A RIDE THROUGH DEATH VALLEY WITH EARLE MOTORS
Photography by John Ryan Hebert
Vicki Golden: To The Limit
UNSTOPPABLE: VICKI GOLDEN
Words by Kirsten Midura | Photography by MacKenzie Hennessey
Aplume of dust billows across the sherbet sunset as two knobby tires launch sky-high into the air. The rider’s body twists to one side, the handlebars to the other. Platinum blond hair streams from beneath the helmet, framing the name and number emblazoned on the jersey: Golden, 423.
Below, the bleachers sit silent, vacant, yet cheers arise from a group of onlookers nearby. The public is not permitted at the practice day for the Red Bull Imagination event, but no matter. Vicki Golden’s biggest fans are her peers who ride alongside her this weekend – the top motocross freeriders in the world.
Disguised as a competition, Imagination is, at its core, a family-reunion-cum-field-day for elite athletes in the sport: Those who, having come mostly from racing, have elevated their riding beyond any conventional metric for comparison.
“Freeriding is more art than sport,” explains Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg, a founding member of Vicki’s first freestyle motocross (FMX) team, the preeminent Metal Mulisha. A world-class rider in his own right, Twitch knows how different this sport is from other competitions. “It’s all up to interpretation,” he says. “Even the competitive element doesn’t quite make sense.”
Indeed, in two short days, the ten riders who have been invited to compete will take on a sea of intersecting motocross jumps, each crest towering above the next. But today is practice day; spirits are high, smiles are ubiquitous, and the athletes are here to help each other and hone their craft.
As usual, the artistry is undeniable in Vicki’s performance. All agree that she is riding as well as she ever has. She makes it look effortless, yet Vicki’s mastery has come from a lifetime of hard work and incalculable physical and emotional sacrifices. Admittedly, Vicki thrives on pushing herself to the limit. “I absolutely love putting in work,” she says. “The more work you put in, the more it pays off.”
Throughout her life, Vicki’s work ethic has been centered undauntingly on dirt bikes, which she gravitated to in her early childhood. “It was mainly because of my dad,” she says. “He was just your average guy going to the track, but I saw him doing it, and it sparked my passion for anything on two wheels.”
Growing up in the outskirts of San Diego, Vicki, her dad, and her friends would bypass the local facilities and carve their own motocross tracks out of the surrounding hillsides. “It was the cheapest way to stay on two wheels,” Vicki explains. “We had more access, but it made it a lot tougher to go up and down big, rocky, rutty hills and just survive on a 50cc.” Those early challenges paid off, and by the ripe age of 8 – only a year after she first swung a leg over a bike – Vicki found herself racing.
At the time, there was no women’s class, despite the presence of multiple female racers. Nevertheless, Vicki flourished when competing against the boys. “It’s just what I got used to at the very beginning,” she explains, “I was always riding with guys on the practice days. It’s my origins; it’s just how it was.” As Vicki describes it, motocross is one of the few sports where you can hit a girl on the track and get away with it. “If they want to take your front wheel and get around you,” she says, “they’re going to. You have to figure out how to stand up to them to get their respect.”
And stand up to them she did. As she won race after race, Vicki established herself among the top in her class, to the dismay of many a competitor. “There was always a joke my dad had with me,” Vicki remembers, “that at every race there would be a kid crying because he got beat by a girl.”
When she was 12, both Vicki and her dad qualified for Loretta Lynn’s annual AMA Amateur Nationals Motocross Championship in Tennessee, the premier amateur MX competition. But months before they were set to compete, Vicki’s life took a dramatic turn.
On an otherwise typical day of riding at the local track, Vicki’s father was hit by an ATV that was also on the course. He was immediately paralyzed from the chest down. In an instant, Vicki’s mentor and go-to riding partner would never again ride alongside his daughter. “When the accident happened,” Vicki recalls, “I was too young to really understand what dangers the sport can bring. But my dad was so stoked to have me riding that from then on, I really rode for the both of us.”
Still determined to compete at Loretta Lynn’s that year, Vicki now had to become a one-woman show, preparing her “bone-stock, clapped out” bike for the event. “When I went there, the bike wasn’t even running properly,” she says, remembering the tears she had shed at the track. With only her owner’s manual and an occasional family friend for technical support, Vicki did all she could do to stay in the race. “I didn’t really know how it was going to go,” she says, “but it was either ride that bike or don’t race at all.” With the never-say-die attitude that has defined her career, Vicki collected herself. She not only competed that day, but won her race.
Over the next four years, Vicki continued to push herself outside her comfort zone. In 2008, she became the Loretta Lynn’s AMA Women’s Amateur Champion. The following year, she turned pro at age 17 and won the TransWorld Motocross Magazine’s Women’s MX Rookie of the Year. However, she also suffered a crash that brought her inaugural season to a staggering halt. With a collapsed lung, a lacerated liver, and an assortment of other injuries, this was the beginning of yet another theme in the Vicki Golden story – the pendulum swing between breaking records and breaking bones.
The peaks and valleys of Vicki’s career continued. In 2011 she took gold in the Summer X Games’ Women’s MX Racing, was the first woman to break the top 10 in AMA Arenacross Lites Main, and became the first woman to qualify for an AMA Arenacross Premier Class night show. She also tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL), resulting in the loss of both ligaments in her left leg. In 2012 and 2013, she won her second and third consecutive gold medals in the Summer X Games’ Women’s MX Racing. However, she suffered additional injuries to her head, leg, ankle, and shoulder while leading up to her 2014 season.
