Taj Mihelich
I love riding bikes. That's my confession for the day. It’s a good thing too, because I've been riding them pretty much non-stop for the last 30 years! As a kid all I ever wanted to do was see how far I could jump my bike. It didn't even matter what kind of bike I had, but of course, I always wanted a cool BMX bike.
Around the age of 13 I went to my first BMX race on a "real" BMX bike (and I was so afraid it wouldn't pass the track inspection to become "race certified"). From that point on BMX was in my life, all the time. I raced for a few years but almost always I have mostly been just into jumping. Around that time some of the first, street and dirt, contests started happening and I couldn't get enough of them. My friend, Ron Kimler, and I are from the same town, White Lake, Michigan. Ron started taking me to street comps around the country. I mostly focused on box jumps at the comps. There was nothing better than jumping as high as I could to some crappy flat wedged landing. Now-a-days I cringe at the sight of those flat harsh landings! When I was 16, Albe's Bike Shop started helping me out early on. That ended up being an amazing help to me. They took me on my first trip to California back in 1992, which landed me an interview in the first Dig Magazine and the newly formed Ride BMX Magazine. From there things started to roll for me. I had spent some time living out at Rampage Skatepark and riding for Standard Bikes.
After that I headed south down I-35 with the idea that I wouldn't stop driving ‘till it got warm. I was friends with the Hoffman Bikes guys and thought maybe I would move to Oklahoma, but OKC in February is really cold, so I kept on going. The weather broke when I reached Austin, TX and my new home was found.
Within a year of being in Austin I started riding for Hoffman Bikes and quit my job as a juice maker to ride BMX full time. In those days being a pro rider meant you did shows at fairs and carnivals to make enough money so you didn’t have to work. It was very surreal being around all the carnies at fairs, but it taught me to ride vert and it kept me on my bike. I also got to do shows with the most amazing riders of the time like; Dennis McCoy, Jay Miron, Dave Mirra and of course, Mat Hoffman. Vert became my focus for a while, but after I got burned out on doing shows (and started making enough money to not have to do them anymore) I sort of lost interest. To this day I miss the feeling of flying on vert. That feeling isn't equaled in any other type of riding. I don't, however, miss all the concussions, or loads of pads and full-face helmets.
I left Austin for a while and moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to ride the amazing trails up there. I moved into a house with a bunch of great riders; Mel Cody, Luc-E, Sandy Carson and Joe Rich to name a few. Most of the PA years I was traveling and going to tons of contests, but whenever I was home and the weather was ok, I was down at the trails. Dirt quickly became my focus and I was happier than ever just riding the same lines all day long. The trails in PA really are that good!
Somewhere in here I left Hoffman Bikes and on one cold night in PA I got frustrated by not being able to ride in the icy weather again and convinced Joe Rich to move down to Austin with me. We agreed to move down to where it was warm and start our new project, in a new city. This was late 1997 and Terrible One was about to be born.
Running T-1 turned out to be a huge change in my life and moving back to Austin turned my riding focus to street. These were the days when you could ride all over town grinding rails and ledges without anyone saying anything. I vividly remember Joe and I being so confident with doing rails that we would follow each other around town and jump on rails that we'd never even seen before, even without knowing what was at the bottom. How long they were or even what kind of rails they were was something we always found out. T-1 was amazing too. We were so over our heads, but it was fun and took all our extra time. In 1998 I started riding for etnies and soon after started designing my first signature shoe called the Trauma.
Riding for etnies was amazing. For the first time in my riding career I had shoes that offered some support and protection for my feet. I know ALL shoes are supposed to do that, but etnies were the first shoes that were actually designed decently. Later, I got to design my second shoe, the Trauma 2, which was a pretty tech shoe that had air- pocket heels and all that. I remember I drew this design for the outsole (the bottom tread of the shoe) and it looked really cool. But when it got reversed for the left shoe the design looked so much like a Nike logo that the whole outsole had to be scrapped and re-done. Molds are so expensive, I felt terrible. Oh well...that's how it goes.
etnies was always so cool with me about shoes. They always allowed me to have all my shoes made in non-leather, since I was a vegetarian and they all worked hard to help me get the shoes exactly how I liked.
My third etnies shoe, the Roscoe, came complete with a picture of my dog Roscoe on the insole. I don't know why we called it that. I just couldn't think of a name for the shoe, I guess. By this point T-1 had moved into a new office with a big ramp and I had blown-up my spleen on a rail gone bad. I turned my focus to ramps and parks. Finding lines and going fast has never gotten boring for me.
Today, I've since passed on my half of T-1 to Joe Rich and am no longer on the business side. I'm riding for etnies, Odyssey, Fender Musical Instruments, and Bicycle Union. I'm still in love with riding bikes.
Need a break from reading? See Taj in action in these video files:
