A Safe and Reliable Future…
Updated: Sep 6
In less than a year, I got married, bought a house, moved to a new town, started a new job, and became a dad. I was trying to settle into a more predictable life. Apparently, my version of settling down still included a 24’ wide by 6’ tall halfpipe in the backyard.
Jenn and I bought a house in Manly, Iowa, in October of 2000, and we were married on November 4. I transferred from the Blue Earth Walmart to the store in Mason City, where my friend Frank also worked as a bike assembler. The only position available at my pay level was Loss Prevention, so I went from building bikes, unloading trucks, and stocking shelves to walking around the store looking for people stealing things. It was an interesting shift.
After years of trying to turn BMX into something more, getting married and buying a house changed my perspective. Twice, banks had rejected my plans for an indoor park, and I had already put Chaos on Wheels on hold more than once. A regular job, a dependable paycheck, and a house of our own began to look like a future I could accept. It was certainly easier to explain when I met someone new.
Still, I wasn’t ready to let go of BMX completely. In the spring of 2001, I moved the ramps from Elmore to Manly. While Frank and I reassembled the old ramps into a new backyard setup, we also entertained plenty of questions from my new neighbors. They weren’t sure what to think of my construction project. The dream of opening an indoor park had stalled, but at least I still had a halfpipe in my backyard and a friend living nearby who had backyard ramps of his own and was always ready to ride.
Frank helping move the backyard ramps behind the Center in Elmore, MN
Around that same time, Greg asked if I would return to help with the action sports ministry in Albert Lea. The portable halfpipe we had been using was taking up valuable space inside the Rock, a youth center in downtown Albert Lea. Greg offered the hayloft of his barn as its new home, so we moved the ramp into the loft and began transporting young people from the Rock out to what we called the Barn every Monday evening.
Most of the guys who came to the Barn were skateboarders. I was usually the lone BMX rider, which made the connection that grew between us a little unusual. In the broader action sports culture, BMX riders and skateboarders were often at odds with each other. At the Barn, the differences between us began to matter less than the fact that we had a place to ride and people who kept coming back each week.
Those Monday nights became an escape for me. Most of my days were spent chasing shoplifters, writing police reports, and ruining someone’s day by calling the police, their parents, or both. At the Barn, I got to invest in young people, give them somewhere to belong, and let them know that someone cared whether they showed up. It didn’t pay anything, but it gave me something that my job at Walmart couldn’t.
The guys called me the “secret shopper,” and they always wanted to hear about my latest adventure at work. I listened to their stories too, and I tried to share a short devotional whenever we met. The Bible studies weren’t all that organized. We were simply spending Monday nights together, riding and skating the halfpipe, talking about life, and making room for conversations about Jesus.
Skating the Barn outside Albert Lea, MN Jeremiah at the Barn Skating the Barn ramp Frank at the Barn
During one of our first gatherings, one of the guys walked up to me and said, “I know you’re doing this so you can talk to us about Jesus, but I’m an atheist. I’m not interested in any of the Jesus stuff. I’m just here to skate.”
I appreciated his honesty. I told him I believed following Jesus was the best decision anyone could make, but I was more interested in him as a person than in forcing him to agree with me. He didn’t have to believe what I believed to be welcome on the ramps. His demeanor completely changed. I don’t think he expected someone to accept him as he was with no strings attached.
He kept coming back. He sat through the Bible studies, listened to what I shared, and eventually started asking his own questions. About a year after telling me he wanted nothing to do with Jesus, he was asking about the Bible and wanted to know how to pray. He wasn’t the only one whose life began to change during those Monday nights.
I never held a formal “altar call” with that group or asked them to bow their heads and repeat a specific prayer. I showed them acceptance, explained the Gospel of Jesus, and taught them how to read Scripture and pray. Then I gave them room to decide what they believed. More than anything, I consistently showed up.
