thrillerburrito

Made it into the Fox BMX news! 

  

I got to spend a morning shooting some lifestyle and action pics with Joe Rich here in Austin rocking the new line of Fox girls active line. I love all of their new stuff, super comfortable, breathable (especially her in the 100+ Texas heat!) and functional for just about everything I get into on the regular. tHeres a discount code right now good through 9/23 FOXTWENTY for 20% off (excludes MX and MTB products)

Click here to see more:
http://www.foxhead.com/us/bmx/news/id/31436 

 
  
   
  

And the “Do It Yourself” theme continues..

I’ll try make this the nutshell version because several lessons were learned here, maybe they will help you if ever you are in the market for a used car.

So, in an attempt to be able to save some money, I traded my perfectly good working newer car, a 2013 Subaru Impreza, for something a little more practical, a used car with a lower payment, a 2007 Subaru Forester 5spd.  I shared my fears of buying a used car with the salesman, I just wanted something reliable with a lower payment wasn’t too concerned with looks, but i stressed RELIABLE and SAFE. He assured me there was a new clutch, newer tires, and would provide me with all of the paperwork history of work done on the car and even a receipt for the new clutch. Sounded promising, I brought it home and I noticed at night the head lights were VERY dim, like you could barely see the road in front of the car. So I took it to Advanced Auto Parts thinking I could clean them myself or get new bulbs, find a cheap quick fix but the guy at the shop came out and took a look and noticed there was about an inch of water inside each one! And that this car would most likely not pass inspection with lights like this. So I called the dealer and the service dept quoted me $1500 to install new units since they would have had to take the bumper off and each head lamp around $500. ?!!!!! I called the sales guy and had him talk to service manager and they thankfully agreed to replace them free of charge. 

After that incident I noticed the clutch had a bit of Chadder and rumbling out of first gear and on hills, I thought, “oh man is it me? Can I be this bad at driving stick?..” It is very frustrating to second guess yourself every time you get in the car, so I had some friends drive it who agreed something was up. After trying to “web MD” my car, searching forums for any known issues with this model car, or clutch problems, I finally took it back to dealer again and had one of their technicians drive it around for a day or so. He advised that it could be the flywheel, and would most likely need to be replaced, thing is that most places won’t replace only a fly wheel, a whole new clutch install is recommended whenever one part is failing.  So then I was quoted around $1600 for a new clutch install. Wait a minute didn’t the sales guy tell me it was a new clutch? 💡 I ran home and looked at the receipt the sales guy gave me and to my surprise it was from 2011!!!  So in fact my clutch wasn’t new at all!! 💪🏻 thankfully after a few weeks they replaced the clutch! 

One roadtrip and not even 3000 miles later, the brakes Completely locked up at a red light, it was over 100 degrees out, and I was the cause of early rush hour gridlock downtown.  Thankfully I have AAA so I got a  tow to the dealership.  After a few days they got back to me and told me I need new brakes, and the “hill-holder” was malfunctioning causing my brakes to stick.  The printed quote to have all of this sorted was well over $1800. 

 What I was most disappointed with was the fact that the INITIAL vehicle inspection before I drove the car off the lot everything was checked off “Green: Checked & Ok” when ACTUALLY it wasn’t. 

 
I got the runaround, was told to call one person who was out of town but that I could  try this other person, and then in the end I was told there was nothing they could or would do for me in this situation not even work with me on the price considering they lied about me not needing brakes.  Complete BS, how they responded to the situation wasn’t understanding or assuring at all they made it out as if I was some demanding freeloader trying to squeeze $ out of them, when I really just want a reliable car unlike the one I was led to believe I purchased.  I’ll be posting the link shortly to my yelp and BBB report.  

Lessons learned, when you’re buying a used car, seems like a no-brainer but don’t go by good faith, bring a mechanic, have them go over the ENTIRE car so this doesn’t happen to you.  Sure they did replace and fix a few things but they had the car for almost one month and half total out of the last six for repairs each time I would have to make a case and go to a manager.  “Cutting me off” telling me I’m “out of favors” for any help with this last situation was really shitty seeing as I have sent quite a lot of business there way and have written letters to Subaru of America in the past praising their service department. 
Hopefully this post will be a nice reminder to all in the market to purchase a used car to take the extra time to be cautious, thorough and patient enough with their purchase decision so you hopefully won’t have to go through what I did. Yet again, thank you to my friends, family, YouTube and bicycles for getting me by in the meantime. 🙌🏻

Summer is here!

  
It’s about 👆🏻hot in Austin right now ha!

