Justin :  “Alright we want to thank Brian Hapgood for coming out, and giving us his time.  Start off with some history, when you first started competitive cycling.”

 

Brian :  Early nineties (thinking aloud) ’92 I think, Annie and Mary Days’ cross country race, and a Bigfoot cross country race.  The Bigfoot was up in Crannel and the Annie and Mary Days was in Blue Lake.  That was back on the full rigid, Stump Jumper Comp, Tange Prestige fork, and Deore DX from Adventures Edge.

 

J :  How old were you?

 

B :  Fifteen, maybe, I don’t really remember.

 

J :  Did that experience get you stoked, so you kept after it?

 

B :  I always thought biking was cool, but I thought the races sucked.  There were lots of hills and gravel roads, not really good trail.

 

J :  Were the courses different then from what you see now?

 

B :  Yeah, I don’t really do cross country races but, now there’s single track at most of them.  Our local cross country races run pretty good single track.  I just stayed riding, and got into snow boarding, and that took me to downhill.

 

J :  Snowboarding was your primary pursuit for awhile?

 

B :  By the end of high school I was over the idea of going to college and down with the idea of moving to Colorado.  And a year after high school I moved to Colorado with some friends.  I lived there for three years, snowboarded, and got a new bike the first year I was there.  The only thing I knew was cross country, so I got a cross country bike with a suspension fork.  Started riding chairlifts with it, that was ’95/’96 was I was first riding chair lifts.

 

J :   After that you moved back to Humboldt?

 

B :  Yeah I moved back to Humboldt in ’99.  Was riding all around in the forest…

 

J :  Just kind of over snowboarding or what?

 

B :  No, I needed to go to school, Colorado was too much fun.   I had to leave I was having too much fun.   So I moved to Montana to try and go to school.  I was trying to work there, and the economies pretty rough, as far as jobs the pay scale is pretty rough.  So I didn’t think I would be able to make that work.  Freakin’ cold up there, good mountain biking, gnarly rock, and good snow boarding good powder and stuff.

 

J :  So you came back here with the bike you acquired in Colorado and kept after it, and now without the snow…

 

B :  Yeah there was just more riding, and it was mostly just about riding in the community forest, and the Sunny Brae trail, I rode that a lot.  I lived in Bayside so we rode Sunny Brae trail.

 

J :  Were you interested in the competitive aspect at that point?

 

B :  No, I was into riding more technical trails and riding with  people that were at or above my skill level was something that I wanted to do.  It wasn’t really able to do that when I first moved back, with the people I knew.  I was in Revolution (Bicycle and Repair) a bunch and talked with Sean T. a bunch about, he lived in Tahoe so we had the snow board connection there and we were similar age.  So he actually called and invited me to meet and go ride the Bigfoot course that he and Matt Snyder, and I think you, had built up in freshwater.  Sean, and Matt, and I think Greg Newkirk was there for a practice day.  He said meet him at three at Three  Corners, and I was so stoked like ‘Yes I’m going to ride with some shredders.’  I showed up and they all have DH bikes and I’m like ‘Oh shit’.  I just slammed my seat down on my Ibis and freakin  go for it, it’s all good.  My Judy DH fork, plush.

 

J :  So that had a major impact?

 

B :  Oh it was an eye opening experience.  So basically the only reason I got into racing, doing one race on that trail, was just to have people to ride with, people who were shredding, with access to those kinds of trails.  Then I bought the Lenz Sport from Curtis (Lonn)…

 

J :  That was your first suspension bike?

 

B :  My first suspension bike.  I had it for three days and I dislocated my shoulder on the Bigfoot.

 

J :  So that injury was a bit of a setback?

 

B :  Yeah, but I’ve never been deterred by injuries they are just set backs.

 

J :  Being on that bike for just three days still must have opened your eyes to some things.

 

B :  I had ridden full suspension before but it had been awhile, and I had never ridden downhill full suspension with big tires, chain guide, and hydro discs.

 

J :  So how long were you down on that dislocation?

 

B :  Months. Three months at least.  It’s not really until just now that I am recovered from that.  Cause it was always poppin out.

 

J :  How many times since then has it dislocated?

 

B :  Eight.  Some of them pretty benign, it just falls out. 

 

J :  What was the last straw when you decided it was time to…

 

B :  I decided it was time to have surgery when I had that really good brace on and dislocated it in practice at Mammoth last year.  A relatively minor fall, I didn’t even fall on my shoulder and it dislocated.

 

J :   From your first race at Bigfoot in ’01, fast forward four years later, you’ve got a bit more experience, and you guys hit the National Championship series last summer.

 

B :  That was fun.

 

J :  Did that feel like was a graduation point?

