-year-student" dormitory! Herman Goering (or was it Joseph Goebbels?) once famously said, "When I heard the word 'culture', I reach for my revolver." Well, when I hear the word 'diversity', I reach for my wallet, in a protective fashion. But I am digressing yet again.
But what did 'diversity' mean before it became a buzzword? Washington State University offers us this fascinating post-buzzword definition, the reading of which has been accepted by the FDA and approximately fifty-four other countries worldwide as a safe, non-addicting cure for insomnia:
The University endeavors to model for the state and nation, a community of individuals who seek what is best for each other. The University respects and significantly benefits from diversity such as may be expressed through racial/ethnic, gender, cultural, disability, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic differences among the faculty, staff, and students. It takes seriously its responsibility to offer educational and professional opportunities equitably to all qualified persons it can accommodate. The University, through its curriculum, programs, and services, provides understanding and supportive interaction among diverse population groups and respects individuals' personal values and ideas.but I have a better one. I offer, to students of diversity everywhere, the thorough and abiding difference between, say, Camp Woodward, which I attended a few months ago, and Camp Strieby.
Nearly everyone in BMX has heard of the Strieby family. They emerged from the Indiana wilderness fifteen or so years ago to challenge the BMX world, achieving no little success along the way. Today, Adam Streiby is Redline's marquee dirt (and car) jumpa, Brian Strieby is an A Pro racer who performs in traveling BMX shows, and Nathan Strieby is, in his own words, "a longtime NBL racer, trail rider, and current moto-filler A Pro." Younger Striebys Judith and Luke are racers, and you will no doubt hear more about them before long. Even in the BMX world, where talented families are certainly not rare, the Striebys stand out as a unique bunch. For that reason, when Nathan invited me to come to his maiden attempt at creating an "over-21 BMX retreat weekend", I wasted no time in ducking out on obligations, disappointing co-workers to whom I had made commitments, and generally lying to my family and friends ("No, I'm sorry I can't visit you in the hospital, I'm going to Calcutta to minister to the poor") in order that I might make the trip and see the Streiby, er, compound for myself.
And what a compound it is. Given the modern misuse of the phrase "We're building a house" to mean "We're taking out a loan and paying some shady company to hang bubbly drywall on a crooked frame in a crooked hole in a quarter-acre tract in some misleadingly named subdivision", it took me a while to realize that the Striebys had actually built their own house by hand over the course of several years. And what a house it is - six (or more) bedrooms in a mostly open floorplan, tucked among enormous trees and removed some twelve miles away from anything which might be even charitably described as a "town". A nearby barn contains an actual horse, as well as fifty more horses tucked away inside Adam's vintage Honda CB550. (Long-time readers may remember that I am a former CB550 owner.) Past the barn, one picks up a dirt path which leads back to the Strieby Trails themselves.
It was the accomodating nature of Casa Strieby, combined with the legendary status of the Strieby Trails, which led Nate to think that there might be some demand out there in BMX land for a Camp Strieby - an anti-Woodward, where unforgiving trail gaps and Mrs. Strieby's methodical cooking would serve in place of sticker-lined foam pits and jam-packed chow halls. Nate's low-key promotion of this potential event, combined with an upcoming six-weekend stretch of the ABA/NBL's national circuses, meant that attendance fell short of the hoped-for twenty "campers", but for those of us who showed up that Friday night, it promised to be quite a fascinating weekend.
Over the course of the next few days, Mrs. Boswell and I became exposed to something I began to think of as the "Strieby philosophy". It's too complicated a philosophy to explain in a single paragraph - and anyway, you want to get to the part where old Boswell tests his sorry excuse for a skill set against the huge trail doubles, right? - but I think I can distill some of the key points:
It's a unique philosophy, and one that, when combined with the talent these guys have, is the basis for their legendary status within BMX. More importantly, it's a philosophy that any of us could follow. Not all of us have the skills to do the "Iron Monkey" jump like Adam does, but we could probably all figure out a way to be respectful and supportive of our parents or children.
Saturday morning dawned bright and early at the Strieby trails. We began, appropriately enough, with a "beginner jump" - a trail-style double, approximately six feet from peak to peak, across which a sheet of plywood had been laid. Even with the plywood in place, the jump looked intimidating to non-jumpers such as yours truly, but with Nate's patient coaching we all eventually made it across. He repeatedly stressed the importance of staying level while above the gap. Each camper had his or her little jumping foibles - I kept 'double-pumping' while in the air, another camper repeatedly nose-bonked the second peak - but Nate watched us and occasionally demonstrated proper technique.
