Travis Pastrana Taught Me To Backflip A Motorcycle

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ravis Pastrana is not a man you say no to. It isn’t even presented as an option. He doesn’t ask your input on what you’re going to do next; rather he just gets this grin on his face as he tells you to grab your helmet and follow him. It doesn’t matter that you hate jumps and it doesn’t matter that you hate heights. It doesn’t matter that you both know he’s lying when he says, “You’re gonna do great!” or that you both know he’s said it to hundreds of people before you who you’ve seen on countless videos on YouTube (and not for sticking the landing). You’re in his territory, both physically and metaphorically speaking, so his belief that you’re going to do something spectacular overrides any perfectly fine reasons you have on the contrary. You’re under his spell and are going to do whatever this mad genius tells you. If you’re smart, you stop fighting it early on and focus on remembering the steps he gives you.

This is how I found myself wearing nothing more than a pair of ripped jeans, Vans, T-shirt, and helmet staring at a 15-foot vert ramp attached to a massive foam pit with instructions on how to do a backflip.

I hate jumping. Everything about it terrifies me. Ninety percent of the times I’ve attempted it, I landed too far over the front or too far over the back. I can never get the throttle right and it’s all so abrupt—and abrupt things and I don’t get along. Same reason the idea of clutching up a wheelie terrifies me. I prefer to be on a racetrack, where I feel like I have time to think about what I’m doing, even at 160 mph.

My instructions were simple enough: Keep my minibike at about half throttle until I hit the base of the ramp, then give it gas and lean back as hard as I could while keeping my legs straight as I hit the top. It was a foam pit, so nothing bad could happen (as long as I didn’t let go)—or so I was promised.

My first attempt was more of a superman than a backflip, and I learned the hard way that the bottom of a foam pit is a miserable place to be. My second attempt got a little more rotation and Pastrana said it was one of the better whips he’d seen, but I wasn’t committing to the backflip. Yeah, no kidding.

I’d warned Pastrana that I’d never done a backflip in any capacity and I was going to be terrible at this, but it took until now for him to believe me. A quick “testicle trip” up to the trampoline was in order to see if I could get my brain to shut off enough to spin backward. I have a whole theory about being too smart to be really good, but we’ll save that for another day.

After three or four attempts that ended with me landing on my head, I finally rotated around to my knees and then to my feet. No one was more surprised than I was, but we had a small win and it was time to carry that momentum into the foam pit on the bike. No one really said a word to me as we made our way back toward it, as if they knew they just needed to let me feel it.

With my newfound courage, I pulled with all my might and managed to rotate three-quarters of the way around, which sent everyone in cheers as I again sunk to the bottom of the foam pit and awaited rescue. I’d managed such a feat through pure willpower alone, as the camera footage showed that I forgot to lean back at all and had rotated purely from my yank on the bar.

Finally, on my fifth attempt, we had back flippage. Yes, I, Sean MacDonald, the man who hates motocross tracks and jumps and all things abrupt, did a backflip on a dirt bike. Pastrana thought this was a good time to let me know he never thought I’d be able to do it after my first run, and I made a mental note to listen to bring that up the next time he said, “You got this,” even though I knew it wouldn’t change the outcome of my pleas.

All this prepped me for some real excitement. I was invited to Pastranaland (and to bring a friend) by Michelin as a guest participant in its #myinsaneterrain competition, which brought three winners and their guests to compete in a contest of sorts at Pastrana’s compound in Maryland. My good buddy Aaron Guardado from Suicide Machine Company was more than happy to accompany me on the trip for moral support.

The contest involved electric slide cars, an indoor quad drift challenge, mini-moto backflips and 250cc two-stroke front flips, a terrifying 40-foot dive onto the air bag, a BMX air-bag-style competition, mini-moto dirt race, and a timed side-by-side race. We took a film crew along to document the exercise in stupidity for your viewing pleasure.

And, no, Guardado and I didn’t do well.