Congrats RL
ABA BMX announced last week the 2009 Hall of Fame induction class, which included such notables as Jeremy McGrath, Troy Lee, and Eddie Fiola. I really should be posting about Jeremy McGrath, the forever King of Supercross. But I’m not. This post is about another inductee, R.L. Osborn.
Scan of the original RL-20 ad. Image Source: www.vintageredline.com
I was way into BMX and BMX Freestyle when I was growing up. Not that I was any good; in fact, mostly I did pretty good to keep it the wheels underneath the rest of me, and I have some really nice fake teeth as evidence of my insane crashing ability. But I was into it nevertheless. When I was about 13 I decided I really, really wanted a RedLine bicycle. So much, in fact, I found a part-time after-school job that I really hated in order to get one, and I saved and saved my own money until I had enough to buy one.
The one I had my eye on at the local bike store was a RedLine RL-20 ProStyler. It was named after and designed by R.L. Osborn, a legendary and award-winning flatland freestyle artist who was, at that time, a RedLine factory rider and also a personal idol of sorts at the time. BMX Freestyle was just becoming a big deal at the time, and while a lot of guys like Eddie Fiola and Mike Dominguez were making big waves in aerial freestyle on quarter-pipes and half-pipes, I was really interested in flatland. And when it came to flatland, back then R.L. Osborn was the man.
In fact, do you remember the movie “Rad?” R.L. was in that movie. No, not during the regular part of the movie. My dad took me to see that movie, because I was so into freestyle. But the main reason I wanted to see it was because R.L. was in the only good part of that movie, the part during the opening sequence and closing credits where they just showed clip after clip of awesome flatland freestyle. Yeah, that was R.L.
I mean, look at that awesome curly hair.
This looks almost exactly like the RL-20 I bought new in 1985. Image Source: www.vintageredline.com
Anyway, after I got that job, I worked for many months and saved every dime I could. I worried every day that someone would come down to that bike store and buy that bike instead of me. Finally I had saved up the $330 or so I needed to buy it. I went down and bought it that same day. It looked almost exactly like this second picture here. I rode that bike everywhere when I was growing up and even took it with me to college.
Then one day at college, for some reason, I was overcome with a bout of absolute insanity. It was probably brought on by abject poverty. Anyway, this day I was riding it around USU campus and this younger kid saw me riding it. He asked if I would consider selling it. Like I said, I was insane with poorness, so I agreed to sell it to him for $125.
$125.
Do you have any idea what one of these goes for on eBay these days? I do. I’ve been looking for another one. They are very expensive – say, many multiples of that amount for one in the kind of shape that mine was in.
I’ve kicked myself for selling it ever since then. Should have never done it.
But I digress. Anyway, congratulations, R.L. Osborn. And thanks for making such an awesome bike.
