Bike-Surfer Breaks World Record!

Back in the 60’s and 70’s, the early pioneers of skateboarding looked to the approach of surfers to influence their styles and body mechanics as they carved around roads, empty parking lots, and wooden ramps. Especially in places like Venice Beach, where most surfers, when they weren’t in the water, were tearing up the street in similar fashion. The skateboard was the perfect invention for the surf-crazed groms of yesteryear—after spending hours in the ocean, they could extend their surf sessions well into the night, perfecting their high speed carves, vertical re-entries, and deep, speed-building pumps and gyrations.

As both board-riding disciplines evolved, a symbiotic relationship emerged, and by the late 80’s, surfers flipped the script and began to study the increasingly technical and airborne maneuvers their skating brethren were bringing to new extremes.  This led to a progressive era of aerial surfing, one that had deep roots here in Santa Cruz with the early innovations of test-pilots such as Kevin Reed in the late 70’s/early 80’s up to the cleverly nicknamed, boundary-pushing posse of fly-boys of the early 90’s, such as Jason “Ratboy” Collins, Darryl “Flea” Virotsko, and Shawn “Barney” Barron, just to name a few.

To this day, the act of carving a line with a skateboard as though you were surfing, or “surf-skating”, is still popular, and is even used by surfing coaches to help their clients become familiar with different techniques and to help them work on their style. Many hardcore surfers, myself included, see “surf-skating” as a goofy way for newbies to attempt to accelerate their surf skills, as opposed to actually putting in the hard work in the water. But who are we to judge?

In reality, people should be able to engage in any kind of exercise of self-expression that brings them joy, without fear of ridicule. Now that, upon sober-self reflection, seems like a truly badass super-power to me!

Two weeks ago, local adrenaline junkie Brock Johnson used his own unique surfing-inspired superpower to achieve a new Guinness Book of Work Records feat –that being the furthest distance traveled on a bike, standing with one foot on the seat and the other on the handlebars— also known as “bike-surfing”.

Johnson’s been surfing, skating, snowboarding, and riding his bike like a savage ever since he can remember, and he recently became inspired to combine his riding talents towards a dedicated pursuit of mastering bike-surfing. After years of practice, he’s perfected this treacherous act, which includes actually maneuvering his bike to mimic surf moves, and most impressively, regularly bike-surfing down a number of Santa Cruz’s steepest, and highly-trafficked hills. As you might guess, this approach has resulted in some horrible spills, but the adrenaline continues to lure him back, time and time again.

At 3:45 PM, on August 16th, surrounded by friends as well as reporters and a film crew from KSBW, the twenty-year-old smashed the world record of 80 meters, ultimately coasting over 200 meters on the Santa Cruz High School track. Usually accustomed to doing the same thing flying down treacherous hills and carving cutbacks down the road, the feat, although impressive, was essentially a walk-in-the-park for the positive and well-spoken young man.

Currently, Johnson has all the paperwork filed and documentation needed for the folks at The Guinness Book of World Records to make it official, but it hasn’t necessarily happened overnight. Still, Johnson was more than eager to chat with me about his quirky obsession; the highs, the lows, his thoughts on the importance of sharing the roads, and his plans to expand his record and motivate out-of-the-box thinkers to pursue their passion.

What are your initial reactions or emotions regarding your world record?

I was super stoked to achieve this record. It was a great thing for the community—just showing people that if they think of something, and put their mind to it, they can achieve it within days.

It seems we all grew up riding bikes as kids, but did you have any experience doing any professional or competitive bike riding growing up?

As a kid, biking was just kind of like an outlet for me. I would just go out and it was a way for me to stay out of trouble. Just something to focus on. So no, I didn’t have any competitive background, but when this record thing came up, it was truly an eye-opening thing because bike-surfing isn’t even really a sport

Was bike surfing something that you just started doing? Because I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do it the way you do.

I saw some kids come over from Stockton doin’ it. They were part of the “Port City Wheelie Crew”. I saw one of those guys do it in kind of a straight line and thought, “what if I got up there and brought my surf-skate style and actually started to maneuver the bike, doing off the top’s, snaps, and cutbacks like I was on a wave?”

It looks pretty sick, you’ve definitely got some good style! So you know, learning how to do this, it seems to me, that just by the nature of being so high in the air, on an unsteady surface, above the unforgiving asphalt that the dismount can be pretty sketchy. Have you had some pretty gnarly spills or are you pretty solid on your feet in that regard?