Camper Kim tries her luck and clears the plywood.
Camp Director Nate says, "For the love of G-d, Boswell, how hard can it be to clear this jump!"
Nate practices what he preaches...
...and I give it a shot. Note the height difference between instructor and student!
When we were all comfortable with the jump, Nate removed the plywood and we jumped it without that 'safety net' in place. Satisfied that we were all doing it right, Nate bundled us off to Hire Park BMX in Warsaw, Indiana, for some hot laps. Keep in mind that when I say 'hot laps', I mean that it was hot as heck out there, not that I was tearing it up. In fact, I think I was passed by a seven-year-old kid on a Mongoose "Hoop-D". After two hours of practice, it was back to the trails for more jumping... for most of the campers, anyway. I went back to my hotel and took a nap, because I firmly believe that the best BMX racers pamper themselves constantly, despite the overwhelming mass of evidence to the contrary... I rejoined the pack for a little afternoon trail riding before we left for Blindside Skatepark in Elkhart, some forty miles distant.
Blindside's owner kept the park open an additional hour so we could ride without fear of being humiliated by the locals, most of whom were outrageously skilled and also outrageously averse to the wearing of shirts. I was frankly thrilled to see some jumps with solid plywood tops after the morning's trail session, but less thrilled to find out that the three-box rhythm section required quite a bit of finesse. Too slow, and you would be unable to clear all three - but going too fast led to overjumping the first box. Overjumping a box, particularly when one is in the requisitely stylish 'nose-down' position, is nothing short of terrifying and I do not recommend it to anyone. After ninety minutes I finally cleared all three...
Always wear dark clothing when you are being filmed at an indoor skatepark, just to keep 'em guessing. But I'm out there somewhere.
Interesting room, isn't it? Blindside is actually broken up into four rooms plus a lounge where one may relax, watch TV, or try one's hand at a PlayStation game. It's a good thing my skatepark at home doesn't have a lounge... I'd never get any riding done. We finished up and returned to the hotel at 1AM, which, thanks to Indiana's refual to honor Daylight Savings Time, was actually 2:00 AM, Boswell Tired Time.
Sunday morning saw us return to the trails to face the "MX" jump, as seen here:
I'd like to stop the narrative here for a moment and discuss the mental aspects of approaching today's super-sized trail jumps. I am an arrant coward by nature and have discovered that the only way I have to convince myself to attempt a jump like this is to actively force the idea of jumping out of my mind. I use a process I cannot adequately describe, but which I have seen described elsewhere as a "voluntary daydreaming state", to force myself to just pedal up to the jump and ignore the consequences. To make this work, I have to distract myself from the actual task at hand, which I accomplish by thinking about something totally unrelated to jumping and yet utterly fascinating, such as quantum computing or "Serena" from this year's Law and Order episodes. Before I know it, I am at the lip of the jump, and I can let fifteen years of bad habits take over.
And so I launched...
and landed...
and was not killed, much to my surprise. I hit the jump about ten more times, eventually working up to courage to try the usual.
I declined Nate's offer to pull the plywood out - I was getting more and more tired as the morning wore on, and the chances of getting something really wrong were increasing, as I demonstrated by crunching my ankle on a bad landing shortly afterwards. We retired to the house to wrap up - on the way out, I jumped what I now thought of as the 'small double' without a second thought - and Nate called Camp Strieby to a close.
Camper Greg wouldn't have needed the plywood after his first few attempts...
The jury is still out on whether Nate will do this again. If he does, there are a variety of improvements he could make in the program - more solid plywood tops for the over-30 crowd, a pre-planned itinerary a la Woodward, perhaps a regularly scheduled afternoon naptime - and I am confident those improvements will be made. It occurrred to me, as I drove home, that there is room in BMX for places like Camp Woodward, with its squeaky-clean parks and national-television profile, and places like Camp Strieby - a bunch of riders in a backwoods trail, learning how to understand themselves, and their bikes, better. It's worth noting that neither kind of place existed when I began riding in the early Eighties. Young riders today have some unique opportunities. For less than the price of another 'fabric-softened super-metal' gimmick frame, they can ride with, and learn from, some of the sport's greatest riders, in truly unique environments - and that kind of experience wasn't available at any price to the riders of my generation. I hate to sound like a color BMX rag here, but you won't go wrong with either the Woodward folks or with Nate and his program. Heck, why not do them both? We'll call it, for lack of a more buzz-worthy phrase, "diversity in action."