What made you decide to come over to Europe?

Well when you’re a 21 year old kid and someone asks you if you wanna go to Europe to ride your bike, what are you supposed to say! It was a no brainer. On top of the radness of travelling, racing the French enduros has been a dream of mine since I was younger. I’d always heard these crazy stories from Weir about ripping through fields wide–open with no clue where you’re going. I loved the idea of that and wanted to experience it for myself. WTB and Cannondale have been super supportive of me doing that.

It’s definitely different in Europe, there are longer descents and everything seems a bit more wild. People here embrace cycling, but at home people are saying ‘this is dangerous, somebody is going to get hurt’. Everybody sues everybody over there. We’ll never have the type of enduro they have here in Europe unless it’s on private property. Ski resorts in the US are so into legalities that they’re not going to let us tape–off this huge, wide–open field and rip down the middle of that thing. They won’t ever let us do that. Or go through the woods where there is no trail. They all say ‘erosion’. Even though the land forgives it after the race has gone. Go back two months later and you can’t even tell that people rode there.

Enduro of Nations was crazy. I was on a junior international team as I was the only American. There was a fast French kid, Maurian Marnay, and then Danilo Penini from Italy. After day one we were doing well, but then it rained all night and the tables turned. Lining up at the mass–start nations race was crazy. Looking down the line at every big name I had posters of on my wall as a kid, I used to watch videos of these guys when I was a little kid. I was behind Jerome Clementz and next to Nico Vouilloz, which was a tad scary.

When we all took off, Karim Amour and Jerome were at the front and I got on Nico’s wheel. The start was slightly questionable, but that’s enduro, you gotta be on your toes non–stop. I had my helmet half way over my big head, playing with my GoPro, trying to get it to go and all of a sudden everyone was sprinting away. Nico wasn’t ready as the tape dropped either. That made me feel like it wasn’t just a rookie mistake! I threw my helmet down, got on his wheel and we started sprinting. We started passing people, we probably went into the trail around 20th, 25th, that kind of area, and I said to myself, ‘OK, I’m following him’. We were off the trail passing everybody, taking the craziest pass–lines ever! If the trail was a foot wide in one place, we were going a foot over to hit some bush to make up a couple of feet. That’s the raddest thing about those enduro races, the trail is there, but you have some space on the sides of the course to romp as you please. It was all just deep mud. Following Nico down a trail like that I was just blown away – I don’t know how he was so sideways and in so much control. I was just following him, I was surprised I could even stay on my bike. It was a cool experience for my first trip to Europe.

I broke my ankle. It was day four, stage three. On stage one I had ripped my derailleur off and broke my chainguide to pieces. So I ghetto–rigged my bike with a bunch of random shit, I had three master links in my chain and stuff was zip–tied on to hold my chain on at the chainguide. And I was pissed because I had messed my bike up. I saw the Grey Earth course and said ‘I’m going to f–king open it up on this one…’

I watched Jerome, Marc Beaumont and Weir go and there was a rise in the distance that I couldn’t see anything past. So I was just sprinting and I frickin’ pinned it as fast as I could, thinking ‘I have to make up some time’ – I’d lost 35 seconds in the morning. I came over the rise, sure enough, I see the trail jetting out to the right and photographer Sven Martin is there with his camera. I was going so fast, my bike was maxxed out as fast as I could sprint and I could see trail going off to the right. I went straight, romped this bush, and maybe fifteen feet after the bush there was a huge ravine. All I could see is bushes on the other side. I was going so fast, I said to myself, ‘OK, I’m jumping it.’ I went about 15–20ft out, into an uphill rise. I cased it by half a bike–length.

Afterwards Sven told me that it was the scariest thing to watch because everybody was coming over the rise braking, and I came over the rise sprinting. Then I was off the trail and he said when I hit my bike bottomed out so hard that it sent me flying. Apparently I flew 10–15ft up and was just flipping, then I fell into the hole. He saw me fly, hit the other side, start doing flips and then disappear into a hole. He freaked out pretty badly when he saw that, he thought I was dead because he knew I hit really hard. Sven told me he’s seen bad crashes, but that was scary.

At that speed my ankle compressed. I pulled the ligaments off the bone in my foot. When I got home my doctor told me, ‘think of when you’re eating barbeque chicken and you pull the meat off the bone. That’s what you did – your meat came off the bone.’

When I did it, the organiser (Ash) gave me my cellphone and wallet and threw me in an ambulance to Nice by myself. I got to Nice, got out of the hospital and they told me they couldn’t come and get me for a couple of days. I had to go and get a hotel and wait for them. I had been riding for four days with campground showers, which are shit. I was in riding clothes that were on the fourth day, one Shimano shoe and a broken ankle, I was looking so homeless. I ended up staying in this hotel and hating my life…I had nothing. Then my phone died and I didn’t have a charger. I managed to get to an internet cafe and somehow managed to get hold of Ash and set up when they were going to come and get me. Seeing the cool bus pull up was the best thing I have seen in my life!

One night, the second I was there, I got pissed–drunk. I was at a bar, got wasted and I was sitting in this park, on a bench, just drunk. I was still in the same clothes, covered in dirt still. I had tried to take a shower, but I had a full cast on my leg, they casted me up and over my thigh so I couldn’t shower properly, I stank. I was sitting on that bench in the park, so depressed and crying almost. I was the angry, drunk foreigner you see in the park. Yelling at people. People must have thought I was crazy, sitting there with that weird–looking shoe on.

I want race any and every enduro, DH, Super D, and overmountain–style race I can get too. Trans–Provence is at the end of the season and I’ve got a bone to pick with that grey earth track. I’m also planning on coming over the pond in July for the Mega, Mountain of Hell and Enduro of Nations. Back in the US, I would love to run Downieville again as it’s like my second home in the summer, but I’m not sure it’s do–able with all the travelling. I just want to keep an open mind and open schedule, maybe throw some local XC races in the mix and try and spend some time with Weir and the Nor Cal boys.

Nobody has done it from America in the enduro scene, which is weird to me. At home I’m the ‘the enduro kid’. I guess because it’s what I do, but I don’t see it as ‘cool, I’m going to be the first one from the country to go and do this’. I go out and ride my bike. This is what I wanted to do when I decided I wasn’t going to go to college. I went to college for a week or something and decided I was done, I hated school. I should definitely go back at some point, but as soon as I was there I felt like I was doing a burnout – sitting there spinning my tyres like a Camaro in the rain, when I could be out getting better doing something. The last year has been insane, non–stop travelling. All my friends at home are pissed, they’re working their asses off and I’m being flown to Italy for a week, just to hang out and go riding. I posted a photo on Facebook when we were doing a photoshoot on the beach the other day. You can see the town and all the peninsulas and the sea. There were about fifteen comments from my friends telling me I am a son of bitch…I guess the long days of pedalling are starting to pay off!