Joven y Viejo: The Bruised & Battered Dust or Bust Goodtimes Ride of Dustin Humphrey
Words by Nathan Myers | Primary photography by Monti Smith
A film by State of Ethos | Directed by Dustin Hmphrey & Kelly Hammond
Travel photography by Dustin Humphrey | Additional photography by Woody Gooch, Tom Hawkins, Max Mandell & Harry Mark
The tattoos tell the story best. Tattoos and scars. He’s riddled with both. Good memories and bad decisions. A life lived fully. Dustin Humphrey pulls a vintage moto jersey on and pushes a pair of dual sport bikes into the driveway. Helmets. Gloves.
“Most of the moto gear on the market these days looks like it should be worn by a transvestite hooker in Vegas,” he says. “It’s good quality, but no one would ever wear it off the track.”
He is a man of aesthetics. From photography to film to designing motorcycles and surfboards, how it looks is how it performs. Vintage influence. Modern performance.
“I find myself immersed in the motocross world,” he says. “And I’ve fallen in love with it. But it’s basically exactly the way it was when I was a kid. Why hasn’t it evolved since then? The other action sports have. Just look at the surf and skate world.”
We’re in Temecula, California. For all his worldly travels, it’s a place Humphrey never imagined settling down. But as we prepare the bikes in his garage full of motorcycles, surfboards and tools, it all seems to fit. As a longtime photographer, filmmaker, and one of the founders of Deus ex Machina, Humphrey is on the cusp of his new adventure. “State of Ethos,” he calls it. So, I’ve come here to ask him about it.
For Humphrey, this is more than just a brand. It’s his whole life story. Every bruise, break and midnight ink job reassembled into this new house of cards. He leads me to his garage and pushes this bike toward me. He still rides motorcycles, but with the damage he’s done to his body over the years, he picks his battles. These bikes are good middle ground.
“I’ve always been a storyteller,” he tells me. “But I’m not good with words. It’s better if I just show you.”
He throws his leg over the Husky 501, cringing slightly at the act, and twists the throttle. Apparently, we’re going for a ride.
He was born in Oklahoma to parents who weren’t quite suited to each other. His wild-child mom and his God-fearing father, making a tractor pull of his childhood. His earliest memory is of sitting on an old Honda 50cc Monkey with his dad. Then riding it on his own, going over a small jump, and seeing his dad’s eyes light up with fear and elation. “I don’t know which feeling I loved more,” he recalls. “Riding the bike or seeing how happy it made my dad. Actually, I do know.”
Mom split to LA when he was six, dating a film director. And Dad moved, too. Everywhere at once. A traveling salesman. I ask what he sold. “Easier to ask what he didn’t sell,” Humphrey replies.
Some months he lived in Echo Park, the only white kid in his barrio. Others, he was with Dad. Sundays for church. Friday and Saturday for the tracks. Moser Valley. Ascot Raceway. And sometimes it was just construction sites and dirt roads. Fond memories.
One time in Dallas they found him out cold at the base of a big jump. Helmet split. Broken collar bone. Amnesia for days. But Dad didn’t even take him to the hospital, since the month before at another—another crash—they’d thrown him into an ambulance too quickly and it cost him a pretty penny. So, take an aspirin to it, son. Walk it off.
Back and forth he went. State to state. Parent to parent. Lost before he was ever found. But those weekend rides meant everything to him. Still do, it seems.
Dad remarried. Four more kids. Soon their expensive motorbike hobby faded from the equation. One day they sold his old bike to afford a new KX80. And every day he’d run to the garage to see the new bike that never was to arrive. That was the end of his moto days. Eventually, he picked up the basketball.
But hold on, I’ve already fallen behind. Over the years, I’ve followed Dustin down enough trails to keep up. The road here climbs the hill behind his house toward open country. I find him waiting at the ridge. Uncharacteristically reflective...or maybe just checking his phone. He rarely stops moving, caught up in the whirlwinds of his own creation. Projects. Ideas. Missions. But here at the top of the mountain, he seems calm. Below us, a vast canyon wilderness sprawls out, undeveloped as far as we can see. Nothing but trails, dirt and emptiness.
“This is where I realized I could live out here,” he says. There’s a long, winding road leading toward the valley, but instead of taking it—no, that would be too easy—Humphrey wheels the bike sideways and tears straight into an overgrown singletrack. No choice but to follow.
He was living in Texas. His father’s overcrowded, underfunded house was growing intolerable. His mom called him in Texas on a Monday, said she’d made a little money, and he could come live with her in Huntington Beach. He was there by Friday.