Still, Vicki pushed on indomitably, setting aside fear and placing full trust in building her muscle memory. “Fear is a mental barrier that has to be broken,” Vicki says. “I know I can do it, so why would I let my brain convince me otherwise?”
Rather than let her injuries faze her, Vicki threw herself head-first into training. “On Monday I would ride, and Tuesday I would train,” Vicki says. “Then on Tuesday or Wednesday I would fly to the East Coast. From there I would have a couple of press days starting at 3 or 4 in the morning, all the way to noon or the end of the day. Friday would be more press and bike prep, Saturday was the actual race, and Sunday was spent flying back to California. Every weekend that I didn’t qualify, I went home and worked harder, which was the opposite of what I should have been doing.”
In the midst of the 2014 season, Vicki’s daunting schedule began to take its toll. A slew of mysterious ailments emerged. Cold symptoms one week would be followed by nausea the next, then by problems with her memory, her focus, and her mood. This was more than mere exhaustion, yet nearly a full year would pass before Vicki could find a medical explanation. Still, she did not stop. “I was digging myself a bigger and bigger hole,” she admits, although she did not know it at the time.
At the penultimate round of the season, Vicki received bloodwork results that were nothing short of life-altering. She had developed Epstein-Barr, a virus that plagues extreme athletes, including Olympians, who overtrain. “My body was so shut down that I slept 20 to 24 hours a day,” Vicki says. “It was a slow process to get blood work, see how numbers look, to sit and do nothing for months on end with lots of IV treatments to speed things along.”
A period of self-reflection passed over Vicki’s life as she was forced to let go of the pressures and pace to which she had become accustomed. “It was extremely frustrating,” Vicki says. “If you break your arm, it’s pretty obvious, and the doctor will give you a fix and a timeline of what it will take to get back on the bike. With Epstein-Barr, it’s completely silent. You don’t know what’s going on, and when you find out, you don’t know what you can do about it.”
Vicki tiptoed through recovery, terrified of overexerting herself and triggering the “couch potato hole” that she had found herself in. She used the 2015 Costa Rica nationals as a testing ground for her rehabilitation, and after dealing with a second bout of severe Epstein-Barr, she eventually found herself back in the Monster Energy AMA Supercross stadium. But Vicki had come face to face with the limit that she had pushed for so many years, and she knew something had to change.
“It was a learning curve switching from racing to freestyling,” Vicki admits. “I knew I couldn’t race and put in the effort that I wanted to, so it was time to move on.” No longer measured by lap times, freestyle motocross brought a new slate of challenges for Vicki. “I had that racer style that doesn’t quite work for tricks,” she explains. “You’re trying to stay low and suck into the bike for racer style, but when you’re a freestyle rider, you want to get away from the bike as much as possible.”
Vicki knew that her secret weapon would be the diligence with which she had always approached her preparation, albeit with a newfound recognition of her limitations. “It’s tough in our sport because I think you need to have ‘it,’ but there are also athletes who have ‘it’ and still need that work and repetition,” explains Vicki. “I think that’s me. I need repetition to really grasp something, but once I have the start, I know where to go. Once I develop that skill and ability, I just have to learn how to use it.”
Vicki still worked out regularly, but her training now incorporated a stricter diet, and more attention to rest periods. Freestyle MX and, eventually, freeriding also introduced Vicki to a community that prioritized camaraderie over competition, which helped to elevate her riding even further. “On the racing side,” she explains, “everything’s kept secret. You don’t really talk to or help people outside of your own team. But the freeriding community is more of a family thing. If you called another athlete and were struggling with a trick, they would give the shirt off their back to help you out.”
Just as Vicki was finding her rhythm in the freestyling world, she was confronted once again with debilitating obstacles. In 2017, her father passed away, and in 2018, she suffered an accident that nearly ended her career. During a freestyle trick on a concrete floor, Vicki’s wheel spun from beneath her, causing her to fall and shatter her right heel in multiple places. “It was a pivotal moment for me,” Vicki says. “I was mentally tapped out on surgery, since your pain receptors heighten as you get more surgeries. Even getting the IV put in before a surgery was kind of grueling.”
This crash meant yet another year on the couch for Vicki, who developed compartment syndrome and an infection in her heel, and came dangerously close to having her leg amputated. “That one left me at a point where I was reconsidering riding,” says Vicki, “but when I thought about it, I knew it wouldn’t make a difference if I quit or not. I’d still have to do all the therapy to get back to walking. Once you start walking, then you have hope.”
Thankfully, Vicki’s doctors found a solution that avoided further surgeries. She was able to not only keep her leg, but to continue to compete. She resumed her record-breaking streak and, in New Zealand, performed a backflip off the 15-foot Next Level ramp, making her the only woman to flip one of the largest FMX ramps in the world. In 2019, she broke the firewall record on the History Channel show “Evil Live 2,” riding through 13 flaming boards – an accomplishment “where other people think it’s cooler than I did,” Vicki admits. And in 2020, to Vicki’s own surprise, she was invited to ride amongst the best-of-the-best in the first annual Red Bull Imagination freeriding event.
For the first time in her illustrious career, however, Vicki began hedging her bets. She now realized that longevity and legacy are as important as winning medals. “I don’t want to be in a spot where riding’s done and I’m like, ‘shoot, what do I do now?’” Vicki says.
In 2021, Vicki began allocating some of her energy toward business, becoming an owner of the MX goggle company Onium. While this shift brought promise for Vicki’s future, it also has brought a sense of uncertainty that is all but new to this champion rider. “It’s like being a kid with your first party, and you don’t know if people are gonna show up,” says Vicki. “But people are stoked on the product, and it’s cool when you see people want to be in the company just because you’re a part of it.”