My mom and “Mookie” sent me a birthday gift card for Eddie V’s Seafood a really nice restaurant downtown Austin, one of my mom’s personal favorites, so Ryan and I went and had a wonderful meal.  

TT

Thanks again Mom and Mook it was amazing!

It was a nice send off before I got on the road with two other girls a Filmer and photographer for a Redbull Europe video project for DIGBMX online.  Tomorrow will mark about one week on the road to a bunch of skateparks and dirt jumps in Colorado.  I haven’t posted a lot of photos on social media because I don’t  want to give away too much of the trip so I’ll post some scenic/touristy stuff here in the meantime until the video drops.

 

 
  (L-R: me, Perris Benegas, Danielle Windhausen)
   
This tweaker kid came up to Rob our photographer friend and begged him to shoot a photo of him doing a “hand plant on his scooter out of the bowl” and promised he would do it first try! We figured to would be a great photo opportunity if anything humorous because we had no idea what he really meant at all, “was he on a razor scooter?” Or “did he really mean hand plant an actual scooter?!”  Mind you there were plenty of characters present during the entire day we spent there, and one of the kids assured us that this tweaker guy “smokes all of the crack, and will do it [the handplant] first try” out of the 11ft deep pool. Here is the video clip…

Ha! Not bad!! And first try, he kept to his word (Do not try this at home kids and please, do not go near crack of any kind, thanks!👌🏼) can’t wait to see the photo someday. 

 

  
  

We rolled over to Valmont Bike Park a few minutes away which was surprisingly dry and rideable for a bit before more storms rolled in

 Fireworks finale from Mile High stadium view from downtown Denver, off I-25 at 20th street and Osage roundabout which was wild because we ended up in my friend Stacey’s neighborhood! We met up with our friends Andy Sweet, Jess and Mike Meister and got some grub to finish off the 4th. 

Any riding trip to a new city should always include a pit stop at the local BMX shop if there is one so we stopped by Pusher BMX in Denver before heading to the mountains. We visited some amazing parks: Frisco dirt jumps, new park in Breckenridge, Leadville, Woodward Copper and Silverthorn attempting to avoid several rain storms in between sessions. Rain or shine Colorado is beautiful! 

 

  
       
   Huge thanks to Jess and Mike and their animal children  Sprocket London and Velcro for letting us crash at their place. As well as John Able and Uncle Jimmy and their dog Barley for letting us crash too.

 

 
  
Colorado sure is beautiful, I can’t wait to have some adventures here with Ryan and Marv!

Hope y’all had a Happy 4th! (Happy anniversary to Nana and Georgie too!) xoxo 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 

 
    
 

June-oh! 

It wouldn’t be a normal couple of weeks without attempting to take something apart to fix or improve.

Last week was the car stereo install, this week was an oil change on the Harley! I am currently riding a ’97 Harley Sportster 1200XL, it has about 7,800K miles on it. My friends Matt Wally and Edgar came over and taught me how to do the oil change. I don’t have an actual garage, but a driveway with a plastic oil pan, a head lamp and a Bluetooth speaker with some tunes and a 6-pack for their troubles seemed to do the trick. The oil filter was strangely stuck on there but the ole “stab it with a screw driver and use that for more torque to loosen it” maneuver played out well upon a second go with a much larger screw driver ha!  

   
Sorry dad I know you’re probably like “?!?!!!” But no need to worry, we got the old filter off and the new one on with ease.  Filled her back up and she purrs!

  
iPhone clip in the parking lot before the ride home from work I shot to send my dad assuring him it’s running and sounding nice.  

Disregard the “883 sportster” on the gas tank, it’s actually a loaner gas tank and a fender I picked up from Bud’s motorcycles in time for a little video project with my friend Danielle Windhausen aka “Dani Lightningbolt” a few months back.  We showed up for a Harley Davidson casting call our friend a photographer and film assistant, Autumn Spadaro-Cali tipped us off about.  We ended up getting called back for it and getting to test ride some of the new line of Harley’s while modeling some new Harley gear.  Pretty cool experience,  we were NOT allowed to sneak any photos or anything (seriously, they even taped over our iPhone cameras front and back just to be ensure privacy that none of their new product designs leak out!)

The casting call instructions read that you ride your own Moto to the audition but my tank and fender were no longer in Austin;  I had shipped to ohio a few months ago for a friend to have fun painting, “Kona Joe,” whom I worked with at Rays MTB Park in Cleveland. You can see some of his work painting hot rods, helmets and even the Lowbrow Customs van if you follow @angeldustcyclepaint on Instagram. 