Surfing consumed his world. It was everything. He found his people hanging around the shaping bays of Robert August (the surfer best known from his travels in The Endless Summer). A community. Good people. And for that he was blessed. His friends ranged from older men to little kids, the only hierarchy being your skill on a wave. This was “Surf City,” and there were always pros around, returning from epic adventures to faraway beaches. Their stories filled his dreams.
For starters, they drove to Baja. Camping. Fishing. Off-roading. Next came a three-month stint in Costa Rica. “I almost didn’t come back from that one,” he says. “Thought I might just become one of those expat fisherman, surf bums. But something told me there was still more I needed to see and do. So, I came home and got back to work.”
He was a ferocious worker. A deckhand on fishing boats. Waiting tables. Whatever he could find. He’d work 70 days in a row just saving for the next surf trip. He forged his mom’s permission to drop out of high school. No more free rent or home-cooked meals, Humphrey was on his own now. He enrolled in Junior College to pursue a degree in marine biology. At least he could stay near the ocean. One of the courses included shooting photos of the marine mammals off the California coast, so his mom gave him her Minolta x700 SLR, and he took a night class to learn how to use it. The following semester, he enrolled exclusively in photography courses, devouring the information. Steve McCurry, Annie Leibovitz, Sebastião Salgado. He’d found his heroes. “I remember calling the school to get my grades at the end of the semester,” he says, “and when the recording said I had a 4.0, I had to hang up and call back again. Thought I had the wrong number.”
The next big trip was Indonesia with his friends Travis Potter and Timmy and Ryan Turner. Along with two single-fins, he packed his camera, two lenses, a water housing, and all the film he could afford. He had no dreams of becoming a surf photographer. “Surf photographers had a weird rap at the time,” explains Humphrey. “I don’t want to use the word ‘creepy,’ but it just wasn’t a highly regarded position.” No, this was just a surf trip.
The first day in Bali, they paddled out at the infamous Padang Padang reef (thinking they were somewhere else) and scored a rare, overhead swell. Humphrey paddled into a solid set, pulled into the barrel and got closed out on the reef. As the next waves came pounding in, he planted his feet on the razor-sharp reef (rookie mistake) and unwittingly began his career as a surf photographer. The cuts on his feet were deep and painful, but they didn’t prevent him from swimming with his camera. So, he spent the next couple of months shooting surf and traveling with his talented friends (who went on to pro careers).
Back home, he’d need to work again just to afford to develop the film. But Timmy Turner couldn’t wait that long, so he developed the film himself and then sent the slides to Surfer Magazine. The mag ran a feature, inspired as much by the travel images as the action, and Humphrey saw the opportunity to keep traveling.
They returned to Indo the following season for an even longer trip, plunging deep into the raw adventures that fester and bloom in every corner of the archipelago’s 14,000 islands. Turner was making a film, and Humphrey’s eye for aesthetic and sense of visual narrative was critical. Wild cross-country rides. Crazy locals and crazier travelers. Feral jungle campsites. Indonesia is a steamy tapestry of human insanity, stitched together by ferries, buses and motorbikes. The travel is hard. The waves are worth it. And everything in between was exactly what Humphrey had been looking for. Unseen visions. Looming dooming. Endless stories.
“We loved every second of it,” Humphrey says. “Travel was everything to me.”
He pulls back his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of Indonesia across his forearm. A map, worn and faded from time and sun.
We’ve paused in a deep thicket of brush. No view. No escape in any direction. I’m pulling cactus spines from my arm and wondering if my leg will need stitches. Humphrey seems oblivious to the absurdity of this trail. No pain, no gain.
The next trip, he didn’t even come home. Why would he? For $3,200 a year, he rented a two-story home in a quiet village in Bali, bought a new DT100, and settled down with a girl he had met in Jakarta. An emerging surf magazine called Transworld Surf had wooed him to their team with travel budgets, a new Hasselblad camera, and bags of slide film. “Just do your thing,” they told him. And true to form, Humphrey was all in. Photography was everything.
For the next few years, he traveled the world, stretching budgets and pushing the limits in places like India, China and the Mediterranean. “I didn’t give a shit about good waves,” he admits. “I had plenty of that in Indo. For me, the surf trips were just an excuse to see the world.”
