History of The Big Hip By Ruben Alcantara

FatTony

• April 27 2009
• 12 comments

Ruben Alcantara recently got the opportunity to make one of his dreams a reality in the form of a giant hip at the local trails. Here is his version of what went down and a handful of photos to go long with it.

It’s been years since Joe Rich, Garret Byrnes, and I talked about jumping a giant hip. When we were filming for the T1 video we got the opportunity to build one and got it to work really good…so good that we couldn’t pedal any faster to go higher.

Since then I have been curious about how much fun it would be to go faster at something like this and see what would happen.

One day riding at the trails looking at this little hill next to the jumps I had the idea and I found this line going between the jumps that will give you a ton of speed and also ended in a good spot to build “The Big Hip,” and without much digging involve. The problem was that to make the landing was a lot of hard work due to its size, done by hand. And one day while digging at the trails with my good friend Sami (who used to work with digging machines) called me and told me that one of the machines was free one weekend and we could use it to make the landing… When I hung up I was so excited that I stopped fixing this little jump at the trails and went to start “The Big Hip” and the first afternoon I almost finished the take off. And in a couple more days everything was ready except the landing. Then the machine came and, boom!!  There it was!  Over three floors of hill and rollers to get the speed, a NINE foot tall take off, and a steep landing 30 feet away! Sooo beautiful! But then it was the moment to give it a go… Yes, I was a bit scared because you had to go really fast and it was huge! So, it made me think a lot the first time. I remember having flashbacks of back in the day trying backflips for first time or something like that…so fun! The jump worked out so good and I felt like I was 18 years old again! I won’t forget this day…incredible! And it’s probably one of the best feelings that I ever had on my bike. But it’s even better seeing my friends jump it for the first time with scary faces and after they clear the jump you can tell how stoked and happy they are. We all agree how good this jump is, and that makes me happier.

Here there is a drawing that gives you a better idea of how The Big Hip is and why is so fun to ride it.

Well, all you guys who ride bikes know how fun a hip is to ride… so much that makes you think why is that fun? Small or big, a bank or transition…it doesn’t matter. It’s just sooo fun!

It’s hard to describe the feeling, but it can be compared to a good day in life. Maybe because the different ways to do it? Because you can pick the trajectory that you want even if you don’t know what is going to happen? Because in the middle of it you can correct this trajectory? Because it always gives you a new good feeling? Yes, it’s sounds like a good day in life and because good days exist big days do too.

Maybe is the reason why I started The Big Hip? Who knows, but the one thing that is for sure is that we all had big days riding it.

- Ruben Alcantara

Thanks to Fly Bikes for the photos and story.