Vicki also has begun putting herself out there in the women’s riding community, an area to which she’s had limited exposure except in competition. Last year, she taught the Over and Out (OAO) Moto Camp, experiencing for the first time an all-women’s moto campout. “I never really understood the whole women’s-only camp thing,” Vicki admits. “I was skeptical and thought it was a little corny. I grew up around males my whole life, and I never realized that if a girl asks a dumb question, the guy will laugh, and the girl will get embarrassed and not want to do it anymore.”
OAO opened Vicki’s eyes to what it’s like for women getting into the sport later in life. She witnessed firsthand a woman struggling to start her own bike, and then stalling it immediately after she got it running. Contrary to the judgment, gawking, and laughter to which Vicki had grown accustomed over the years, she watched as another woman helped and encouraged the rider. “It was something super special that I never thought about or understood,” says Vicki. “Guys and girls learn differently, and I was so desensitized to it that I realized, oh, this is what they need: someone to help them learn without the pressure.”
“Women want to be women,” Vicki continues, “and to do what they want in the way that they want. I immediately hopped into this idea of things and want to be a part of it.”
Vicki also discovered that she had something unique to bring to the women’s grassroots riding community: proper MX training. “I noticed that a lot of women were not getting taught all the right steps in the right order,” Vicki recalls. “Even after a group lesson of just 10 minutes, I had so many women come up to me and say, ‘I’ve been riding for 5 years, and no one’s told me that.’”
While Vicki continues to diversify her resume, she is not yet ready to leave the competitive arena. She still pushes herself to the limit, only now she knows where the limit is. She still feels frustrated when she does not perform to her own standards, but she brings with her a perspective that can only come from a career’s worth of trial and error. “I get defeated when I’m not doing well results-wise,” she says, “but I have to take a step back and realize there is no one else that I can beat higher. Beyond where I’m at, there really isn’t anyone else to compete with.”
On competition day at this year’s Imagination event, Vicki hits the lip of a jump, catches an extreme gust of wind, and goes sailing into the trees. “I didn’t mean to go into the woods,” she jokes, “but we ended up there anyway. You’ve always got to get creative, and I guess I just did a little extra.” Her injuries are not debilitating, but Vicki considers the accidents she’s had this year so far and the competitions that she has ahead of her. With the sagacity of a seasoned professional, Vicki makes the tough decision to withdraw from today’s event. “It’s a bummer,” Vicki admits, “but I hit my personal goals for this week, and that’s really what matters.”
Whether Vicki competes at this event, or the next, or any in her upcoming program, nothing can change the trail that she has blazed in this sport, for women and otherwise. This is something that even Vicki has come to accept of herself. “It’s really humbling to look back at where I started and to see where I am now,” Vicki says. “I kind of just embrace it more now because I’m in a really good spot in my career and my life.”
In stark contrast to her early career, Vicki is finally at peace with letting go of the need to prove herself. This shift has not only had an impact on her physical health, but also on her personal life. “I kind of started noticing enjoying things,” Vicki says, “like getting to enjoy time with my boyfriend, family, and friends. I’d neglected it for so long when it was all dirt bikes all the time.”
“Gnarly Vicki” has been pushing the limit and inspiring riders for years, but now she hopes her fans will take away another lesson from her story. “The biggest thing is that dirt bikes aren’t everything,” she advises. “They’re a huge part of somebody’s life – and of my life – but I see a lot of kids get heartbroken because they didn’t win. I see a lot of moto parents who put too much pressure on kids because of how much money they’ve spent. But it’s a family sport, so take it for what it is. It’s about having fun. Just enjoy it, because that’s the whole point.”
Out of the Depths
CODY SCHAFER’S JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK
Words by Andrew Campo | Photography by John Ryan Hebert
In February of 2014, I traveled to Mexico with one of my best friends, Cody Schafer, to attend a four-day ride down the Baja California peninsula. The ride was led by Cameron Steele, and our group of roughly twenty riders consisted of several lead industry figures, including the seven-time Supercross Champion Jeremy McGrath. We had no idea that “The King” himself would be joining us, and I’m pretty sure I saw Schafer pinching himself in disbelief as we geared up for the ride. Life was at an all-time high, and I was experiencing it with one of my best friends.
The days in Baja were full of twisting singletrack, massive hill climbs, surfside wheelies, frosty cervezas and campfire laughter deep into the night. But like all good things, the ride came to a close, and as we loaded up the van, thanked the crew, said our goodbyes and began to pull out of the parking lot, we heard some yelling and banging on the side of the van. Schafer stopped and McGrath came running up to his window to have one last word with him. “I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed riding with you, you have a great style, and it was a pleasure to meet you. I hope we get to ride again.”
McGrath walked away, and Schafer and I looked at each other in disbelief at the amazing gesture from one of the most respected men ever to throw a leg over a motorcycle. Like any other kid growing up in the ’90s with a love for dirt bikes, Schafer idolized McGrath. With Schafer’s humble nature, you’d never know that his list of accomplishments at the time included winning Class 21 Pro at the Baja 1000 the year before, representing the United States at the International Six Days Enduro, and holding several Colorado off-road championship titles. It was a surreal moment for him, but he is someone who truly deserved the accolade.
Five years later in September of 2019, I received a call from Schafer’s wife, Hannah, and my heart sank. She informed me that he had been airlifted to a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after colliding head-on with another racer in a freak accident during a sighting lap at a regional hare scramble event. I was in shock, and all I could do was pray, try to keep calm and do my best to manifest some positive energy. In 2012, Schafer and I had lost one of our best friends and mentor PJ Marquez, who had helped Schafer realize his racing goals of moving up in the professional ranks. From the pain of that loss we have become like family, and I could not fathom losing another friend. Every passing hour felt like an eternity.