In the pages of Transworld Surf, Humphrey’s imagery set a new standard of surf photography. Most surf photographers of this era carried only a long lens and a fisheye for the water, focusing exclusively on action. Humphrey was instead inspired by big-league travel heroes like McCurry and Salgado. The portraiture, culture and curated artistry of his photography elevated the genre as a whole. Then one day Transworld called Humphrey and skate photographer Atiba Jefferson into the office and thrust new digital cameras upon them. “This is the future,” they said. And so it was. Humphrey has always been one to embrace progression, even when it spelled his ruin.
Through his Bali friend Rizal Tanjung (“the prince on Indonesian surfing”), Humphrey connected with a well-known surf filmmaker named Taylor Steele, and the two bonded over their near-masochistic love of exotic travel. Over the following year, Steele and Humphrey dragged legendary surfers like Rob Machado, Dan Malloy and Kelly Slater (Steele’s close friends) to outrageous surf destinations like China, Cuba, Italy and Egypt, documenting their extended journeys on various photo stocks and 16mm film, focusing on culture and beauty rather than perfect waves.
It’s one thing to explore the dark corners of the world on your own, but another entirely to lead others there. In Egypt, they snuck past security to photograph the pyramids from an unseen dawn angle. In Iceland, they crossed a glacier in whiteout conditions to score a never-before-surfed bay freshly powdered from the storm. In India, their bus driver fell asleep and drove off a cliff, nearly killing everyone inside. With two fractured vertebrae, Humphrey still made it to the beach to shoot the next day. In each location, they discovered waves no one had ever surfed before. They were pioneers. Explorers.
The resulting film/book combo, Sipping Jetstreams, went on to win American Photo’s “Book of the Year” (beating submissions from Humphrey’s heroes Steve McCurry and Annie Leibovitz). He’s got the logo from the book tattooed on his arm, committing those years of adventure to his flesh.
Now we emerge from the brush and thicket on the singletrack. Something I thought I’d wanted. But here I find Humphrey parked amid a series of large boulders at the top of a forbidding cliff. “I’d forgotten this was even here,” he says, staring down the too-steep hill. “You might not want to ride this part.”
He considers this a moment, then heads down the hill.
If this were my own story, I’d tell you about that hill. My twisted ankle and bruised knee. But I will say that Humphrey arrived at the base covered in dirt and dust, as well. This is how we met. Chasing pro surfers around the world. As the editor of Surfing Magazine, I’d just moved to Bali myself to collaborate on projects with Humphrey and Steele, who’d also started basing himself in Bali. He put me up in his house (as he did for many) and set me on my path as an expat.
The photography work was ramping up for him now. Fashion shoots in New York and Paris. Ad campaigns for mainstream brands. He took on an agent and hired assistants. The money was coming in, but there was a price to pay for it.
Steele and Humphrey had just started a followup to Sipping Jetstreams, filming Vietnam, Peru and Iceland. He also started his own film project with surfer Rob Machado called The Drifter. This was a dark, complicated project, with Machado drag-racing the demons of divorce across the Indonesian outskirts. Humphrey built a custom, vintage motorcycle to be Machado’s costar, full of rattle and romance. Budgets were approved. One of the first-ever Red cameras was delivered to Bali. And the whole crew set off to create one of the most ambitious surf films ever.
But it all went to hell.
His son Kelana had just been born. His once-spacious house was now crowded with visiting crew members juggling multiple projects. He barely even touched his cameras. Instead, he’d train up young locals, set them up on the beach, and approve the photos later. With the digital age in full swing now, the skill and mystery of photography was gone. Just Photoshop tricks now. Anyone could do it.
“I was sleepwalking through it,” says Humphrey. “Just saying yes to everything. Digital photography was too easy, and I lost my love for it.”
Deep in the jungles of Java, he contracted typhoid and dengue at the same time and ended up in the hospital. Overworked and overwhelmed. At odds with his own ambitions. It was his sanity that concerned him most. From the hospital, he checked himself into therapy.
The films moved on without him. The mags grew distant. His home grew quiet.
After the great and violent storm his life had become, a silence fell upon his house. Darkness. And then, after a time, the phone began to ring again.
On an overnight flight to Australia, he ended up in first class beside another Bali expat named Dare Jennings. Two generations older, Jennings started the surf brand Mambo in the ’80s, and pioneered the notion of sponsoring artists and musicians alongside surfers and skaters—the idea being that these activities were not necessarily separate. Jennings eventually sold Mambo for a chunk of change and spent the next decade traveling and indulging his love of custom motorcycles. Eventually, his hobby began taking shape as a business in Sydney, called Deus ex Machina—a coffee-shop, moto-building clubhouse in downtown Sydney. Jennings offered to loan Humphrey a few of his custom bikes for an Australian surf trip he’d been working on, and the two stayed in touch.
