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Jumpin� at Broad Street Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Ted Jensen of Medford does a "360," a full-spin maneuver over one of the passes at what he and other young dirt bikers call the Broad Street Jumps. Built without adult help near Jackson School in west Medford, a vacant field has been transformed into an underground dirt jumping center. Discarded dirt pile becomes outlet for west side bmx riders By Bill Varble Ted Jensen accelerates his BMX bike up the street, veers into the field, hits the first jump and flies into the air. He touches down on the far side of the next dirt mound and zips through a low spot before flying up and off the next ramp. On he pushes, tires whirring, through five surprisingly high jumps, one after the other, no pedaling, all momentum. Boys straddling short, knobby-tired bikes watch Jensen and await their turns this cold day. Flocks of starlings jabber in bare branches against a gray sky. There�s graffiti on a shop building and litter dotting the field. A rusting derelict of a car stands watch on the field. "See all this land," Adam Bilyeu says with the sweep of an arm. "Some day, it�ll all be jumps." Welcome to the Broad Street Jumps. Here near Jackson School in west Medford, boys have transformed a vacant field into an underground dirt jumping center with little help or sanction from the adult world. A man brought in a load of dirt and dumped it, they say. That was about it. Now in its second month, the pirate course continues to expand, a magnet for boys. Adam Bilyeu, 13, and JD Tumey, 14, are shoveling out a "banzai" � the low spot after one jump and before the next. "It�s so you can get going faster to hit the next jump," Adam says. The boys� main course is a "10-pack" of 10 dirt hillocks forming five jumps. The boys started building slowly. "People just started telling people," Adam says. A nearby shop owner brought in a load of dirt a few weeks ago. "He said, �You can do what you want,�" says Jensen, 18. "He asked us to keep our eyes open. He�s cool." The boys say 20 or 30 guys from age 11 to 18 have pitched in. Jensen even brings his mother�s roto-tiller. "It�s the neighborhood�s," JD says. "The only rule is, �don�t wreck �em.� " Riders practice stunts like the 360, which is just what the name implies, and the ET, which is to pedal while flying through the air. But the main attraction is the snake-like 10-pack. "Lip, landing, banzai," Kenny Boardman says. "Lip, landing, banzai." Boardman, 13, of Phoenix, shows off a monster jump called The Bug. The lip of The Bug rises five feet in the air. It�s more than 15 feet from the lip to the next ramp. The jump gets its name from the main construction element in the first mound: a derelict Volkswagen Beetle. The boys built the jump out of the car body, discarded tires, old wooden pallets, pieces of lawn furniture, trash, dirt. "It took four days to build," Kenny says proudly. The boys built their first dirt jumps in Central Point. "The cops and the city bulldozed �em," Kenny says. Next they built jumps near J.J. North�s in Medford. "They tore �em down." Then word went round about the field at Broad Street. "We just started building," Kenny says. All riders are welcome, but they should plan to help build. "We�re gonna bring trash bags," Kenny says, eyeing the litter. BMX riders compete at different types of events: motocross racing, flat land, freestyle and dirt jumping. There�s a BMX course in Bear Creek Park in East Medford, but it�s for racing, not jumping. "It�s more for staying on the ground and going fast," Ted Jensen says. "It�s boring," Jeremiah Thomasson says. Mark Graham, the operator of Nu Force BMX, a Medford bike shop, knows some of the Broad Street riders. "A lot of them come in here," says Graham, 39. "They�re good kids." Graham oversees the volunteer-built BMX track at Bear Creek. He says plans are nearly complete to put dirt jumps in at the park. He�s worked on models with the boys. "It�s their design," he says. Those jumps will have the city�s imprimatur. Until then, there�s Broad Street. Graham says the jumps are the essence of BMX culture. "Go out and build your own," he says. "It�s a whole underground lifestyle thing." Until then, as Kenny Boardman says, "It�s not the best place. It�s the only place." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.