Although Schafer’s accident was both brutal and life-changing, thankfully after a few days we learned that it was not going to be life-threatening. His list of injuries included multiple facial fractures, bleeding of the brain, a torn posterior cruciate ligament, a torn lateral collateral ligament, a torn meniscus from hyperextending his left knee, a broken wrist, and a shoulder injury that was causing immeasurable pain. Schafer was hospitalized for nearly two weeks as doctors monitored his brain bleeding through multiple CT scans on a daily basis. He was experiencing an intense battle with nerve pain as the result of his brachial plexus injury, and he had severed the nerves from both C5-C6 vertebrae, resulting in paralysis of the left arm.
“The weeks following the accident are still pretty fuzzy to me,” Schafer says. “Although, there are also memories that are so clear I could never forget them. The sound of the impact of my accident is something I will never forget. The feeling of rolling over on the mountain and watching my arm just flop is burned into my memories. Getting loaded up into the helicopter and the wave of calm that came with the fentanyl is a strange numb feeling I hope to never have again. I remember laying on a gurney in the hallway in the hospital crying and begging for some sort of pain meds.”
Roughly a week into his hospital stay, the doctor finally came in and told Schafer, “You have sustained a brachial plexus injury and will never use that arm again.” But Schafer didn’t accept this diagnosis, and thankfully neither did Hannah. She immediately got to work searching for a specialist who could help.
Once he returned home to Colorado, he was able to visit multiple specialists, and they scheduled him for several electromyography (EMG) tests. From those tests, they determined that he had ripped the nerves for the left arm out of the C5 and C6 vertebrae and had severely damaged the remaining nerves from his spinal cord to his left arm. A local plastic surgeon referred him to a specialist in St. Louis who specializes in brachial plexus injuries. He was fortunate enough to get an appointment to see Susan Mackinnon for a consultation, a highly respected doctor who is recognized as the first to perform a nerve transfer surgery.
“When I first met Dr. Mackinnon, she asked me how I knew her grad student that referred me?” Schafer recalls. “Hannah and I were both confused by the question and asked what she meant. She said that she only took me as a patient because her student referred me. The crazy thing is, the doctor who performed the EMG tests on me in Colorado was not her old student, but had the same exact name as one of her students. What are the odds?” Twelve hours later, Schafer was on the operating table.
Three additional eight-hour nerve transplant surgeries were required over the next couple of months, including a wrist nerve to the bicep, a hand squeeze nerve to the bicep, a triceps nerve to the deltoid, and a trapezius nerve to the supraspinatus for external rotation.
Now the waiting game was staring him dead in the eye. There would be no immediate results from those surgeries, and it was still highly unlikely that he would ever regain any movement. This is about the time I saw Schafer start to become more mentally vulnerable, something that was extremely out of character for him, but as his new reality was setting in he began to realize everything that used to be normal for him was now a thing of the past. He felt lost, and rightfully so. His bright future was now overshadowed by the unknown, and he says he felt like he had been forgotten by the racing community he once called home. He was searching for answers, for reason, and it broke my heart to see him so full of doubt, struggling to find his identity and in desperate need of his friends, family and restored faith.
“The first couple of months following my injury I was taking a lot of pain medication, I was very depressed and thought that life as I knew it was over,” Schafer says. “Then I saw a video of a guy in Europe riding mountain bikes with the same injury as I had. I just wanted to be on two wheels again and decided the safest way to try to do it was first on a bicycle. The time spent outside and the fresh air really helped bring me back to life. It was really hard to ride with only one functioning arm, but I figured out it was possible. The mountain bike helped me refocus my energy in hopes of making the best of every passing day.”
During this time I witnessed Schafer regaining some of his physical strength, and becoming mentally strong enough to reach out to others in need, and more importantly to have the confidence to let himself be carried by others. I saw Schafer weekly and was able to witness one hell of a transformation over the next couple of years. He mastered the art of patience, and in doing so used his time as an opportunity to help coach young racers through riding camps organized by his church, and he began riding his mountain bike at level most of us can’t even comprehend.
In July of 2020 I received another phone call that made my heart sink yet again. This time it was from Schafer, and he simply said, “Campo get your ass out of bed, it’s race day.” I didn’t ask many questions, and an hour or so later I watched him return to off-road racing in the Pro Class where he had left off. His arm still doesn’t work, but his hand is just strong enough to hold onto the grip, and that’s all he needed to place fourth overall that day.
Over the past two years, Schafer has been doing his best to live a normal life. Riding bikes and doing the things that bring him joy. And in time, life would present offerings greater than any adversity when Hannah gave birth to their beautiful son Craig Walter Schafer. It’s been horrible to stand by and watch him overcome so much pain and adversity, but it’s truly inspiring to see how far he’s been able to come, and I’m excited to see where life takes him next. I hope that by sharing his story it will help to inspire other people to believe in better days. To let those who love you carry you when they can, and to never let go of the desire to live each day to fullest, no matter what the odds are.
Zye Norris: Living & Dreaming in Noosa
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ZYE NORRIS
Words by Phil Jarratt | Photography by Harrison Mark
On the afternoon of October 5 in California – the morning of October 6 on the other side of the Pacific – while longboarding superstar Harrison Roach was streaking toward his first world title at Surfrider Beach, Malibu, his best surfing buddy and soul-brother was stomping around on a rough-as-guts building site on the outskirts of surf town Noosa, phone in hand, issuing orders to his site workers while watching the world title go down to the wire.
