And this folks, is how it starts..

If any of you guys have the Jox/Jag DVD set offerd on the site sponsor list to the left, on the 1st disc is a segment on the Maryland state championships and you can see a breif interview with Jason in his Blazer gear.

On a side note, Jason and I were pretty good friends during his Blazer years, Does anyone know what he's up to now?

Blazerbmx are you being sarcastic? I can't tell. I'm just stating what I know. I apologize for my ignorance if you are being sincere. There just doesn't seem to be alot ifof info on Blazer bikes pre-82 out there. I was just relaying what I know through Jason.

I am being sarcastic, just proddin' some of the guys.

Blazer was made by a guy in Texas not Hutch

There's an "RR" decal on the headtube. What does that stand for? The decal is an original, I'm the only owner of the bike.

Rebel Racing?

blazer was made in lufkin. last i heard that dave gerston guy was doing street preaching in phoenix or something. the rebels were made in san antonio by aba owner bernie anderson. bernie tells me some guy in houston did try to revive blazer but it never worked. rebel was sold and you can find those rebels now and then that look like cycle craft/mcs, the later generation rebels, but blazer died out. that decal said BR , blazer racing. blazer is joking about hutch bikes, it goes back to an inside joke from like 1998 or so. his blazer, which is in the museum, was found by me in austin and i got it to him as fast as i could, cause he's a big blazer fan.

Could be I believe Rebel bikes were made by the same person that made blazer - I'm not sure

no, rebel and blazer were seperate. people mix them up, but no dice. then , when that guy in houston tried to revive the name, he may have bought blazer name and tried to make rebels without permission, i am a little fuzzy on that. this happened later like in 1985 or so. but the first blazer was lufkin and the first rebel was san antonio. bernie told me who welded the first rebels and it was a guy in san antonio. now, a lot of texas guys were on the rebel team and at one time the same guys were on the blazer team, the people interchanged some, but that's just because it was a texas deal. at least this is what i was told about it around here. I was too busy growing up in Iowa. i also heard the kuwahara dudes would swoop in sign people around here.

yeah Pat I think your right, I remember B.R. JR. riding a Rebel out at Cibalo and River city bmx before he jumped on National Pro in like 83. I think Rusty Cable also road for Rebel.

Around 83-84 time frame Rebel bikes were out of Houston. The name of the owner escapes me, but his son raced and they sponsored local hot shoe riders Richard Lamb and Michael Hill.

Carl

what about Jay davis / Eddie Siegmund both superfast rebel riders in the day

Trosper Park. Yes. You might have raced my little brother on the Blazer. His name is Cass Walker. He rode a GT. Wait, '82-'83 he would've been 8 or 9. Maybe not. He was a little dude though, so he was still riding a mini with sew ups.

Question: Were the Titan titanium bikes made by Blazer? Those were sick little rides. I always wished they had one my size.

I can build ya a ramp. Can an Okie come for the BBQ? PS, you guys are invited up to OKC for the Hoffman Contest next weekend at the downtown OKC skatepark.

no ...titans were made in san antonio by welder jesse garza, i think that was his name. he also welded the esp, eddie sigmund products frames. i think this is why blazer and rebel get mixed up, and now titan, cause they were all made in tx. i think carl is right, when the rebels looked like the cycle craft or zeronine with the wierd under the stays dropout, they were based out of houston. i think that same houston outfit made a run at blazer 84 or so. don't think it ever happened for blazer in houston though, i think they died out afer about 83 or so. there may have been a thread on here where blazer welded the navajo frames or something? maybe that's when that gerston guy moved to phoenix? my memory is fuzzy on that, because i know little about navajo.

[ May 27, 2006, 04:49 PM: Message edited by: pquinnbmx ]

Pat, the way I was told by Tom is somewhat like that. The way he put it, it was after Rebel was sold and Blazer patners split that they ended up being made in the same shop somewhere around Houston. they were seperate companies but used the common facilities and personnel. At this time is when the Blazer rights suit was filed. We do know that Navajo ended up being what a Blazer frame was when it was said and done. BTW Blazer did not manufacture forks. It is said that the two Blazer owners went their seperate ways and both started making Blazers. Problem was that one owned the original design, jigs, and whatever. The other owned the name and all the remaining build materials. So there it came to the ultimate head. One owner was told to change the design he did not own and the other was told to change brand names (became Navajo). Gersten supposedly introduced the mechanical starting gate to BMX also. I have no proof to back any of this up but the words of someone quite credible whose father was very close friends with Gersten at one time. They speak very highly of him and say that he was an absolute genius craftsman.

Yes, the original Blazer factory was in Lufkin as thats where Milborn was home based. Gersten pulled up stakes when he developed an overwhelming home sickness for Arizona. I think this was when business started declining so thats what brought it on really. My friend Tom was a factory racer and he and his family spent lots of weekends at the Milborn home.

I think the guy's name is Maberut not Milborn. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Alot of folk think that the company started out in Houston because of the contact phone number in their old ads. the area code was 713. Way back when that area code was for east Texas but changed 20 or so yrs ago to the Houston area.

[ May 28, 2006, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: BLAZERBMX ]

sk8bones, I don't recognize your brother's name, but I don't remember many names at all. I do remember David Gill who would have been about your brother's age I think. Those I remember racing against were Tapley Holland and Ben ???. Ben was the son of the track operator. We were introduced to the sport by Bubba and Ricky McIntosh and family.