The Road Was Changing Us
Updated: Oct 2
When we got home from a few weeks of shows in Texas, there was a letter in our mailbox telling me to stay off my foot. An orthopedic specialist had found a fracture on an X-ray taken before we left. By then I’d already driven to Texas, done the shows, and driven home.
It was a little late for that advice.
A few weeks earlier, I’d landed a trick wrong during a show in Michigan. Despite the pain in my foot, I finished the show, helped load the trailer, and drove home. When we got back to Iowa, I went to a doctor for an X-ray, but the fracture was missed and I was sent on my way. We needed to be in Texas a few days later, so we went. I didn’t ride during that trip, but I still had shows to do and a team to get where they needed to be.
At the time, the letter felt like one more strange thing that was part of this new life we were living. Looking back, it says a lot about how full our lives had become.
In 2004, our booking agent started filling the calendar with church and ministry events around the country. I was still booking a few county fairs and town celebrations in the Midwest, we didn’t really have a tour season anymore. We were doing shows all twelve months of the year. One week we might be in a church parking lot or a small town high school gymnasium, and the next we’d be riding in a huge stadium in front of thousands of people.
At first, I loved where things were going. The shows were allowing our family to pay the bills and we were giving other riders a chance to travel and get paid for riding their bikes. Jenn and our two boys traveled with me most of the time. Sometimes between bookings we got to explore places we might never have seen otherwise. We spent Thanksgiving at the Grand Canyon, visited beaches on both coasts, and drove through parts of the country I’d only seen in pictures.
It wasn’t exactly a family vacation, though. On the long drives, I was usually thinking about the schedule, the riders, and getting us to the next city. Jenn was in the back of the van with two boys who’d been in their car seats far too long, listening to the conversations taking place between the BMX riders who were traveling with us. We were having a good adventure together, but she was carrying a lot of the work that made it possible for us to keep traveling as a family.
Chaos kept growing. We began working with the Franklin Graham Association, which brought us into stadiums in front of thousands of people. The Freedom Experience crew was starting to feel like family. In December 2004, we did our first Livin’ It Live event. Those events were hosted by actor Stephen Baldwin and brought Chaos together with a skateboard team. They became a big part of our 2005 schedule, and that combination became part of all the Luis Palau Festivals too. In between those larger partner events, we were still doing shows for churches and organizations in small towns all over.
Meanwhile, I was riding less. After I hurt my foot, I spent more time on the microphone, including during those weeks in Texas. Even after it healed, I didn’t go back to riding as much as I had before. The younger guys were progressing and doing the bigger crowd pleasing tricks. The show no longer needed me on a bike.
When I was home, I had family to see, projects around the house to finish up, and a growing business to manage. I wasn’t getting those backyard sessions in, where I used to ride just for fun and learn new things. About the only time I rode was during the warm up before a show, and even then I stuck with tricks I knew I could land consistently. Before long, it was pretty common for me to ride only if somebody got hurt and we needed to fill time. I’d worked for years to make a living riding my bike, and now riding was starting to feel like work.
Early in 2005, we joined the Winter Jam tour. It was a Christian music tour that took us through more than twenty cities in about eight weeks, performing for thousands of people each night. It was a big opportunity for Chaos and led to more bookings. But our ramps and equipment wouldn’t fit on a tour bus, so while the other artists slept as drivers took them to the next city, we drove ourselves. We’d sleep for a couple of hours in a hotel room the bus drivers had been using during the day, then get back on the road and try to reach the next venue in time to set up.
At the first event, the tour manager noticed Jenn and the boys. He said something like, “Oh, you brought your family. They won’t last long.” I think Jenn took that as a challenge. She stayed for the entire tour, cared for our boys through those long days, and became the driving force behind our merchandise sales, media, and marketing. By the end, she’d earned the respect of a lot of the crew. I was proud of her, and I knew what it had taken for her to make it work.
That tour was hard, really hard. We got better at loading the trailer, setting up the ramps, and working together when we were tired and hungry. We found out what we were capable of. We also came away knowing we probably wouldn’t sign up for a tour like that again.
There were moments mixed into that season that hardly sound like they belong to the same life. We missed a couple of Winter Jam dates because our friend Stephen Baldwin arranged for us to be part of an event connected to the 55th Presidential Inauguration in Washington, DC. Secret Service agents transported us around in a limo, and we stayed at the Watergate Hotel. One of my boys later said, “The President came to our show.” I think it was the other way around, but whatever.
Then we’d be back to the regular work of getting everyone down the road. We had breakdowns, event hosts who didn’t pay when they were supposed to, and days when reaching the next city took everything we had. One day we could be signing autographs for hundreds of people. Another day I could be under the van, covered in grease, trying to figure out why it wouldn’t run.
By 2005, we had two teams traveling full time. I had to think about the riders, vehicle, and equipment with me, along with the team that might be on the other side of the country. If a host didn’t pay us, it affected when I could pay the riders. If a vehicle broke down, someone might miss a family gathering or be late getting back to another job. The guys were still my friends, but I increasingly felt like their employer. After spending so much time together on the road, we’d often get home and go our own ways. Sometimes we barely talked until it was time to leave again.
In less than two years, we put more than 100,000 miles on the van that I was driving and visited 47 states. I’m grateful we got to do it, and I believe good came from the shows. I also think about the many hours just driving down the road. A few of the riders who traveled with us are following Jesus today because of conversations we had on those long drives. We had time to get to know each other, even when being together that much was difficult.
During 2005, Jenn and I found out we were expecting another baby in the spring of 2006. We’d made travel work with two young boys, though much of the weight had fallen on her. After seeing what it took for her to get through a tour like Winter Jam, I couldn’t picture asking her to keep doing it with three. I still enjoyed doing shows and meeting people, but I’d begun looking for another way forward.
The time with our riders had shown me how much could happen in the hours nobody in the audience saw. We were also riding for thousands of people, sharing the Gospel, and then heading to the next town to do it all over again. I knew some good came from those events. But I was beginning to wonder what happened to the people in the crowd who had heard about Jesus after we left town.
Jeremiah Anderson
Rooted Action Park Founder
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