At one point, Zye Norris moved away from the guys pushing barrows and digging trenches and put the phone to his face as he watched Roach take off on a bomb. “Come on Harry, you got this!” He repeated the mantra until Roach kicked out in the shore break and was awarded another score in the excellent range. Yes, he had this!
If ever there were a testament to the power of transoceanic positive thinking, this was it. Not that Noosa’s Harry Roach needed positive affirmations from afar to win the world title he had been eyeing for years, but it spoke volumes about the kind of loyalty to his clan that Harry has always dished out, and the way it is reciprocated in kind. And from no one more than Zye Norris. There is also another element to this. Their places that October day could easily have been traded.
Both Harrison and Zye, three years his junior, are brilliant all-round surfers, and elegantly powerful longboarders. While it might be argued that Harrison has the edge in consistency and a better mindset for big events, he has also struggled for years to focus on the will to pull on a colored jersey and perform on demand, rather than jumping on a bike and riding through the night to surf a remote reef on the edge of a jungle. Happy-go-lucky Zye was just starting to regain his contest mojo when COVID intervened, but he had still done enough to qualify for the 2022 WSL Longboard Tour.
Sitting on a sofa overlooking the Noosa River and sipping a beer, still in his dirty work gear at the end of a hard day that began with watching the world title go down, Zye is philosophical. “Potentially I could have done the tour this year but getting the time off would have been very difficult. Then I thought about flying over just to be there for Harry. Watching it this morning, all I could think was, wish I’d gone! But no regrets, not about any of it really.”
Born in Noosa in 1994, Zye and older brother Ezra grew up surrounded by the strong surfing culture of Sunshine Beach, a now-stylish beachside Noosa precinct where most surfers have long been priced out of the market by sun-seeking billionaires. But back then it was affordable and family-oriented, and it was surf city. Just down from the Norris house were the Roach family and the Bidens, whose patriarch was local postman Peter “Biddo” Biden. As the neighborhood kids began to take an interest in surfing, Biddo became unofficial coach.
On days when there were likely to be waves on the Noosa points, Biddo would rouse his own boys, Fraser and Harrison (there were a lot of Harrisons going around at the time; must have been a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” thing), before dawn, then jump in his rusty old VW Transporter and do the rounds, knocking on bedroom windows at the Roach house and the Norris’ to gather up the gang. All manner of surfboards would be thrown in the back on top of Biddo’s 12-foot point enforcer, the kids would pile in on top of all that, and off they’d go.
Zye recalls: “The routine of us all going surfing together in Biddo’s van seems like it was every day when I look back on it. It wasn’t, of course, because we did go to school, mostly, but it stands out as the memory of my childhood. We’d go to First Point with as many different boards as we could fit in. We’d surf all day, trying out different boards and different stuff, and some nights we’d be sitting there wondering where the hell Biddo was, and then you’d see him paddling into the beach an hour after dark.”
He continues, “Our parents were always cool with it, though. They encouraged us and didn’t care if we played hooky from school to go surfing. In fact, I think that had something to do with me wanting to become a tradie [tradesman]. Every time we wagged school, the tradies would be the only other surfers out there. They’d say, ‘Why aren’t you at school?’ And we’d say, ‘Why aren’t you at work?’, and all have a laugh.”
But it wasn’t all about surfing. When Zye was about eight years old, his dad, Owen Norris, took him and Ezra down to the local bike shop and bought them a 1984 Yamaha YZ 60 to share. “To be honest, we were shit-scared of it at first. It was all Dad’s idea, and we just came home with this thing, and Mum looked at him like he was crazy.”
Owen Norris is a wild-eyed kind of guy who’s game for anything, but there is also a very gentle side to him. It’s the kind of yin and yang you often see in Zye. And sure enough, the bike was a good call. The boys learned how to ride it, and for Zye riding became a lifelong passion.
Although there were always plenty of shorties in the quiver in the back of Biddo’s van, it being Noosa, longboards were the usual craft of choice for the Sunshine Beach gang, with five long, tapering point breaks to choose from, each of them perfect for extended nose-rides. Biddo and other older locals introduced the boys to the delights of riding surfboards at least twice as old as they were, using such techniques of bygone eras as drop knee and soul arch turns, and walking rather than shuffling.
As his buddy Harrison Roach would write of Zye a few years later in The Yak: “He is 20 years old and revered as one of most stylish longboarders in the world, but before now he’s never had much of a rep for his achievements on the shorter sides of surfing … hell, he’d hardly even gone left at the start of this year.”
But the rounding of Zye Norris as a surfer was coming. At 14, he made his first overseas surf trip, going to Bali with the family of a schoolfriend. Here he did go left, on a shortboard at Bingin on the Bukit peninsula, almost got barreled, and has the photo to prove it. But you’ll never see it. “I’m sort of almost in the barrel, but I’m wearing booties and boardies! What a kook! I’ve never worn booties since,” Zye confesses.
In 2010, Zye, Ezra and Owen were all members of a Noosa Malibu Club team trip to the Malibu Surfing Association annual clubs contest at First Point, Malibu. This was Zye’s first taste of California and of traveling to compete. He instantly loved both, but moreover, he suddenly realized that he had friends all over the longboarding world. For several years both he and Ezra had been competing in the junior boys’ divisions at the Noosa Festival of Surfing, befriending kids from California, Hawaii and even Europe, who would sometimes stay with the Norris family. What he hadn’t realized was that this was a reciprocal deal, that he was equally welcome in his friends’ homes. That sense of a global surfing family has never left him.
