Once upon a time I was cool(er). I rode in tight black denim jeans and cotton t-shirts that I had drawn on with black marker pen. I drank bourbon and then do sick tricks on a Kona Bass I used to call a Jack Cannan ‘Ninja Edition.’ Goodness, I wish I could ride all day on my trail bike and look good again… if only there were tie-dye polyester jerseys with a cool logo.

Anyways, those sick tricks I learned were helped by soft dirt piles and more importantly, foam pits. It’s funny, most people think that if you have a foam pit you can learn backflips; that’s not always the case. 360 tailwhips were easy but taking the bike around the vertical plane was a mental game I couldn’t play. Believe it or not, foam pits still hurt, just not as bad as concrete or dirt so it’s kind of worth getting access to one.

In the third exciting episode of The Learning Curve, we see Drew using the foam pit to help speed up his progression from the BMX to the MTB, coping with a tight timeline, and having injuries slow him down. Worth noting that Ryan Nyquist’s progression is coming along a little better… but he doesn’t have a Red Bull show.