That project became Lover’s Land, a month-long, vintage surf/moto road trip up the eastern coast of Australia that would prove formative in Humphrey’s future (and inspire another tattoo across his arm). He was shooting on film again. Directing and riding. Feeling alive and inspired again. They camped along the way, then rented a beach house in Byron, communing with artists and curating a festival-like show full of art, photography, music and writing. The entire traveling circus experience was posted daily to a live blog, with photos, video and journals. Long before Instagram and vlog culture, audiences barely knew what they were looking at. But Humphrey knew they were onto something. This immersive, all-in experience. It was everything.
His conversations with Jennings continued until one night, over dinner, they shook hands on the idea of bringing Deus ex Machina to the remote Balinese village they both called home.
A new chapter had begun.
At the base of the hill, dirty, thrilled, exhausted, we emerge into something new. This wide, green valley filled with trails, jumps, berms and hills. A couple of dirt bikes are ripping gleefully around the track. The smallest among them has his name on his custom jersey: HUMPHREY.
“It’s kind of like a secret spot down here,” Humphrey says, putting the kickstand down on his bike to watch his son ride. For the moment, he seems to have arrived somewhere. We take off our helmets and mop the sweat with the dust.
“You know,” he says, “there’s a movement in the moto scene of guys who travel places they want to ride, wait for a big rain, then shape the ground into jumps and features to film content around. It reminds me of what we used to do in surfing. There was no such thing as freesurfing until a handful of guys just started doing it. I feel like moto is evolving toward that same idea now, too. People are more open-minded.”
In Bali, the Deus build was massive. It included a spacious retail space, outdoor cafe/restaurant, motorcycle workshop, surfboard-shaping bays, photo studio, editing suites, and even a barber shop. There was a skate ramp out back, waves just down the street, and nothing but empty rice paddies in every direction. The locals couldn’t believe what these crazy white boys were building way out here in the middle of nowhere.
As the project neared completion, Humphrey was offered a yearlong campaign for Corona beer—the biggest, most lucrative photo/film directing opportunity of his career. He passed on it to stay focused on this new behemoth. His agent lost his number. The magazines cut his retainers. He got divorced. But the Deus build continued. Constructed from ancient teak sourced from other islands. Hand-carved wood. Lush gardens. Quiet corners and creative spaces. A towering matrix of dreams, ideas and passions. They called it “The Temple of Enthusiasm.”
Of all the things the Temple was meant to be, a nightclub was not one of them. Some friends played music for the opening party, and the tradition continued over the weekends to come. For all of its party culture, original live music was rare in Bali, and the expat culture was famished for it.
One night the boys from the rock band Wolfmother were in town to unwind after their stadium-filling Asian tour and staying at Dare Jennings’ expansive villa. They only wanted to surf, chase girls and disappear, but it was John Lennon’s birthday, so lead singer Andrew Stockdale suggested playing some cover tunes at the cafe. Humphrey rented the gear they needed, asked some musician friends to form an opening band, and then made a little blog post the morning of the show. “John Lennon’s birthday,” it read. The rumor translated across the island that “Wolfmother was playing Deus,” and by sunset, nearly a thousand people had congregated in the courtyard at Deus. The opening band decided this was the gig of their lives and turned it up to 11.
Watching all of this from Humphrey’s office overlooking the courtyard, Stockdale quickly realized an acoustic set of Beatles covers wasn’t going to appease this half-naked mob. But after three months of touring, the band was tighter than ever. They stepped onto the stage and ripped into one of the most blistering, no-holds-barred sets of their streaking comet career, belting out classic rock covers, Wolfmother hits, and psychedelic jams for over three straight hours.
That night won’t soon be forgotten. And the little moto shop in the village would never live down it’s reputation as one of Bali’s best live music venues.
It’s no small task to describe how Deus evolved from there. They built custom motorcycles, yes. And custom surfboards. And the restaurant, barber shop, clothing lines, and art shows turned the place into a tourist destination. The film productions, four-day surf/moto art festivals and steamy Sunday night DJ hip-hop parties were a mainstay for locals and travelers alike. They sponsored surfers, shapers, moto-riders, artists, celebrities, sushi chefs, and girls, lots of girls, to infuse their time at the Temple. Then they traveled throughout Indonesia creating lush travel films like South to Sian and I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night. These were the beautiful and uncomplicated travelogues he’d been trying to make from the beginning. Simple. Romantic. Friends sharing adventures.
