PRESS DEMOCRAT
By JOHN BECK
Published Friday, June 5, 2009

Bob Burnquist offers this tip to anyone considering skating the Mega Ramp.

“You gotta learn how to fall,” he says in a matter of fact tone. “If you don’t, you snap bones.”

And when you’re hanging there in mid-air and your board is nowhere to be found, here’s what’s about to happen: “It’s either a slam or a bail. I like bailing. It doesn’t hurt as much. Slams on the Mega Ramp feel like a car accident.”

Two of the worst falls in Mega Ramp skating history came in the past two years when Jake Brown pancaked after a nearly five-story fall at the 2007 X Games and Danny Way came up short, catching the lip and flipping down the 30-foot face of the quarter-pipe ramp at the 2008 X Games.

Sporting battle scars like badges of honor, Burnquist, Way and Brown roll into town this week for the inaugural Eco-Cup challenge at the Harmony Festival.

Search YouTube for Way and Brown and you’ll hear the crowd gasp followed by eerie silence as both lie stone-cold while medics tend to what look like lifeless bodies.

The skater to follow both of those nasty spills was Burnquist.

“After Jake slammed, everybody was like — ‘All right, contest is over,’ nobody really wanted to go. But he got up and I’m like — I guess I should go. And in the back of my mind everybody in the stadium is thinking, ‘Please don’t go’ — my mom included. But just because it happened to him doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to me.”

Both times, he walked away with big-air gold.

“I just try to visualize what I need to do and focus on making it happen,” he says. “Winning is apples and oranges. I share both those golds with Danny and Jake in ’07. That’s the way it has to be.”

You know times are changing when a glorified skate competition towers over what began 31 years ago as an organic hippie festival on an SSU athletic field. “We decided to try to connect with a new audience and sow the seeds for the future,” says Harmony promoter Sean Ahearn.

After trying to book the Grateful Dead and Beck, Harmony organizers hooked up with Mega Ramp Events and Rudeboyz Present to bring in a live skateboarding soundtrack with blast-from-the-past ’80s hardcore bands Bad Brains and Dead Kennedys (sans Jello Biafra), along with Pepper and Rebelution.

“We’re definitely getting some funny looks here and there,” says Ahearn. “Some people are gonna say, ‘This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. What are you doing? You’re gonna spoil Harmony Festival.’ There is that risk — no doubt. Some of the older generation may get turned off. But I hope they don’t. I hope they see it as a chance to reach out to a new demographic and take the Harmony message beyond Sonoma County.”

The massive two-piece monstrosity, billed as the oxymoron Mini-Mega Ramp, won’t be quite as large as the 90-foot-high Mega Ramp at the X Games. But, with a 30-foot drop and a 25-foot gap riders have to clear, it’s far more intimidating than anything on the vertical-ramp circuit.

“There is no faking it,” says Mega Ramp Events coordinator Darryl Franklin. “It’s serious stuff. We developed the Mini because we needed to broaden the athlete pool for full Mega. To step up nine stories and do the Mega, you need something in between.”

When Burnquist started nearly a decade ago, he didn’t have the benefit of the Mini as a transition. His good friend Danny Way, who recently did a 360 over the Great Wall of China, pioneered the Mega Ramp, perfecting the prototype in a remote Southern California desert locale called Point X Camp in 2002.

Burnquist trained along with him as Way added the Mega Box, the Rainbow Rail and a quarter pipe at the end. In 2004, the Mega Ramp debuted at the first-ever Big Air contest at X Games in L.A. A huge hit with fans, the competition has returned every year since.

Now Burnquist, 34, is the proud owner of the largest fixed Mega Ramp in the world. Every morning when he wakes up, it’s looming large in his backyard in Vista, just north of San Diego.

“The reason I skate is so I can learn something new every day,” he says.

These days, he can also hear his body talking to him more than it ever did back when he started out street skating as a kid growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “It’s saying — get in order, get in shape — around the clock.”

Logging 27 fractures to ankles, elbows, knees, wrists, ribs, he’s “lucky there weren’t many ligament tears” along the way.

Putting in the hours, he’s done more than 100 jumps in one day just trying new tricks. But, aside from daredevil determination and will power, every good skater needs an even better chiropractor. “My guy is called Doctor G and he’s pretty amazing,” Burnquist says.

“One time I fell out at Point X and I fell sideways on my butt and I had the worst whiplash I’ve felt. It felt like a truck just ran into me. My organs seemed like they spun around. I had to sleep completely crooked ’cause of my neck and I just waited until 6 in the morning so I could drive to the chiropractor and ‘boom’ — he got me back up and I was ready to go again.”

You can reach John Beck at 521-5300 or john.beck@ pressdemocrat.com.