So in a midnight panic my friends helped me out and like Voltron a loaner gas tank, the fender from buds and custom sissy bar/BMX bike rack were installed. (Mind you it was seemingly straight out of a movie, a storm scene on a pirate ship; in the rain, in my driveway half under a tarp tied to the driveway fence, the roof rails of my car and the gutter of our house, rain and wind in full effect blowing the tarp and supplies just about everywhere). 

 
  I’m lucky to have some amazing, talented friends who helped me get her runnin!

  
The Filmer photographer from the Harley shoot was stoked on dani and I and decided to make a short film about us, Benedict Campbell has made some pretty amazing films before if you click his name you can see some of his work.

Here is a short teaser him and Autumn put together: Burrito and the Lightningbolt
  
Stay tuned for more news on the full length will drop but for now here are some rad photos he shot..(copyrighted do not steal!)

   
  

 These next few were shot by Autumn:
 

   

I’ve been hoping this update will make it to everyone before  I go too far over my data from the road….I just snagged some wifi, take care for now! 

And the burrito earns another year on earth!

Yikes! It has been awhile since my last post but I feel like I have had so many great things  going on in my life lately that I have barely had time to post more than a few tidbits here and there on Instagram or Facebook.  I just remembered that I have this place to document it all and am making the time to start it up again.  Welcome back!

I am not sure really where to start so I’ll start with some photos and just caption it up from here.

I met an amazing man, Ryan, who moved here from Baltimore with his band, the Hard Dads, with his best friend, Marv. There isn’t enough time in one day to enjoy everything here in Austin but they are usually jam packed with lots of fun, bikes, music, entertaining friends great food and other fun beyond our imagination..

(Example: when Aaron Ross invites you to go swimming, and this happens

 

 

👆🏻 Ryan’s band..click the band name to peep their band site and hear the  “hard dads” and/or follow @harddads on Instagram

In other exciting news!! This year the ESPN allowed me to invite five other girls to ride the park course in an effort to eventually earn our own girls BMX category of competition at the Xgames here in Austin. I have been advocating for a girls class for quite some time now and have been at Xgames in Los Angeles almost every year since 2004 with petitions and teaching clinics introducing BMX to young girls in the crowd. The Austin Chronicle did a nice write up on females at Xgames, and asked me a few questions about the event and where we stand so far.  I believe the link to the online version is here: http://www.austinchronicle.com/sports/2015-06-05/riding-while-female/

The print version was out last week available everywhere in Austin:It was hard to choose only 5 girls with so many other talented female riders around the world. The girls who attended absolutely killed it and we had SO much fun, hopefully we are a few steps closer to riding for the crowd next year!! Thanks to all of the media friends who came to support and help cover our time on the course Devon Hutchins, Autumn Spadaro, Kim Woozy from Mahfia TV… Some shots stolen from social media:

    Here’s a little edit of the girls from Mahfia TV

 

I’m sure there will be more coverage surfacing soon, but in the meantime, summer is here and we are bracing ourselves for even more Texas heat!  Speaking of which here is my Segue way to yell, Sunblock!!!!! (Reminder, please wear it 😘) lets just say although we made it out in one piece we all came out a little bit on the crispy side.

Then on barely any sleep straight off the plane I was supposed to go to work and then holy crap, what day is it again? Flag day? June 14th? Another birthday of mine had arrived! As soon as the plane landed I was already going to be late for work, at which point Ryan had invited me to go on a party boat with some rad local bands playing. So I made the call into work and did the irresponsible awesome decision to go on the party boat with Ryan and my roommate Brittany! From one wild night in Denver to a party boat on Lake Travis:

 

Three bands played: Major major major, the Hikes, and Chipper Jones ended up getting only one song in before the captain had to call it due to lightning and rain.

 

And as if that wasn’t an awesome impromptu birthday celebration, I ended up going to see the Sonics play at red 7 later that night!! Click to hear–> The SONICS ! Band from the 60’s Tacoma, WA still killing it!
And then I installed my first aftermarket car stereo thanks to some help YouTube

And then I spent the next day riding bikes with friends, swimming at the Greenbelt before work..
And then my friend Joe Bob made Us his famous pot pie!

Hmm that’s kind of a lot for just a few days one breath update so.. Stay tuned!

Austin’s craziest final months of 2013 ha

So yet again I have been too buried to post an update in awhile handling a ton of events, hosting out of towners all while working full time and managing to juggle baby showers holiday feasts and insurance claims ha!