Photography was a huge part of everything Deus. But instead of shooting this himself, Humphrey began mentoring a series of young photographers. Hurling them into the churning boot-camp of Deus’ never-ending trips, events, parties, projects and products. These photographers—guys like Tom Hawkins, Woody Gooch, and Harry Mark—surely bear their own scars from Humphrey’s no-filter, tough-love program, but they are each successful professionals today, owing much to his mentorship and creative vision.
“I’m an average businessman,” says Humphrey, “but I am a good storyteller. And Deus was all about stories. That connected with people. And it showed people that you don’t have to be just one thing. No one’s just a surfer, or just a moto-rider, or just an artist. You can be all those things at the same time.”
As if to prove his point, Humphrey set up thirteen sewing machines in his office and dedicated himself to the creation of boardshorts. Retro styles made modern with four-way stretch materials and modern details. Aesthetics. Just like the bikes at Deus. The food. The Temple itself. All these things, Humphrey never physically worked on any of them, but they all originated in his head. Drawings and designs, sketched by artists, translated to builders, and each of them tongue-lashed when they got it wrong. “Yeah, I can be a hardass,” Humphrey admits. “But it’s just because I care about this stuff so much.”
Amid all of this, young Kelana Humphrey was growing up fast. Surrounded by surfers, shapers, riders, mechanics and artists. He’d ride his little skateboard around the Temple and sit in for all the inappropriate stories and late-night parties. His dad brought him along on all their travels, and eventually, when he was seven, Kelana asked if he could come riding, too.
They’d been headed to the beach for one of their traditions of sunset flat-tracking the low-tide sandbars. While Dustin had never pushed Kelana to ride, the bike was ready for him. Seven-year-old Kelana twisted the throttle, tore down the beach, and that was it. He hasn’t stopped pinning it since then.
Kelana was raised by the Temple. Growing up, he thought people drag racing in crazy costumes on the beach was normal Thursday-night activity. That lighting a motorcycle on fire and dancing around it was just something people did. His bikes have always been custom. His surfboards hand-shaped. The waves were always epic and when he decided he wanted to race, Dad was all in.
“We were already fans of the sport,” explains Humphrey, “but racing in Indonesia is pretty disorganized. The tracks are hard to reach, and barely worth it when you get there. I’m no stranger to hard travel, but I’m used to reaching the beach at the end of the line. This was just more dirt, more jungle.”
His first year competing, Kelana finished runner-up Indonesia national champion (against much older kids). But Dustin remained skeptical of the whole program of Indonesian racing. He joined Kelana at one of his training camps in Java, thinking to advance his own riding in the process. After riding his 250cc for a few days, he borrowed a 450cc and massively overshot a double jump. The crash broke his left foot in 21 places, split his right tib-fib in two, and wrecked his knee permanently. He spent the next eight months in a wheelchair, and a year after that just learning how to walk again. This was a dark time, clouded by pain meds, poor health and business growing pains. Their little Balinese village had grown up, with dozens of rival restaurants and clubs creating a nonstop festival merry-go-round. The rice paddies were gone. The surf breaks were crowded. The spotlight was blinding.
At some point in all of this, he took Kelana to California to train with moto-coach Sean Lipanovich. The quality of the tracks there was night and day compared to Indonesia, and with Sean’s help, Kelana was getting ready for a bigger stage. Around this time, Deus—now an international brand with shops in Japan, Italy, and California—sold part of the company to an Italian conglomerate, headed by the CEOs of LVMH and Ducati. Humphrey sold the Deus Indonesia operation to them and took the role of global media director, cutting his ties with the Temple.
He moved to California and invested heavily in RVs, bikes and support vehicles for Kelana’s racing career. All in, once again. It was Dustin and Kelana versus the world. Until the day that a unicorn crossed his path. He fell in love with the girl of his dreams, Emily. And with an epic fiesta in Mexico, they became a family. With kids in tow, they honeymooned driving south through Baja, passing nothing but cactus and tombstones before finding perfect waves at the end of a very long, dry, bumpy road. Humphrey happily gained another son, Dylan, with this marriage. It’s hard to say if Dylan loves surfing or watching Kelana race more. The crew couldn’t be better matched.