At the end of 2011, Zye left school and began a carpentry apprenticeship under builder Paul Winter, another Noosa Mal Club member. This was a fortunate turn of events because, although Zye had to toe the line, his boss well understood the importance of a Coral Sea swell and would make appropriate allowances. Just a few months into the apprenticeship, Zye, just 17, won the open noserider event at the Noosa Festival. Up against the best in the world, Zye, built like a stick, just walked casually to the nose every wave, hung ten toes over it and stayed there for an unbelievably long time. It was the performance of the festival, and won him a trophy, some cash and his first sponsorship, from the Deus Ex Machina operation in Bali.
In 2013 he went back to Bali to do some promotional work for Deus and to compete in their Nine Foot and Single contest. The Deus ethos, then and now, is all about boards and bikes, in no particular order, so it was to be expected that at some point Zye would be asked: “Can you ride a motorcycle?” His response, “Been riding them all my life,” may have been taken initially with a grain of salt, but he soon proved himself, thrashing through the jungle at speed or taking on Bali’s numerous motocross tracks. Deus fit Zye Norris like a glove.
When he finished his apprenticeship in 2014, he accepted a Deus offer to live and work in Bali for the season, appearing in the brand’s promo videos. Thus began what seemed to Zye the perfect lifestyle, living in Canggu, hanging out with Noosa and other California friends, riding dirt bikes and surfing perfect waves in what turned out to be an epic first full season in Indo.
Zye’s first assignment was to accompany Harry Roach and Deus boss and filmmaker Dustin Humphrey on a bike and surf trip across the western end of the Indonesian archipelago. The product of the journey was called “South to Sian” and it was the adventure of a lifetime, with Harrison and Zye biking around crater lakes and surfing giant unknown pits on remote coasts. But it ended prematurely when Harrison dislocated his shoulder in the most painful way in South Sumatra, a seven-hour drive on rough tracks from help.
Back in Bali, Dustin Humphrey was encouraging his young son to participate in the local motocross tour and invited Zye to tag along. He recalls: “We met a bunch of local guys and started traveling with them and doing all these races. It’s all over Bali and Java, and it’s big. The best one was at a private compound with a world-class track that professional racer Agi Agassi had in Java. Competing was just for fun, like I was in the B or C class or something. But you’d go very, very fast, and that was when I had my biggest crash.
“It was a place about three hours up the West Coast of Bali in the hills,” he continues. “The course was built for small bikes, and the jumps were very short. I was on a full-sized bike, and after the first race Dustin and I agreed the track was too crazy. I didn’t want to get hurt, so I decided I wouldn’t race again that day, then they called me up and guess what, I just forgot all that and went for it. I was about second-to-last, and I came around a corner inside a guy, gave it a fistful and didn’t make the jump. I went to get up and couldn’t.”
Zye had broken his arm and smacked a big hematoma into his leg. After getting a splint on the leg and getting chucked into a van to head to the local hospital, he recalls being wheeled out onto the street and down the road to get an X-ray. “I stayed there overnight and these scooter accident victims were coming in with half a face, just horrible,” he remembers. “I rang Dustin and told him he had to get me out. The surgery I needed was going to cost $10,000 or more so I flew home, had it done, spent Christmas with the family and went back. But I never raced again.”
The job at Deus stretched from three months to six months to two years, with Zye working on about a half-dozen hit branded videos. He loved it, but there was just one thing wrong: His best pal Harrison was the Deus star team rider whose brand assets matched Zye’s in almost every respect – all boarding, all biking, adventure-loving guys that the camera just loved. In other words, there was not much room for Zye to advance. He recalls: “It was great fun, but I wasn’t making much money, and every time I brought up the subject of a career path, the conversation would veer off somewhere else. So, I came home and started working as a carpenter.” In fact, in the years since, he completed his builder’s certificate.
The Noosa Festival of Surfing had already given Zye many blessings, but perhaps the biggest was in 2015, when he noticed a beautiful woman out on the town in Noosa with Hawaii’s junior star Honolua Blomfield. Zye edged closer, but she backed away and started walking briskly toward her rented apartment. At the next festival, Zye did better with Sierra Lerback, a stylish longboarder from Maui. In fact, by the time it ended, they were an item.
For the next couple of years, it was a long-distance love affair, meeting up every few months on Maui or Bali or in Noosa. Nice work if you can get it, but finally they realized it wasn’t financially sustainable. Zye says, “We kinda went, what do we do now?” They were married in Noosa in 2019, and made their home in the hinterland, where this year they bought their first house, surrounded by parks and forestry and less than an hour to the surf.
Sierra comes from a motorcycling family, so tucked away in Zye’s garage full of boards and bikes is her Husqvarna 250, a step up from the 1980s XT 250 he bought her when she arrived. Surrounded by trails, they both take advantage of where they live, but surfing is still a major part of the equation, with Sierra now sponsored by Deus and taking out the men in mixed-gender events in Noosa and Byron Bay this year.
And while Zye is pretty serious about his career as a master builder, he’s also signed a new sponsorship deal this year with Noosa-born surf champ Julian Wilson’s new brand, Rivvia Projects, with its focus on motorcycle and surf lifestyle, adding that to his Triumph Australia ambassadorship, inked in 2021.
And so the adventure continues.
The Crazy Never Die
LIFE AT FULL SPEED
A photo gallery by Kevin Pak
Some people will tell you that slow is good – but I’m here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles.