It took a while to secure the kind of confidence needed to challenge gnarly hills like Miramar (a steep street on Santa Cruz’ Westside), so with that came a ton of sketchy falls, where you fall straight from the top of the handlebars, and yeah, the ground’s not very forgiving. I have one specific instance when I was bombing Water Street. I got going about 40 miles per hour. I came straight down from the top of the bars onto the asphalt—my bike flew 15 feet one way,  and I flew 15 feet the other way.

Luckily, what I think saved me, is that I was wearing a beanie and had a pair of snowboard goggles on the back of my head that absorbed the impact when my head hit the road. Those also flew off 15 feet the other way. So, after that, I was really encouraged to start wearing safety equipment and a helmet, even when I’m just riding my bike normally. I encourage others to do the same, even if they’ve got both hands on the handlebars.

The older you get, the longer the injuries linger and then so yeah, wearing a helmet starts making a lot more sense. So you’ve taken this from navigating flat ground to where you’re bombing hills too?

Yeah, I’m bombing hills, I’m bombing some of the steepest hills in Santa Cruz. I’ve done Miramar countless times, at least 10 times. I do it on my daily rides. I go and bomb big hills— the same big hills I used to bomb on my skateboard, but now I’m bike-surfing.

When you’re in the street, cars become a part of the threat. How do you deal with that? Do you ever have like drivers like saying like, “what the fuck are you doing?!”, or trying to get pissed you know, how people do when they drive?

Yeah, so, you have people who react in a certain kind of way when they see a lot of bikers doing some crazy, dangerous trick, and that actually makes it more dangerous for the rider. Most of the time, I’ll be in the bike lane, exactly where I’m supposed to be, and drivers will almost try to challenge me— like push me off of the road and such. But as bikers, we really want to, and for me, as the leader of a bike crew, I really want the youth to be really respectful of the drivers and be really courteous in the bike lanes and the crosswalks.

We all, at the end of the day, want to share the road. If we can all get along, things will be so much safer, with the bikers respecting the cars and the cars respecting the bikers.

Yeah, it’s kinda similar to the ocean, you know, you can’t beat the ocean and you’re not gonna win a war with a car if you’re on a bike. That’s clearly a losing game.

I like that, I really like that. That’s so cool. I like the way you worded that. Just like in the waves, you can’t fight it. You just have to be one with the ocean. Doing what we do, you have to be one with the road.

You rip at surfing, Brock. I’ve definitely seen some sick clips of you ripping on the waves. Would you say that much like “surf-skating”, skateboarding can be a way for you to work on your surfing. Do you also feel any way that your bike-surfing? Can it bring you more awareness or more skill when you’re on the actual waves on your surfboard?

Yeah, the cross-training actually goes both ways, but obviously, when I’m on the bike, the surfing background easily ties into the bike-surfing. It’s crazy, I’ll go back into the water after bike-surfing and I’ll kinda feel some new aspect of balance that I never had before. I’ll be doing some weird, crazy stuff that I never try, things under the lip and on other different aspects of the wave because the foot-pressure you use while bike-surfing is a whole different ball game than surfing, where you’re just kind of stomping your foot on the board. A lot of different surfers don’t think about that, they just go down the line. But I’m trying to bring in this gravity thing I’ve been working on in my bike-surfing to my regular surfing, and I’m seeing myself doing things that I’ve never done on my surfboard, even when I was sponsored as a kid.

You got a bunch of your buddies together to help document when you did the world record. In the future, you just plan to keep it  going? Maybe to document it again, like every year so or try to go for further length? Was that like the farthest you’ve ever gone, do you think, when you broke the record? 

So this record had to be done on a physical athletic track no more than 0.01 gradient. A running track is a spongy material that really slows you down. The actual official record was 220, I just wrote it down as 200, because I didn’t wanna have to deal with measuring the extra 20 feet or so. But I know I’ve gone, and my buddies have seen it, where I’ve done uninterrupted bike-surfs for over 20 minutes, going down the roads for miles. That might include some deeper hills, but I can pump and just propel myself down the road. I know that I can shatter this record— maybe even double or triple it. If I were to bring it to Laguna Seca and make the record there it would be all-time!

That would be sick. I’m sure you could get a big crowd involved! I would definitely come watch! Do you have anything else you wanna add about your new world record?

Going forward, I really want to tie in the community part, and bring more acceptance to diverse sports and people trying new things. I’ve had some of the best surfers in Santa Cruz tell me that bike-surfing is the lamest thing they’ve ever seen, without even knowing what actually goes into it.

That’s some close-minded thinking if I’ve ever heard it. Keep doing what you’re doing! I think it takes a lot of balls to step  away from the norm of what’s cool, especially here in Santa Cruz! Keep crushing it Brock!

Thanks Neal, that was a rad chat. I can’t wait to see what comes forward from it! Exciting times for sure!!