XDL Playin' In The Rain at IMS Long Beach

XDL Playin’ In The Rain at IMS Long Beach

In December of 2013 I traveled up to Los Angeles from San Diego to visit a friend and attend the International Motorcycle Show in Long Beach.

Equipped with my fancy press pass (still blows me away every time I get one of those things, I feel so special), camera, and sensible shoes, I set out to introduce myself to folks of the industry and capture photographs of the event. Well, I found the XDL arena outside and said hi to Tice, XDL’s emcee, and then it finally stopped raining. Yes, it does (sometimes, rarely) rain in California. While the ground was wet, it wasn’t a lake, so they decided it was good a time as any to start up the show.

While I find stunt riding amazingly impressive, watching them control the chaos of high performance sport bikes in a slick layer of water is even more flabberghasting. You may or may not be into stunt riding yourself, you may even look at someone doing a wheelie and scoff “Squid” under your breath, but let’s face it… you’re really just jealous. Now, there’s a difference between the professional riders of XDL (and other pro stunters) and hooligans doing wheelies on the freeway at 90 miles an hour (no, they’re not mutually exclusive). But if you don’t recognize the absolute talent these riders have in bike control, you’re crazy.

Riders Aaron Twite (red bike), and Tony Carbajal (green) get frisky in a dual-run, sliding sideways to kiss their bikes before screeching away.

The whole crowd heard the knock of their bikes making contact, everyone’s faces lit up. Meanwhile, I was ecstatic when I got it on camera. Yet, I didn’t manage to get to the photos from IMS until now. Sorry ’bout that, folks. You can add this to the list of “better late than never” posts I’m releasing as I try to knock out the photographic back log.