–Hunter S. Thompson
Range of Light
RIDING FAST AND LIVING SLOW IN THE EASTERN SIERRA
Words by Ben Giese | Photography by Drew Martin
Cinematography by Kasen Schamaun | Soundtrack by John Ryan Hebert | In collaboration with Danner
The punishing late-summer sun beats down on the back of my neck as the rev-limiter on my XR650 screams for dear life. I have no speedometer on this machine, but I’m clicking through the gears with the throttle twisted to the stop as we skim across the soft desert basin at full speed. Faster and faster into the 110-degree furnace just north of Death Valley. There is no town, no cell service, no shade and not a cloud in the sky for miles. One mistake out here would be a disaster, but if we can just ride fast enough, and far enough, we can find salvation in the mountains ahead.
I’m holding my breath through the endless cloud of dust as I chase five other crazy riders ripping flat-out into the badlands like a pack of wild coyotes. Their silhouettes warp and distort behind a distant mirage, dancing and shifting across the horizon like some strange heroes of the desert. But there are no heroes out here. No egos. Just new friends, old bikes, good vibes and five days to kill exploring the beautiful Eastern Sierra.
It all started back in the spring with a text from my buddy Drew Martin, a photographer from Huntington Beach, California, who had been quietly mapping out a dream route up Highway 395 into the heart of the Eastern Sierra. Drew has been exploring this region for as long as he can remember, discovering epic new locations with each adventure. His plan for this trip was to pack everything on the back of our bikes and connect a bunch of his favorite spots with hundreds of miles of remote dirt roads, camping all along the way.
In Drew’s words, “It’ll be a dream trip for the crew, with swim holes, creek crossings, epic high-elevation views and fast low-valley roads. Big trees, no trees, hot springs, cool springs and some good eatin’ spots. There will surely be broken shit, makeshift replacement parts and the kitchen sink. We’ll sleep in the dirt, get lost and probably run out of gas. The whole deal.” I was sold.
So, Drew and I kept the conversation rolling, and by late summer we were finally meeting up with his band of Southern California misfits at a little burrito spot in the desert to kick off the ride. Joining us for the trip was Noah Culver, a film producer living in San Diego; Jay Reilly, a photographer and director based in Carlsbad; and the roommates from Oceanside, Alex Ritz and Johnny Russy, who both work as motorcycle adventure guides and photographers.
Looking at this crew was like flashing back in time. They were all dressed to the nines in a cool vintage style, with fun-loving attitudes to match. A real run-what-you-brung kind of group that cares more about having a good time than having fancy equipment. It’s rare to find such like-minded people, and it’s truly special to get the chance to share an unforgettable experience like this together.
We kicked off the ride at the hottest time of the day, during the hottest part of the summer, in the midst of an intense heat wave in the hottest part of the country. I’m not sure exactly what we were thinking – maybe we’ve all hit our heads a few too many times – but our bikes were pointed west toward the Sierra with the promise of higher altitudes and cooler temps. We were all sparkling clean and laced up in fresh Danner boots, but that wouldn’t last very long. Within a few miles, every inch of our bikes and bodies would be caked in dust, and the adventure we had been anticipating all summer was finally off and running.
The Sierra Nevada is home to several national parks, wilderness areas and national monuments. Those include Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States, as well as Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America, Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks, and Devils Postpile National Monument, just to name a few. But as beautiful as those places are, we weren’t as interested in the mainstream attractions. We wanted to explore the lesser-known corners of the Eastern Sierra. The places you couldn’t find on a map. The spots you only hear about through word-of-mouth. We wanted to take the backroads, the long way through, far away from influencers, tour buses and gift shops.
I went into this with no idea about the kind of extreme elevation changes we were going experience on this trip, but for reference, Mount Whitney, which towers at an elevation of 14,505 feet, is only 85 miles away as the crow flies from the lowest point in North America, at 282 feet below sea level. On a route like this, you can expect to see five different life zones, each characterized by the completely unique plant and animal habitats at different elevations. From the hot and dry pinyon-sagebrush zone where we started, we would ride up through the lower and upper pine-forested montane zones, then eventually higher into the colder and more desolate subalpine and alpine zones.
Every passing mile was like a doorway into a new world. Like riding through the barren deserts of Arizona and suddenly being transported to the red rock canyons of Utah, then to the rolling green hills of Montana and eventually the rugged mountains of Colorado. And that vast diversity of terrain and climate is felt even more acutely when traveling on a bike, completely exposed to the world around you and at the mercy of the ever-changing elements.
After some hot and dusty miles up the mountain and a few good swimming holes along the way, we arrived at our first camp spot just as the sun dipped below the horizon. An infinite blanket of stars lit up the sky as we set up camp and reflected on the beauty of the wilderness around us. There’s something magical about spending time the mountains. The crisp, clean air is healing somehow, and the smell of the pines just makes you feel at ease. We went to bed early that night as a gentle breeze washed over our bodies, and we drifted off into peaceful dreams to the sound of crickets.
Like the boots we wore on this trip?
There was an unfamiliar chill in the air when we woke up that next morning – a far cry from the heat of the desert the day before. I could sense the end of summer for the first time. The inevitable change of seasons that always reminds me how temporary this all is. Soon these mountains would be covered in snow, and we would be back in the grind of life at home. But for now, we can enjoy these golden moments before they float away like the leaves of autumn. We sat by the bikes and brewed some coffee, then walked over to a nearby hot spring to watch the sunrise and soak up the warmth of the earth. Just what the doctor ordered before another long day in the saddle.
We would spend that morning following Drew through more spectacular miles of remote forest roads, winding up and down the mountains through dense trees and vibrant wildflower meadows. Slower, tighter sections turned into high-speed dirt roads. The sky was blue, the birds were chirping, and we enjoyed this blissful ride until we arrived at another epic swimming hole near the town of June Lake. We would spend that afternoon on the lake, cheering and laughing like little kids as we flipped, flailed and belly-flopped off a rope swing. The sun was shining, the beers were flowing and the vibes were at an all-time high. There’s something nice about having nothing to do and nowhere to be, when you can simply sit back and watch the clouds float by.
