FBM GYPSY LIVING

FBM does a trip every year called "gypsy caravan"   a bunch of people riding bikes and having fun for a week and they make a video out of it.. this years will also include a bonus dvd with the adventures in puerto rico and the south of the boredom trip..

here is a kick ass flipbook of pictures from the gypsy trip this year

Gypsy Caravan Flip Book

and heres the trailer for the video.. just watching this you will get an idea of the riding in the video .. or maybe not..


The DVD is pretty funny...

eric hennesseys life lesson learned

         life is what you make it..if you spend your time complaining about car payments and your job.. quit your job and stop paying your car payments..go do whatever it is you wanna do. you only live once and you should do it in a way that makes you the happiest.

      i havent always been broke and nomadic..i acctually had a lifestyle not fitting to what most would think of me now.

this is a breakdown of how i got into and out of debt. and will probably be the longest post i will ever write on this website.

      when i graduated from highschool i started working the next day full time as an electrician.i was making 11 bucks an hr and working 40 hrs a week. taking home about $380 a week and $1500 a month i worked for 1 year and bought a new motorcycle.

 payments werent anything crazy $120 a month and my insurance was $80 a month. i was making 1500 bucks so what the heck matters about $200 dollars to have a sweet ride that chicks loved.

i got a dollar raise the following year. i was racing motocross professionally at the time so i bought a van to get back and forth to the races. it was a nice van and was the first brand new vehicle i ever bought.

the payments were $460 a month and the insurance company had told me the insurance would be about $200 a month.. turns out they messed up and after i bought it the insurance was $380 a month.and gas was alot for a v8 van full of dirtbikes(about $50 a week). i was stressin so i found a new job that payed me $14 an hour  and i was happy again.. my total payments were  

$1200 dollars (with gas) and i was making $2000 and still living at home.

$200 dollars a week is plenty of money to live off of when your eating your parents food and working all day anyway.

       the next year my dad was getting stressed with me living in his house eating all his food. he had a g/f and i was bringing home chicks and they were sleeping over and all that and it was just an unconscious lack of respect on my part for him and his girlfriend.. he asked me to move out.

    all of these things that were happening to me were completely normal run of the mill events that happen to the majority of people in their lives..its called the american dream..work hard, buy things that you cant afford through loans and mortgages,have a family, and pay for all of that stuff for the rest of your life.  i still wasnt seeing what was happening.

i had been doing electrical work for a while now (2 years during highschool and 3 years out).i found a new job with ,again, better pay. $17 an hour and a little over time.. now i was working more and making more....and paying for more.. 

   i got an apartment with a high school buddy of mine named jeff.. the rent was $750 a month plus about $200 in utilities..divided between the 2 of us was about $500 a month.. now i was paying $1200 a month for my bike and van and $500 for my apt. $1700 total but making about $2400 now a month so i still had about the same amount of money throughout the week to blow on food and dvds or whatever else we wanted to get into... we had our own place we could do whatever the heck we wanted to.. we had a pool table and dart board and a legit bachelor pad. girls were in and out of that place constantly.

    jeff was selling cocaine occasionally on the side from his job. he would have parties with all these babes all the time and a bunch of the local jock dudes we grew up with in highschool. i watched these beautiful smart girls turning into cocaine loving  empty bodies. jeff threw a party one night and the neighbors called the police and the landlord ended up coming over and kicking us out. i talked to the landlord and explained the situation and he decided to let me stay but jeff had to go.. i solt my motorcyle to get a little more money to pay my rent.

   my friend kate at the time had no place to live so i offered up jeffs empty room in exchange for her helping me pay the rent.. she was amazing. i lived with her for a while and never had any problems. i got another raise to $19 an hr and life was good.

      kate ended up getting a b/f and hanging out with some shit heads and me and her had a falling out and she moved out with her b/f and i lived in the apartment alone paying for everything.. $900 rent utilities,$1000 van  and now the $80 a month cell phone charge that i couldnt live without. $2000 a month in bills and making $2500 a month.. i started getting stressed alot and working more and having little fun. i didnt see it happening and then i realized that i was spending my life working to pay for everyting i had.

  i made a decision to get my life back in check when i started falling behind on my car payments.. i bought my truck for 21,000 dollars and had it for 3 years and still owed $17000 dollars on it.. i sold it for $15000 and borrowed $2000 from may dad to pay the difference. i bought a car for $500 dollars.

   once i started having less bills it was like it took over my mindset.. how can i get rid of more bills? how can i live off less money? i was friends with a guy named chuck at the time and he had a bike shop in connecticut not too far from my house. he said i could live in the back of the store for $300 a month so thats what i did. now i was making over $2000 dollars a month and paying $300 bucks a month rent and $80 a month cell phone..back on track!

  chuck threw me out because i wasnt giving a shit about anything. he didnt want people to know we lived in his store and i was bringing girls back there and didnt really care. thats when i moved into the apartment i lived in for the last 4 years.. i started traveling more. started wanting to work less. quit my job and stop paying my cell phone bills.. no more phone.

