Everything you never
really wanted to know
about BMX.

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Rescued stories from 1990-1992

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Welcome to Boswell's Basics Page, the web site where I, "Jim Boswell", have the pleasure of sharing the complete and definitive texts of the "BMX Basics" columns with you. Included are all the columns from BMX Today magazine, several "Web Exclusives", and the columns I have written since parting company with the magazine in December of 1998. If you are looking for something from the old pages, click on the side buttons before giving up. Please let me know if you encounter any broken links!

Recent Features - Updated December 02, 2007

The more things change, the more they stay the same:

I swore when I started my new hobby of auto racing that I wouldn't write about it, and I wouldn't teach other people how to do it. After all, I'd been writing and teaching BMX for more than twelve years, and I thought I deserved a break. Well, the break's over. I'm now writing for Dubspeed Driven and archiving my contributions at Squidcar. In addition, I've been doing some minor on-track instruction of new drivers with TrackDaze. If you're interested in learning how to drive fast, or just want to become a better driver in your daily car, and you are in the Midwest, let me know.

Recent Competition Results: I managed to win the 24 Hours of Lemons at Flat Rock Speedway, driving our Toyota Supra past the Car and Driver team to take the lead. I took second place at the NASA National Championships but was demoted to second for bumping. It turns out the BMX mindset doesn't go away!

BMX Basics - All of It! I'd like to thank Damien Norris for creating something I didn't know we all needed until I saw it - The Complete BMX Basics In Portable Document Format. This is a true masterwork - not for the articles it contains, as they were done by me and are all pretty lame, of course - but for the massive effort and skill involved in creating a comprehensive PDF. It is five hundred and ninety-one pages. Please take a look at it and let me know what you think!

No! I'm Not Dead, At Least Not Yet! Nearly four years after my retirement from BMX, I'm still getting emails almost daily about BMX Basics. The two questions I hear most often:

  • Do you still ride? No, it's now too physically difficult for me to ride a BMX bike for more than a few minutes at a time. In the fall of '06, however, I took a long afternoon out with my bunnyhop stand to finally pick up the art of hopping with my weak (right) foot forward. The good news is that I could clear eighteen inches that way; the bad news is that I could only clear twenty with my strong foot forward, and that I limped for weeks afterwards. Nope, I'm done.

As always, best of wishes to all my readers for your 2008 racing season!

The final BMX Basics column is called So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish.

Copyright 1991-2007 Jack Baruth