A Baby, More Hotels, and $20,000 in Prize Money
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The first JoMoPro had been advertised in BMX and skateboard magazines. There was $20,000 in pro prize money and a Harley Davidson motorcycle up for grabs. Riders from all over the world were making plans to arrive in Joplin for April 7–9, 2006, to compete in a contest hosted in a facility that had never opened to the public.
It was now my job to make sure the details of that weekend came together. But we were still living in Manly, IA, and Jenn was due to give birth to our third child just a week before the contest.
I accepted the job at The Bridge in January, and there was a lot that needed to get done in Joplin in a short time. During January and early February, Jenn and our 2 boys traveled to Joplin with me. We would spend a week there, then head back to Manly for a week or so. I was getting familiar with the job, meeting people, and trying to figure out what needed to happen before the Grand Opening. Somewhere in there, we also needed to find a house.
While I was at The Bridge, Jenn was back at the hotel trying to keep our boys entertained and looking for a house. She was scheduling appointments for us to see houses, then trying to coordinate those appointments with my already full schedule. She was doing all of that while pregnant, in an unfamiliar town, with 2 little boys in a hotel room.
There was a good team at The Bridge who had already put a lot of work into the facility and the opening weekend. I was stepping into something people had been planning and working toward long before I arrived. Now it was my responsibility to help make sure all that work paid off.
For the past 10 years, I had been doing stunt shows and going to contests. I had been around major events, traveled with professional riders, and watched a lot of people organize things like this. That gave me some useful experience. It also gave me enough experience to recognize how much there was to do and how much I didn’t know.
The Grand Opening was going to include JoMoPro, with pro and amateur contests for both BMX and skateboarding, which meant judges, contest formats, prizes, and all the details that go along with asking people to travel across the country to compete.
BMX was familiar territory. Skateboarding was a little different. I had done shows with skateboarders and spent plenty of time with kids on skateboards during the Youth for Christ years, but organizing a professional skateboard contest was a different environment. I had a lot to learn, and April was coming whether I figured it out or not.
The contest was only part of the job. Autumn, the ramp park portion of The Bridge, also needed to be ready to operate when the weekend was over. We needed a check-in process, employee schedules, and people to work those schedules. I needed to hire staff and train them on systems we had never used. The pro shop needed merchandise, and that merchandise needed to be priced and displayed. We were preparing to welcome people into a building where we had never checked anyone in for a regular session.
We did find a house in Joplin on the last day of the last trip that Jenn was able to make before the baby came. At least now we knew where we were going to live. We still needed to close on it, pack up our house in Manly, have a baby, and get through the Grand Opening.
During March, I mostly worked from Manly. We were doing the remote-work thing before it was a thing. Even with slow internet compared to today’s standards and no Zoom calls or smartphones, I could still stay in contact with the team, but a lot of things that needed to be done were hard to do from several hundred miles away.
There was a lot in Joplin that needed to be done. But somehow, back in Manly, there seemed to be even more.
Chaos on Wheels was still up and running. Accepting the job at Autumn had not paused the shows we had booked. We still needed the team out on the road, which meant I was still helping get riders, vans, trailers, and equipment where they needed to go, even though I wasn’t going with them.
Meanwhile, Jenn was nearing the end of her pregnancy, caring for our boys, and preparing for a move. We had also decided to have this baby at home. Our first 2 boys had been born in a hospital, so home birth was another new experience with its own preparations. Apparently, we were just doing all of the things at once.
I wish I could give you one particular moment that explains what that season felt like. Mostly, I remember it being a blur. There was always something that needed attention in Joplin, something that needed attention in Manly, and something else we had probably not thought of yet.
Then, within a couple of weeks, we closed on a house, welcomed our third son, and hosted a major contest.
Our son arrived at home with no complications. After all the preparation and everything else happening around us, we got to meet this new little person who was going to be part of our family. We now had 3 boys, a house in Manly to get packed up, and a Grand Opening coming up fast.
April 7–9 finally arrived, and the contest came together. After months of working toward that weekend, it was a lot of fun to see people riding and skating the ramps and enjoying the place we had been getting ready for them. JoMoPro deserves a story of its own, probably more than one. I’ll get there. For now, let’s just say it was a great opportunity for people who had seen a glimpse of the park in the magazine ads to finally see the facility for themselves.
A few months earlier, I had been walking through the building trying to imagine what working there might be like. Now that space had hosted a major contest, we had a trained staff, and daily operations were rolling. There were still things to learn, but Autumn was becoming the place that I didn’t believe would ever exist when Steev had first described it to me years earlier.
The Chaos shows went smoothly without me too. That was a relief. My brother was leading the team and the guys I had been investing in for the past few years were doing great out on the road, and seeing them do well meant I could give my attention to what was happening at Autumn without feeling like every show depended on me being there.
We sold our house in Manly without too much trouble and officially moved to Joplin in May. Of course, moving us involved more than loading furniture and boxes into a truck. We also had the Chaos ramps, tools, and equipment, 2 touring vans with trailers, a flatbed trailer, and my backyard ramps. We had accumulated quite a bit of stuff in 5 years of being married and 10 years of developing Chaos on Wheels.
I am convinced God sustained us through those months. So many details came together, including things I had very little control over. I am thankful for that and at the same time realize that surviving something does not mean everything we asked of ourselves was necessary.
By May, all 5 of us were living in Joplin. Chaos was still sending teams out to do shows, and I had a job at a ramp park where people could come back day after day. After years of packing up and leaving when an event was over, I was excited to find out what could happen when I got to stay and build lasting relationships.
Jeremiah Anderson
Rooted Action Park Founder
If you enjoyed this story, share it with someone else who might enjoy following along. I have a lot more stories from these years that I’d like to tell, so leave a comment and let me know if you want me to keep writing them.
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