Austin vs. the hip.

Austin is a beast. Every time i think of Austin i think about Mat Hoffman saying, "if you’re gonna have fun, you’re gonna be woken up unconscious pretty often, if you’re gonna have fun the way I like to have fun.” Austin may not air 15 feet on a vert ramp but hes the only person that I've met with the same mentality as the Condor. They don't warm up, if they are on their bikes they are going all out. The most prime example of this is a few years back after a 3 hour long trip to an indoor park in the dead of winter. Austin had not ridden in weeks. He gets out of the car, pays his entry fee and does a 540 air 4 feet above coping on a 6 foot quarter. On this occasion it was the hip.

Shady doesn't begin to describe the concrete sand castle atop the bumpy mounded asphalt hump that is our local street hip. It is more or less a roller with a bank on top that is just too absurdly steep to make any kind of logical sense. Every inch of its face is bumped and concaved in a different and unflattering way. To jump this concoction is to spend the entirety of your air fighting the g forces that want to send you into an unwanted back flip.

The first attempts came out of the blue and without any warning, the way they always do. Austin usually turns his ideas into a reality before he even has time to tell anyone what kind of storm hes brewing in that crazy head of his. I watched about 5 tries before my eyes started to actually believe what they were seeing. This is when i grabbed my camera. The problem was, the faster you go, the greater the g forces try to loop you out. Had this lip been better constructed i know he would have gone much higher. Austin Finally overcame the sheer physics with brute strength and will. Here is the result.