Within the first year of racing in America, Kelana finished 6th at the infamous Loretta Lynn’s and won two AMA Monster Energy Supercross Future titles. Even still, Humphrey questions this career path. “Motocross kids have a 0.1 percent chance of making it as a pro,” he says. “And many of them just completely burn out before they get the chance. It’s the most physically demanding sport in the world. So, personally, if he did make it, I’d love to see him spend half the year racing supercross and the other creating movie sections, the way the pro athletes in the surf and skate industry do. I think that’s better for the fans and the brands, anyway, and doesn’t kill the athletes in the process with the hectic schedules.”
Watching Kelana, it’s not hard to imagine him as the 0.1 percent. He’s got a natural style, a mature attitude, and a showman’s flare (the kid loves a good victory celebration). While his years in Bali were a revolving door of influential mentors, moving to Temecula has taken it to the next level. Here, Jason Anderson has become a friend and role model; he regularly connects with top freeriders like Twitch and Tyler Bereman just to ride on a weekday afternoon, or pop over to Jarred McNeal’s house to jump his ramps. Riding here is fun. Less serious. And that’s definitely the point.
While it still baffles Dustin that he’s back here, he’s realizing America is full of its own adventures. They’ve just returned from two weeks in Utah, creating the first State of Ethos content with co-conspirators Nick Lapaglia, Todd Cram, Micha Davis and Forrest Minchinton. They shot 16mm film photos and Super 8 film to splice together with action, and behind the scenes shot on Red cameras. “The whole vlog thing isn’t really my cup of tea,” he says, “but I do see the importance of it; it’s not the polished film feel that generally attracts me, but I do see a need for it in this day and age. So, my approach is to say, okay, how can we make this better. You gotta keep up with the algorithms.”
Kelana spots us watching and wheelies up the hill, followed by the other rider, who I quickly realize is Forrest Minchinton.
Forrest’s dad, Mike Minchinton, used to shape his boards when he first started surfing in Huntington. Forrest was Kelana’s age then, just hanging around the Robert August shaping bays. When Dustin flew Mike out to shape boards at The Temple, he brought Forrest, who quickly won every division of the moto event they were hosting. Deus sponsored Forrest, who soon became a mentor to Kelana. And when they started making trips to California, Forrest’s desert compound in the Johnson Valley became an essential training ground for Kelana’s development as a freerider.
The sun’s getting low in the sky, and it’s time to get back to the house anyway. I was dreading the return ride, but we end up following Kelana along an easy dirt road back to the house. (Why didn’t we come this way in the first place, I wonder?)
Back at “The House of Good Times”—as Humphrey has dubbed his new home—the sunset is painting an epic view for about a hundred miles. Layers of mountains, a glimmering lake, the twinkling stars of strip malls spilling into darkness. The cool calm of dusk. Humphrey opens a bottle of white from the local vineyards and Emily throws a tri-tip on the BBQ. While the rest of us settle into the porch, Kelana keeps riding. He’s got a full dirt playground carved into the backyard—complete with full-size FMX ramp, pit bike track, turn tracks—and Humphrey can just sit on his stoop and watch his sons ride.
“I couldn’t dream of anything more than this,” he says. But then his phone buzzes, and I know he told a lie. He’s never been one to sit back and watch.
“I feel like State of Ethos is the sum of everything I’ve been working on for the last 25 years,” he says. “What I learned from building Deus is that it doesn’t have to be just one thing. People aren’t like that anyway. It’s okay to love lots of different things at once. That’s how life is.”
On the surface, Ethos is a line of motorcycle gear. Beyond that, it’s a vehicle to continue his narrative. His storytelling. What he’s always done. Building campfires to gather around. All the years of photography and filmmaking, the style and clothing manufacturing he learned at Deus, and a lifetime rambling the world on two wheels.
“I’m not a professional designer,” he says, “but I’m a design enthusiast. And right now, I don’t love anything that I see being made out there. But rather than complain about it, I’d rather just try to make it better.”
He’s been doing this for years with Kelana and Forrest’s custom Deus gear, with Deus rebuilds, and with his own films and photography. So, this is just scaling up. “The goal is just to bring some of the style and culture that doesn’t really exist in motocross these days,” he says. “And to be able to do that with my friends and with my son, what more could I ask for?”
Kelana hits the kicker and sails 70 feet through the sunset backdrop. He’ll be gone before long. A teenager chasing his own dreams and adventures. Yet for a moment, Humphrey seems to be fully here and now. Enjoying the sight of his son soaring across the sky like a streaking comet.
Maybe it’ll become his next tattoo. Or maybe a scar. Either way, there’ll be a story to tell.
