I slalom ski. I wakeboard. I hike and rock climb.
When I'm on planes, I'd talk to people and I'd tell them I compete in the X Games. Some would know what it was, but maybe half didn't. But everyone knows about the Olympics. They're really like the X Games for the world!
I was always interested in skateboarding, BMX bike riding, flipping, gymnastics. Anything with tumbling, turning, twisting, and extreme sports.
MMA is so exciting. It doesn't matter if you know the rules or not. If you like a fight, it's automatically gonna draw you in.
Bobsledding is like sprinting with NASCAR. You get to push these 400-pound sleds as fast as you can down a hill and hop in. How could you not enjoy that?
When I started, I was 18 and really into punk rock and just wanted the action. Over the years, I've gravitated towards the travel and experience around surfing and trying to relay that feeling. Going forward, I'm interested in story-driven and personality-driven themes.
You realize, as time goes on, there is a certain expectation now in 2018 where fans want to see cool, exciting, hard-hitting sports entertainment or hard-hitting pro wrestling, and there are ways to give them that without necessarily putting yourself in the hospital that night or not being able to move the next morning.
I've cracked my head open before; I've had some great injuries. So I have to do it on the side now. I cracked my head open kiting before a competition in New Caledonia. The water was shallow, and I missed a trick and hit my head on a rock.
After snowboarding a fair bit in 2011 and 2012 to test equipment, I got pretty good at it, and some friends at Adaptive Action Sports talked me into competing at the exhibition event at the Winter X Games in the adaptive boardercross. I was able to step up my game pretty quick and compete. I took last place, but knew I could improve.
I like snowboarding, and I like to watch it.
Once you pick up a skateboard, you'll find out that it's not a hobby, it's not a sport, it's a lifestyle.
For my equipment, we're not about running. We're about wheels, action sports, and that type of thing. So we want range of motion and shock absorption. The foot itself has 28 degrees of ankle motion as you press into it or you put weight into it. A typical running or walking foot has kind of around 10 to 12, at max, flex at the toe.
Extreme sport has only ever been about goals and the ways to achieve these goals. Adrenaline plays a part, but it's never in the foreground.
It was a no-brainer to get the Unified snowboarding race into X Games.
I bought my first dirt bike when I was 12, and I started racing motocross when I was 15 and started getting pretty successful. Then I started racing snowmobiles at 17 and decided I wanted to focus on that and see if I can make a career at it.
I was a snowboard bum and a climbing bum.
Yeah, I'm a physical kind of guy. I've always liked being physical. It takes a stuntman to really say, 'Look, we don't want you to do this. No, no, I'm serious, you're not going to do this' to get me not to do my stuff.
Growing up in Huntington Beach, you were either a traditional sports athlete, a skateboarder, or a surfer. I got my first skateboard when I was five and skated off and on over the years, did a little BMX racing as a kid, and then in my freshman or sophomore year I started getting a little bit more into skateboarding.
In ramp skating, there's this guy Alex Perelson who's really coming into his own and doing some amazing new stuff we haven't seen before. Just different types of spin.
I'm excited to join the Mountain Dew snowboarding team.
Contrary to popular belief, there are actually quite a few guys in the action sports community that have faith and are Christians.
I decided I want to represent the U.S. and show what snowboarding's all about.
Most of my fans know I love video games. I say it in every interview, so they know. But one thing that I like doing is skateboarding, I like jet skiing, skydiving. It's like a huge roller coaster ride. Like forty seconds of free-falling. That's some of the stuff I love, daredevil stuff. I like horseback riding.
I don't think that one thing defines me, but I know that by coming out the way that I did, sort of almost pioneering it in action sports - to take that stand - that it's always going to be a label that is stuck with me, and I know that I'll always be the 'gay skier,' and it actually doesn't bother me.
Extreme sports tricks are becoming increasingly complex, the courses ever more challenging and crashes all too common.