 

B :  My graduation point felt like my first expert race at Sea Otter.  I had raced sport the year before at big bear and gotten eighth.  So at Sea Otter I decided to race expert my first year there and got sixth.  I was like ‘Ok I can do this’.  So I went to Big Bear and did relatively good there on a pedally course that people were bitching about.  After that I was like ‘I need to do more races, I can do this, I’m good at this, I want to keep doing it, I want to race these kids again.’ 

So we just made it happen.  Curtis (Lonn) has the ideas, we all have the ideas, and we just started talking.  Curtis and Hank wanted to do it, J (Superfan) was down, we just made it happen.  We just all put our noses to the grind stone once we had the idea, and came up with the money we needed.  When it came down to it we were trying to get different kinds of vehicles, but we just took the vehicles we had.

 

J :  So how many races did you hit?

 

B :  Three.  Schweitzer Idaho, that was pretty sick.  Had a flat in my race run and couldn’t finish, that was sucky.  Then Snowmass Colorado.  That course was fun and fast.  Got third there, that was my best finish, it was sick.  Then Durango Colorado.  Had a crash in practice there and sprained my wrist pretty good, which hampered me a couple months afterwards.  I wasn’t able to ride for that race and for a couple weeks afterwards.  Just started taping to ride Mammoth, decided it was good enough.  I learned good taping techniques from Kirt Voreis, it’s extra ligaments.

 

J :  Time riding with Kirt Voreis and other pros last summer must have been eye opening.

 

B :  Absolutely.  Just use less of the trail.  On any kind of winedy back and forth single track, anywhere that you can bunnyhop corners and just rhythm stuff makes it smoother and faster, its more fun too.  Once you retune your eyes to that it becomes more natural.

 

J :  Have you seen your vision changing a lot in the last couple years?

 

B :  It can’t help but change if you start going faster.  You gotta look at the trail different.

 

J :  Let’s get a little info on SWD, how you became tied in with those guys.

 

B :  Was Hank, hank moved up here.  Met him at school, I had heard about some dude with a steel bike from Sean.  He came up to go to school, I met him, and we just started talking about bikes and downhill.  At that point I was breaking swing arms on the Lenz Sport.  Devin Lenz, from Lenz Sport, told Curtis that I should find a new bike builder, he asked me to find a new bike builder.  So talking to Hank I told him that I was told to find a new bike builder and it sounded like I had.  So Steve built me a bike that was kind of a prototype, and at Mammoth last year he gave me another frame, and I’ve been riding on that.  Modified the geometry a little bit, I got the bottom bracket a little bit lower then stock, it’s awesome, it rips.

 

J :  Seems like Steve’s support and interest in the sport is really valuable to the team.

 

B :  It’s huge.  He works so hard for everyone,  it’s pretty amazing.  People realize the amount of work that he puts into the bikes, into building the bikes, supporting the racers, going to races.  He works himself sick actually.

 

J :  So is the SWD design due for further revisions?

 

B :  We’re never stuck with an idea, a design.  We are always trying to make them better.  Lighter helps, strength helps.  It’s that balance between the weight and the strength, and to get the weight lower.

 

J :  With the teams success this year do you think you will be seeing more interest in hitting it hard this year?

 

B :  I think so.

 

J :  Personally you’ve been riding a lot this summer, including a trip to Japan, what can you tell us about that?

 

B :  That was rad.  I could spend a lot of time talking about Japan it was so much fun.  I took off the first of August and came back the 25^th.  Did two races, the second race was actually two races in one weekend.  There was a long course and a short course.  First race the course was a lot more technical then the second.  The first one had roots and rocks, steepness, wet and rain, long off camber section, weather delays in practice, delays in practice from people getting all stopped up, which made practice really rough.  The course was sick though, I though I had it pinned, pinned myself right off the track at the end.  Organization of the event was amazing, everything was just like clockwork.  Not very long after the last rider in the category finished the times were posted, almost immediately they were posting times.  They gave us some cool schwag and had a welcome party with free food and free beer for all the racers.  We camped in a parking garage, it was sweet free camping in the parking garage for everybody.  It rained a bunch.  The area was super lush, green, rain, humid, warm.  I didn’t know until driving to the races, they have monkeys, I saw monkey crossing signs.  They were surprised ‘You don’t have monkeys in America?’

 

J :  Did you get a different vibe over there, or is it like any other race?

 

B :  Not too much different in the approach.  There is the same array of people of people who are all focused and super quiet, people who are taking naps, and people that are listening to music and rocking out.  People take pretty good care of there bikes there, they are big on bike prep.  If you have the money to get to the race it is a big deal, so they take it pretty seriously.