etnies

My name is Aaron, and I'm from a city in Texas called Corpus Christi. When I was a kid, I loved to be outside and did every outdoor activity you could imagine—I played lots of sports, hung out at the beach, skated, and rode bikes. The one thing that always stuck was BMX. I got my first BMX bike when I was about nine or ten, a Mongoose Hooligan. At first I tried to flatland, but that didn’t go so well, and I just ended up skating instead. Then, my best friend got a BMX bike for his 12th birthday—after that, we road everyday and everywhere, and that was the beginning of this whole thing for me. Since then, I haven’t gone more then a few days without riding unless I was too hurt to pedal.

Now I live in Austin, but my name is still the same and I still ride little kids’ bikes every day. These days, though, I am lucky enough to be able to travel the world and pedal like I did when I was 12, see sweet places and ride the thing I love. It’s amazing that something I grew up doing as a kid with all my best friends has become something that’s taken me to the other side of the world and given me the opportunity to make new friends and see things I would have never seen.

There are so many people who have been there for the ride, though—from my friends to my parents, they were always behind me every step of the way. My parents let me build a ramp in the backyard, which was a tough one because my mom is all about her yard and flowers. I also grew up racing, and my parents were at every race and every contest. My dad would watch while my mom sat in the stands, read, and asked, “Is he okay?” My dad and little sister both raced some, but my mom was too nervous to watch any of us. She loved it, though, and these days she can actually watch me ride in videos—she knows I’m okay because I’m sitting next to her, and it’s over and done with.

I guess all I’m getting at here is that I grew up a bike rider, and I love it. I ride a little kid’s bike every day and would not want to do anything else with my time. I still fall asleep thinking of something new I want to do, and I wake up in the morning ready to ride. That’s probably not going to change any time soon. I love BMX and where it has taken me in life, and somehow I have ended up riding for one of the biggest shoe companies in BMX, getting to work with some of the best dudes in BMX, and being teammates with some of the best bike riders of all time—people I’ve looked up to since I was a kid and still do today. And we all get to wear sweet shoes. These are all things I will never take for granted.

I’d like to thank everyone from my parents to everyone at etnies. This will be a great year!