Ambitions as a Rider: How Chad Kerley Is Changing BMX
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If it were up to him, Chad Kerley wouldn’t wend another step in his life. His feet are used to going in a dizzying ring-shaped pattern, lifted a few inches from the concrete, gripping a set of pedals. That’s where he’s most likeable, not with his legs swinging back and forth, pounding his fresh pair of Nike kicks against the unforgiving pavement. He’s been riding a bike so protracted, he claims he barely even knows how to walk anymore.
“I unprejudiced feel awkward now,” Chad says. “I don’t do it often, so I look freaky walking. I could ride from [New York] to China and wouldn’t be as tired as I am walking around.”
Bicycles aren’t the only fad Chad uses to get around, though. He’s quick to hail a cab in big cities; he has no problem handling a halfpipe on a skateboard; and in drugged school, the girls are on a constant swivel, watching for one of his notorious piggyback attacks. Anything to sidestep some steps. Regardless of his methods, Chad has been finding a way to push send on since he was 18 months old, when he first broke the shackles of training wheels and hit the clear road on two wheels. The one thing he’s never had to ride is anybody else’s coattails.
At 18 years old, Chad has vomit up all his life in Serra Mesa, a neighborhood in San Diego of less than 30,000, smushed between Interstates 15 and 805 selfish Qualcomm Stadium, home of the Chargers.
Football, or any other mainstream caper, was never of interest to Chad. He started racing with a 14-inch Kent from Toys “R” Us at age four, when he couldn’t even get over the jumps, and has only moved up in the biking community since.
Chad swiftly rose to the top of the kids’ racing ranks, winning his department five times in a row, winning State two times, attaining National Age Assemblage 1 at age 13, and placing second in Worlds later the same year. After nine years of bolt, Chad decided racing had run its course. He was done, whether his parents liked it or not.
Source: Complex.com (blog)