Daily Lobo: How long have you been biking?
Stephen Webb: Probably for, like, the last two years. Seriously, like, the stuff that I'm doing, the stuff that I'm doing is called trials.
DL: What does that mean?
SW: It's kind of like an urban sport, an urban type of biking where the rider tries to use urban obstacles as his course, so there's a lot of technical stuff. You'll see riders up on one tire; you'll see riders jumping around from obstacle to obstacle, so it's not really like BMX or mountain biking. It's its own thing.
DL: What kind of obstacles do you use?
SW: Oh, you can use anything. You can use anything you can balance your bike on and anything you can jump onto, so there's a lot of stuff here on campus. You can use these rocks. You can use these walls. You can use those trash cans. You can use numerous ledges - anything that your ability lets you and you can be creative with. It's basically like the landscape is your canvas.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
DL: Would you say it's better than BMX in that sense?
SW: Oh yeah. It's way better. BMX is pretty raunchy.
DL: How do you mean?
SW: They have like pegs and (expletive) on their axles and they use them to grind on ledges and (expletive), so it really (expletive) up the stuff. So I see where people get mad and they think that you're destroying the architecture of the buildings and whatnot because of people that ride BMX and ride on the cement with their metal pegs. It just really eats up the cement. Whereas trials, you're just on your rubber tires the whole time. You don't do any sort of grinding or anything like that.
DL: I see you don't have a seat on your bike.
SW: Yeah, seats get in the way. They can be a hazard.
DL: How much time a day do you think you spend trialing?
SW: Probably like three hours a day.
DL: Does it get in the way of classes?
SW: No, I usually do it in between classes - before classes, after classes. Sometimes I set up my schedule so I have an hour or two break in between, like right now I'm on an hour break between two classes.
DL: What classes?
SW: Jogging and weight training, so it's like three hours of energy-burning athletic crap. It's pretty crazy.
DL: Have the cops ever kicked you off?
SW: Usually, during the week, if there's enough complaints they'll tell us to stop doing what we're doing. If it's the weekends and we're by ourselves, they'll normally come by and admire us. It probably also depends on the attitude you're giving them. If you give them like the typical skater attitude, which is like the sarcastic attitude, they're going to tell you to leave. But if you're cool with them and you respect them, they usually respect you as well.
~ Pat Lohmann