Texas toast jam was a great time, the ramps were a LOT of fun! A ladies session went down 8am Saturday morning of, and we got to shred! Flavia Santos came in from Brazil and so did Heather Scully from PA, Jessica Ausec from CO, Natalie Noble from WA, Angie Marino came down as well but got her bike stolen the morning of our session thankfully a day or two later after plastering the internet with photos to keep a lookout some out of town NW homies spotted it locked up and managed to get it back for her!
Here are some photos by Fat Tony of me and Dani:

A few days later my badass little cousin Megan came to stay with us for a nice little 5 day vacation! Hailing from Orlando, FL we pedaled all over Austin, saw some sights, ate some delicious food and almost carved pumpkins haha (I ate a piece of butter pie or two and passed out in a food coma real fast, oops!! thanks Emily! Ha)

After Megan came to visit there was the annual Halloween Jam at the 9th street dirt jumps, downtown Austin. Afro pat tagged up my motorcycle helmet with some stickers and his lady sewed up a cape for my costume as “Nina Knievel,” it’s almost January now and those stickers are still on my helmet ha! Here are some fun Halloween jam photos:

Jake Tappan always has amazing bike costumes as well ha seeing a man ride a unicorn over the jumps will forever make me giggle.

The dudes Scotty Mezcal and big Rob out together a nice little prize package for the gals who rode, including some bottles of wine and empire BMX goodies.

After Halloween barely one week later was Fun Fun Fun Fest! Matt Hoffman had his vert ramp
set up and Project Loop provided a really fun mini ramp, box jump to ride near one of the three stages with some of my favorite bands playing while we rode. Dead milkmen, Descendents, some reunion sets by black flag, Cro-mags, man I can barely remember everyone we saw but even Ice-T performed with his metal band called “Body Count” and then he did a set as Ice-T himself, the rapper ha! Icing on the cake was that we got to enjoy this weekend with my girl Stacey Mulligan and Eric! They drove down from Colorado to ride bikes, eat some good food and even get their twerk on during big Freedia’s set at FFF. I miss you already stace dog!

My mom mailed me some leaves because I told her that I miss seeing the leaves change in NY. ❤ the note read, "I wasn't sure how else to get the autumn to you!" Thanks mom, you made my day!

The following weekend was the US Grand Prix formula-1 car race here in Austin. Thanks to Brent at project loop for the tickets at turn 9 day 1 and to some of my Shakespeare’s customers from Boston for hooking me up with their extra ticket for the big race finals! This was a lot of fun, my ears were ringing for days these cars were so loud!

Pauly C, Stoney and I rode out there on our motorcycles worked out better with parking and traffic.

Then just before Thanksgiving, I had a bit of a car accident 😱. A man failed to slow down and rammed into the back of another car, pushing it into oncoming traffic (my direction) and into the rear side of my car pushing us across two lanes. The man who caused the wreck took off running while leaving behind an injured 7-month along pregnant girl and a 3 yr old in the smashed up car. Horrendous! Thankfully this real “piece of work” returned to the scene several times to retrieve items from the car and argue with fire and ems workers that they should stop what they are doing and pursue the “driver that ran off wearing a purple shirt!” Lucky for us, he was too much of a hot mess to realize we acknowledged that HE was wearing a purple shirt underneath his “disguising” jacket. Police arrived over an hour later but he was gone again. Thankfully the officer on the scene called us to give us some peace of mind a few hours later; on a separate disturbance call, when the officer arrived boom! There was purple shirt dude in the mix!
So now it’s a been over one month, several chiropractor visits and still no car. It’s in the shop still but thankfully in good hands! (Thanks Rene at oak hill auto!).
Poor Subaru

In the meantime, something positive that came from this I was kind of forced to get the Suzuki 650 s40 boulevard on the road to get around besides bicycles. Finally got this thing inspected with plates and I got my official motorcycle license. Thanks to Tom Passero for helping me get it all legit and safe: Swapping the tires and bars and making me a replacement tail light/license plate bracket! And thanks to Stoney for the spark plug change I most def would have dropped the tank on the floor that was so tricky to get off haha! So excited she’s Rollin good! Oh and Thanks to YouTube I was able to successfully change the oil on my own, how rewarding!
How you transport loads of stuff when you don’t have a car, thanks “john prolly” for this photo of my adventure to Toms shop with new parts and tires

Tom welding new tail light light/license plate bracket.. Thanks homie!

We tried putting the new seat on, but my frame actually scoops more for a pan style seat then straight across like on a Harley.. Oops! No go on the seat! But the rest of the bike is looking and feeling so much more comfortable!

I thought I posted this update while I was in the airport on my way home to NY for the holidays.. Oh boy ha! If you made it this far reading this, thank you. Thank you all for a wonderful 2013! Looking forward to 2014!