Our time together wasn’t limited to Monday nights at the Barn. I took them on road trips to the Mankato skatepark, invited them to ride and skate the ramps in my backyard and Frank’s backyard, and made trips with them to the Mason City skatepark. I was riding BMX while most of them were on skateboards, but the ramps gave us a reason to spend time together. That time created opportunities for conversations that probably wouldn’t have happened anywhere else, and slowly, I began seeing changes in their lives.
The strange part was that while I was watching a halfpipe in a barn open doors in their lives, I was slowly closing the door on the possibility that BMX could become my future. I had planned to put Chaos on Wheels on hold after getting married because my new position at Walmart was demanding and much less flexible than my previous arrangement in Blue Earth. For a while, I turned down booking requests and tried to be content with riding in the backyard and spending Monday nights with a group of skateboarders at the Barn.
By the end of the summer of 2001, I was tired of saying no. I booked two local shows, one for a Youth for Christ Back to School event at the Mason City High School, where Thousand Foot Krutch was also performing, and another in Osage a few days later. Frank agreed to join me, I built a couple of portable ramps, and Chaos on Wheels was suddenly back in business, even if I wasn’t ready to admit that it might be for more than just a couple of shows.
Before the Mason City show, Frank asked if a local BMX rider named AJ could join us. AJ was a student at the high school and wanted the chance to ride in front of his friends. At the time, it seemed like a simple request to add one local rider for one show, so I said yes. I had no way of knowing that AJ would continue riding with us and eventually become a regular part of Chaos on Wheels in the years that followed. A team I was trying to put on hold had just added another rider.
Thousand Foot Krutch at the Mason City event Jeremiah & Frank Mason City, IA AJ at the Mason City event Jeremiah doing a little flatland in Osage, IA Frank blasting an air in Osage, IA Jeremiah with a 360 in Osage, IA
After those two shows, I stopped booking events again because another major change was coming. Jenn and I were expecting our first child. We were already adjusting to marriage, a new house, a different city, and new jobs. Now we were going to be parents, which made the security of a steady paycheck even harder to ignore.
Ethan was born on October 19, about two weeks before our first wedding anniversary. If you’re wondering, I wouldn’t recommend getting married, buying a house, moving to another city, starting a new job, and having a baby in less than twelve months. We did it and survived, but it wasn’t ideal. By then, I had pretty much abandoned the idea that BMX could become something more than a hobby.
I still had the ramps in the backyard and took occasional road trips with some of the guys to indoor skateparks, but I wasn’t trying to build a career around BMX anymore. I experimented with reopening a bike and skate shop in a shed behind our house, which gave me a way to provide skateboards, BMX parts, and gear to the guys in Albert Lea and other local riders. Jenn had studied web design, so we also tried launching an online store. It seemed like a way to keep one foot in the action sports world without giving up the security of my job.
Backyard BIke & Skate Shop Backyard BIke & Skate Shop
Then we received a series of fraudulent payments for large orders of parts and gear, and I had to abandon that idea too. The banks had rejected two attempts at opening an indoor park, I had repeatedly put Chaos on Wheels on hold, and twice I had failed at running a bike and skate shop. I didn’t have a college education. What I did have was a wife, a mortgage, a new baby, and a dependable paycheck.
Everything pointed toward Walmart being my safe and reliable future. BMX still had a place in my backyard, and action sports still gave me a connection with a group of skateboarders in the hayloft of a barn. But I had stopped believing BMX could become the work I built my life around. As far as I could tell, that part of the dream was over.
Looking back, I can see something I didn’t fully understand then. The Barn didn’t pay my bills, and it didn’t look much like a career. It was a halfpipe in a hayloft where one BMX rider and a group of skateboarders discovered they had more in common than the broader culture suggested. More importantly, it became a place where those young men knew I would be there on Monday night.
One of them walked into the Barn determined to keep Jesus at a distance. He found a place where he was welcomed anyway, and that gave him enough room to begin asking his own questions. Nothing about it looked impressive at the time. It mostly looked like listening to their stories, giving them room to be honest, and showing up again the next Monday.
I still believed Walmart was where my future was headed. Within a few months, that would change.
Jeremiah Anderson
Rooted Action Park Founder
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