  quit my job and started working odd jobs for my landlord and his son. i always made enough to pay my rent.. sometimes late but always paid him. that lasted for the last 4 years.. my only bill was $300 dollars a month.. at that rate i could work at Mcdonalds if i wanted to making minimum wage and afford to pay it..i could have been working as an electrician making $30 an hour but instead i was raking leaves for my landlord for $10.. money wasnt even a thought to me..

    recently i bought a school bus. and started living in it.. it costs me zero dollars a month in rent.. my insurance is $200 a year.. and lately all i have had to worry about is

   how big should i make this fire to cook my chicken and dumplings?

and am i gonna land on a jetski when i backflip my bicycle into this lake?

sorry this post is so long.. i wrote it more for myself than anyone else.. i wanted to have it wrote down so i could look back at it in years to come and see how things are different.. 

DO WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY!

      

trail blazin

last few days have been a blast...gorgeous weather and good times..
   will said he could see a pond from the highway that was right across the street from his house.. so yesterday we walked through the woods to check it out and low and behold there was a hole full of water..

so we jumped in

the walk out there was rough....so today we blazed a nice trail back out there for future use..

a few more photos from the cilli dogs house

heres a couple of photos that a new friend snapped at that bmx jam in arkansas..fun times for all

photos by BEN MISTAK!!

now that thats out of the way

i suppose we can get back to reality and start posting some normal stuff again.
   last night sitting around bored on the computer i stumbled across my friend garrets facebook photo album "mobile uploads" which are just random pics he snapped with his blackberry. garrett has always been a funny dude, not always as jacked as he is now, but always funny. some of them were not funny at all but found myself laughing so hard for no reason.  heres one picture of what will be many more of his that get posted on here in the future... get outside and enjoy the beautiful mother nature

ham wallet

also i would like to mention that some of my family members dont find it weird to see me naked because they saw me naked when i was a baby...is it just me that thinks that thats totally different?

heres the email conversation i had with my mom

ME

" hey mom just letting you know theres a picture of me naked on my site so you might not wanna look at it for a bit...i let the rest of the fam know lol love you"

MOM

"LOL Doesn't bother me. I gave birth to you, remember? BTW...you look exactly like your dad standing there butt naked. Wiener and all. Uh Oh. I might have offended someone hahahah"

i have awesome parents

the perks of having my own website

this is post number 666 believe it or not... turns out the last post upset some people.. someone asked "what makes you think hundreds of people wanna see that stuff you post"  and heres the anwser... because hundreds of people look at the site.. if you dont like me or what i post on this site, dont look at the site... until then im  gonna keep posting whatever i feel like it... like this picture of me butt naked in front of a mirror..  deal with it

the mudcat wack fest

so the official video is in !!!  the final scoop.. thought everyone was sleeping .. did the old lay the sweat shirt over the lap trick..started pulling it out and will saw what was going down and started taping...looks like the cat might have gotten spooked and stopped so fortunately for all of us.. theres no weiner   but just the thought of someone trying to get frisky with themselves in a car full of dudes is hilarious..

will blount

my friend will that im staying with right now im memphis, just got a killer 2 page photo in the new bmx plus.. women have been blowing up his phone trying to get a piece of his action.

funny story just in!!!

will just drove to vegas with 4 of his friends and the mudcat was driving and thought everyone was sleeping and started stroking his dick and will was fake sleeping in the passenger seat and video taped him and texted it to the dudes in the back seat..HAHAHAHAHAHA!

memphis bmx

i have rode my bike on 2 occasions since i have been down south.. the first time was at tonys ramp jam last week.. and the 2nd time was while some friends visited memphis the past few days from little rock arkansas..

   Will left town to go to vegas for the week, so i have been staying with my friends clayton and amy.. they are always amazing hosts and i can never thank them enough.. the last few days have been filled with good  friend memories and good food..to me, thats what its all about

got to claytons and we hung out and watched tv a whole bunch... a rare thing for both of us

then we went and had some amazing bbq pulled pork pizza. the first pizza i have had since i have been here. so good!

then tim,levi,and ted showed up from little rock and we headed to the trails

i havent done a nothing since like 1999..so fun

then we went and rode wills ramp..it was hot and sweaty.

came back to claytons and cooked these AMAZING kabobs!

hung out with his turtle

the next day we somehow crammed 5 bikes and 5 people into claytons nissan altima.

headed down town and rode a concrete wave on the side of an off ramp.

then we all layed around while levi and tim did a bunch of stuff on a 1 ft tall bank thing

then we hit the 180 curve wall that is oh so fun

and then we went to what everyone calls the tree house... because its these crazy backyard ramps that acctually look like you riding in a tree house.. peter pan shorts fit right in.. i felt like a lost boy !

then we went to claytons house..had an amazing dinner and watched tim and clayton get drunk..

mc escher

i have always had a thing for artist mc escher.  growing up as a kid we had this mc escher painting on our wall

i have been staying with my friend clayton and his g/f amy and they asked me to do some electrical work for them and as payment they gave me 2 really awesome mc escher books. one of them is a book of all of his artwork and the other has an amazing art project that makes kaleidocycles out of his artwork...