It would be another peaceful night sleeping under the stars. Another crisp morning in the mountains. Another delicious camp coffee. Another fun day of riding bikes with friends. Rinse and repeat. Life is so simple this way, when you can escape the money-machine and just breathe in the fresh air. When you can let go of the modern distractions that cause us so much anxiety and exist purely in the present moment. These thoughts really came to surface for me the following morning as we rode passed the historic ghost town of Bodie. The abandoned streets and decaying structures of the town felt like yet another reminder of how temporary this all is, and the importance of enjoying this moment.
Our route back down the mountain was magnificent. We said goodbye to the pines and followed an endless and desolate road that snaked and carved its way through the vast and expansive landscape. The views were stunning, but you could feel the temperature begin to rise as we rode farther and farther into the depths of the desert, as 80 degrees became 90, 100, 110 – and beyond – into the land of the blazing sun.
At this point in the trip, Noah’s bike was sputtering, and he was giving it his all just to make it to our final destination. Johnny’s seat fell off somewhere along the way, and it was being held on by zip ties. My luggage rack broke, and my bags were about to fall off my bike, and I had a pair of vice grips clamped to my handlebars to replace a broken front brake lever. My lips were chapped, and my body was completely dried out as the scorching hot air sucked the last bit of moisture from my skin. The beauty and comfort of the mountains was now a distant memory, and the harshness of the desert began to take hold. It was back to survival mode. Ride as fast as you can, as far as you can. Overcome the discomfort, and the destination will be that much more rewarding.
Through some treacherous rock gardens and a few deep silt beds, we limped our bikes across the valley into our final camp spot. A tiny little oasis in the middle of nowhere, with a few large shade trees and a pond with fresh water flowing out of the ground. Drew came skidding in to a stop, jumped off his bike, stripped off his gear as fast as possible, and then sprinted to launch himself into the water with a big splash. Alex, Jay and I were laughing right behind him as we jumped in, and a few minutes later Johnny came rolling in with his shirt off and a celebratory “YEWWW!”
We cracked open some cold beers and gave a cheers to an unforgettable ride around the Eastern Sierra. The sun began to set over the valley, and the hot brown hell around us came to life in a spectrum of vibrant color. Suddenly it felt like heaven, and as the peak of Mount Whitney was illuminated in bright pink in the background, I finally understood the nickname “Range of Light.” In the distance, we could see a golden plume of dust from a large herd of elk roaming through the valley. Noah told us how it was the last herd left in this region, and it made me think about this group of guys. A dying breed. Still wandering, exploring and hanging on to an old way of living.
I’m so thankful that my motorcycle has introduced me to these people, and that we could share this time together, away from the nerve-shaken world. That we had this opportunity to step back, breathe, live simply, and enjoy some unforgettable moments in the Eastern Sierra.
Faster Than My Demons
VOLUME 028 / WINTER 2022
Words & Photo by Ben Giese
And so it goes on those days when the demons begin to creep in. I pull the bike out of the garage and strap on my helmet. Slip on some gloves, adjust the goggles and start up the engine. I feel the roar of the beast beneath, rumbling and ready to carry me away to god-knows-where.
The plan always starts out as a few relaxing miles to get some wind on my face and clear the mind, but soon enough I find myself on the outskirts of town where those lonesome backroads call my name. Wide-open prairielands with a road that leads through the vast and desolate rolling hills as far as the eye can see, twisting and curving to infinity. No cars, no cops, no limits. Just the type of freedom that could get you into some real trouble.
As I turn off the pavement and onto the long stretch of dirt ahead, the rear tire spins and kicks up rocks through first and second gear. I click it into third, and that’s when she really opens up to breathe…thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-five as I shift into fourth. Only a few inches beneath my feet the gravel road whizzes by in a blur, but my eyes are focused ahead. Faster…sixty, seventy…the engine growls, and the wind is now howling in my face trying to rip me off the back of the bike. But to outrun the demons I keep pushing it into fifth…seventy-five, eighty-five, ninety…and now I’ve got a white-knuckled grip on the handlebars as they vibrate up my arms, and I tuck my head for speed.
It’s a dangerous game we’re playing here. Walking the tightrope between nirvana and disaster, with no margin for error. But that’s when things really start to get interesting. The turbulence of the mind begins to calm, and all the noise of modern life becomes quiet. Regrets of the past, worries of the future, anxieties, loneliness and the fear of death. Those demons…they all fade into the background in a cloud of dust as your body tunes into the present. It’s like that momentary state of enlightenment that monks and mystics spend a lifetime chasing.
I’ll linger here as long as I can…but there’s a curve approaching, so I let off the gas, take a deep breath and let out a sigh of relief. I think I found what I was looking for. It’s time to head back home.
To be alive and to be a human is to feel pain and suffering. But when we can find a means to simply let go and exist purely in the here and the now, we can feel some peace of mind. Traditionally, people search for it through various forms of meditation, but for some of us that kind of clarity comes along only in these precious moments of chaos. I think that’s what drives big-wave surfers and free-solo climbers. And it’s what I love about fast motorcycles. Because when you find yourself balancing on that razor’s edge of mortality, all the rest becomes dust in the wind.
Darkness will always be looming in the background, somewhere in the distance, just around the bend. But at least we can have faith in our motorcycles to keep us grounded, to give us courage and perspective, and to light the way in the face of our demons.
