Chain Gang Racing

In the summer of 2016 I bought my first downhill bike. I continued to ride for fun throughout the whole summer. Towards the end of the summer I saw ads at bike parks for a race circuit called the Eastern States Cup, I started looking into it and thought that racing would be very cool and would test my skills as a rider and even challenged me to learn new skills and techniques. There was one race left in the season and I decided that I at least wanted to try one race before the season was over so I could see if I liked racing or not. I proposed the idea to my parents and they were on board with it. I did not know it at the time but this was a decision that would create many huge opportunities for me.
We packed the car full of gear and tools to fix my bike and started on a 6 hour drive to Plattekill New York where I would race for the first time ever. I practiced all weekend and then went to the top for my race run. It was my best run all weekend and I didn’t even crash. I came in dead last for the amateur 15 and under category I was in. Although I had gotten a taste for racing and wanted to continue doing it. Something about all the pressure of racing done extremely hard courses made me ride much better than I ever had and all I wanted to do was improve. The next summer (2017) I signed up to race the whole year in amateur and even got second place in one of the races, I finished fourth overall and was extremely proud of myself. A team that raced in the Eastern States Cup Approached me during the end of that season and asked if I wanted to become a sponsored rider for the Chain Gang Racing Team. I was blown away by their offer and said yes as soon as I talked it over with my parents. Becoming sponsored mean’t that I would get gear for free and really expensive stuff at a heavily discounted price. The bike I was racing on was a 1400 dollar bike and and to me that seemed crazy but there were guys that rode on 10,000 dollar bikes. Since I had this sponsorship I used it to buy my dream bike which was around 9500 dollars and actually got it at a discounted price of 4000, which saved me 4500 dollars and I was riding on a pro level set up. After I got sponsored my family ended up even buying a really nice camper so that we didn’t have to keep buying hotels. Having a camper was something that our family had always wanted and now this racing experience had allowed us to be able to do that. In our off time from racing we even took up camping and went to a few places on our own. The next season of 2018 I moved up to the expert class and had great success which was something I had never even dreamed of, not to mention being a sponsored rider for a factory racing team. I even went on to race a few events registered as pro where I didn’t have much success but it was still crazy to be racing as a “pro”. This was something I had always dreamed of as a kid but never thought it would come true and here I was living it. I went on to race until my senior year of high school and then decided that I would take a break from racing before I went to college.
All in all I went into racing expecting something fun and it turned into something bigger than I ever knew. I even have gotten scholarships from colleges for my racing experience. this taught me that sometimes taking a leap of faith in life can lead to many great things that you don’t know about when the journey starts. This journey was something that I will never forget for the rest of my life and I am extremely grateful that I took my leap of faith. It created new friendships and forced me to become a better rider than I ever thought possible.
This reminds me of an episode of family guy where Peter Griffin becomes an internet sensation just by posting one video. He posted the video for fun but it ended up being a whole episode of him becoming famous and all of the surprising things that come along with his fame. I relate this back to my story because they both started out with a leap of faith into something new and then ended up being somethings that lead to many new opportunities in both cases.

Photo on Foter.com