basically i was totally siked and this is one of the things i made... im sure you will be seeing alot more of these.

i used to have a g/f who loved mc escher.. if she looked at this website she would be jealous of this.. i even thought of how it was possible to mail them to her because i know how siked she would be

turtle power

me and 3 friends of mine dressed up like the ninja turtles last night and had a party...  we took this picture of the festivities!!

god rules?

today i worked in a church basement ripping up a tile floor and i went to the bathroom and there was some vandalism carved into the stall.. someone took a sharp object and carved "god rules" into the wall..
   im not a religious person.. i think i am smart enough to understand that it is impossible to be pregnant without having sex and give birth to the only person to not sin once in 30 years, or can walk on water, feed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread, etc etc...

 but anyway... it got me thinking, is vandalism not considered a sin by those people? or is it ok if you vandalize if you carve something like "god rules" into a bathroom wall instead of "for a good time" with your ex- g/f's phone number..
      im fascinated by the huge amount of gray area that there is in religion.. i have tried many times to have conversation with religious people about it but anwsers like "because he was gods son" and "because it says so in the bible" just arent good enough for me.. if someone can give me a real educated anwser to how it was possible for moses to split the red sea, i would love to hear it.

until then... this still makes alot more sense..

  

new stickers

i have been wanting to make some sort of logo for the site for a while.. just something that i could make some stickers of and i finally made it today.. so im gonna get some of these made hopefully this week.. we will see what happens.. let me know what you think and i will figure something out where i can get them out to people.. thanks craig for some ideas.. i just needed a little creative conversation to spark something.. its basic but to the point.

this sticker sums up the last 4 years of my life..i have spent more time digging dirt jumps in the woods and sitting next to campfires than doing anything else.. the free feeling of digging trails or sitting by a campfire not thinking about anything that isnt within 100 feet of you is one of the best feelings for me.. those people that know what im talking about, know exactly what im talking about.. and those who dont, probably cant understand at all.. these stickers are for the first group

bob dylan pandora

getting me siked for the entire day... first 10 songs.

bob dylan- shelter from the storm
neil young(live)- old man
bob dylan(unplugged)- shooting star
van morrison- astral weeks
clapton&duane allman- mean old world
tom waits- old shoes
bob dylan- the wheels on fire
van morrison- domino
bob dylan- stuck inside of mobile with the memphis blues again
donovan- josie

just finished another book called "the game" by neil strauss.. its leather and has gold on the edges of the pages. making it look exactly like a bible..but its about pickup artists and how this guy mastered picking up women..crazy

now im reading "walden" by henry david thoreau"  i dont know if im quite smart enough to understand everything he writes..but he says some amazing things in that book.

"this spending of the best part of ones life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it"

"go confidently in the direction of your dreams! live the life you've imagined."

heres an ESPN photo gallery from that arkansas event this past weekend..ben took a boat load of photgraphs..heres 12

click here to view pictures!

hollie the super pooch

my dad has 2 weiner dogs.. hailey and hollie.  i just talked to him on the phone and it turns out, hollie, went blind in the last week.  shes not old or anything. just has some problem where in a week shes blind.. what if that happened to you? it would make you wish you went and saw anything you could while you could still see i bet.

dont get stuck like hollie the weenie.. some people are blind and dont even know it yet .

wild tonys house

this weekend i headed out to arkansas to ride some back yard ramps at a guys house named Tony Carruth who was a huge part of the bmx scene starting in the 80's and going till today.. arkansas bmx history..its crazy to think how much bmx history there is out there.. all these kids that think the bmx scene ends with them and their local skatepark, are just a speck in the bmx community.. its nice to go out and see other parts of it
  the arkansas bmx scene is small but soooo tight.. what they did for tony for his 50th birthday party proved that.. everyone pitched in and bought him a new bike, and a signed freestyle book from mat hoffman and corrigan came out there and spent his own money to  rebuild tonys back yard ramps and build some new stuff so the local kids and everyone from around there would have a fun place to ride..it was a great time and i cant thank everyone enough for the amazing hospitality and having us there to celebrate such an awesome event..

ramp set up

tony carruth!

tony carruths mom? she called me muscle man all day and said i "talked with my eyes".. we are in love

on the way to the party we saw signs on the side of the road for a lady running for state rep and her name was anna grizzle...i grabbed one and modified it and had clayton hold it while i did a grizz air in tribute to the old school good times.

arkansas buddies, clayton,ted,levi,tim,performer

flatland bike nose pick

the goat is dead...but they have some ducks

tonys bike shop?

good times for all

and last but not least...after the party we all went back to ted and levi's house to have some fun, and i shit you not, the town over from the town they live in is called "toad suck". google it..they have a big festival called "toad suck daze" where people go there and trip on mushrooms or something.. they drove me there so i could snap some pics with some frogs

and heres 5 random clips in random order to make what some might call an "edit"..i call it a memory

hey crandall.. tony said you owe him money.. for using a picture of his goat on the front of your dvd..i guess he thinks you made money off his goat?? your gonna have to call him and work out a reasonable price.