DIG ARCHIVES: PAUL BUCHANAN
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PAUL BUCHANAN - SOLO MISSION
ARTICLE REPRINTED FROM DIG 18, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2001
Words by Sandy Carson, Taj Mihelich, Chris Young and Ruben Alcantara
Photos by Ed Docherty and Sandy Carson
WHERE’S PAUL?
FU*K KNOWS?
HE’S PROBABLY ON ONE OF HIS SOLO MISSIONS.
That’s how Mr. Buchanan rolls. Paul is probably one of the most naturally talented riders out there. And if you get the chance to see him “ take the back off the remote”as he calls it, and ride to his potential, then count yourself lucky. A black cloud has been following this Canuck around and he’s only been able to ride a year and a half out of three years because of injuries.
His passion to ride a bike has gotten him through some of the gnarliest injuries, and when he’s healthy (not often), he likes to tell his bike how its gonna be. And anything you do see of him see will be on ANY day of the week. Paul rides in small numbers (or solo) and hates drama. His only drama it seems, would be how long his batteries will last for his Walkman on his cruises, blasting his “heavy tunes “.
Paul is also an Aquarius and likes to sup tea and eat beans ‘n toast. And his eye for photography is just as creative and original as his riding. He says he’s only learning but he needs to turn it in with the modesty. C’mon paul....Fu*kin take it. –Sandy Carson
I’ve been trying to write something about Paul for a few days now. I feel like I should concentrate my story on his riding style or how creative he is on a bike. Instead, I keep thinking about the tires on his van. I know that doesn’t probably make a hell of a lot of sense, but since its what I’m thinking of I’ll go with it. Not long ago Paul moved himself up to Vancouver and bought himself a van. I don’t really know how else to describe the van other than to say it’s a Scooby Do van. It totally a seventies looking machine and if it just had some funky old airbrushed mural on the side and a heart shaped bubble window on the back it would be perfect. Anyway, Paul came down and visited me in Olympia and we rode some skateparks and trails. After a fun few days we said our good byes and Paul headed back north. A half hour later Paul called to say he was coming back. One of the tires on his van had gone flat and he was going to hang out till the morning and get it fixed. Probably my favourite part of running a bike company is that I’m in a position where I can occasionally help out our team riders. Its not that I wouldn’t help Paul out on my own if he needed it, I love the guy, its just that it’d probably be a little weird if I just randomly offered to buy Paul new tires for his car. With the company though I can justify it easily. “Think of it as a thank you for all that you’ve done for us,” I said. So, the next morning we went out and after a little shopping we found some new tires for Paul’s van and I got to charge it to the T-1 company credit card. A lot of the tires we looked at had big raised white lettering on the sides. I kept urging Paul to pick some of those. To me, the big white lettering sort of completed the image of Paul’s swingin’ bachelor’s van that I had in my head. It just seemed to be part of the look. When we actually chose tires we were given the choice for white lettering on the side or all black. I was excited that the image of the van was going to be complete, but Paul politely declined the lettering. I was sort of confused and asked him why. With a calm and nonchalant voice Paul told me he didn’t need to have all those logos all over his car.
Paul seems to be a relatively quiet guy. He’s certainly not the kind of person to impose his ideals or opinions on you. In fact, I think he’d rather not get involved with any of the politics or shit talking of BMX at all if he can help it. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a conversation drift toward the business aspect of BMX only to see Paul riding away. He has a real knack for waking me up in those situations. I’ll think that I’m not letting myself get anymore wrapped up in the bullshit then I need to, and then when he just puts his walkman on and rides away I’ll realise that I am actually completely buried in the bullshit. If I wasn’t I’d be riding like him, and not sitting around talking about it. It’s been the little subtle events like those from Paul that have had the greatest impact on me. Quietly leading by example is way more effective them screaming up a storm but doing nothing you know? I started thinking about the logos on people’s cars after picking out tires with Paul. You know, he did have a point. Why did we need to drive around with a blazing Goodyear logo on our tires, or even a big chrome Honda logo on our cars? What sense does that make? Do we have them there to show off what brand of car we have, so say that our car is more expensive then someone else’s? To show that we paid extra for the “Sport package”? It seemed silly to me after looking at it in that light and it what Paul said made a lot of sense to me. Everywhere we look we are filled with logos and advertisements and there’s no way to escape most of it. Why cover our cars (or ourselves) with it? Anyway, I went home that day and tore the emblems off my car. It turns out they were just glued on anyway.
Paul is a really amazing bike rider and I hope that I’m not in any way discounting that by writing about his car. In fact, I think it’s his unique and deep thinking that leads him to think about tire lettering and different ways to ride all at the same time. Paul seems really disjointed from a lot of the riding scene to me, but I think that’s a great thing. He is always testing and trying new things and I think that type of creativity is so often lost on a lot of today’s pro riders. Keeping his distance is a good way for him to maintain his own originality and his own direction. He’s able to take riding to new places that no one has ever thought of and that’s invaluable to the BMX world. In any event, I don’t think Paul is aware of any of that. I don’t think he has any idea how influential he is. The boundaries he has pushed and new directions he opens up have trickled down via the few people who spend time riding with him, to the rest of BMX. There are lot of trends and tricks in riding right now that start back with Paul, but I’d be willing to bet that not even he realises it. - Taj Mihelich
If I had to recall the exact time and place that I first met Paul, I don’t know that I could. He was just this shy and quiet kid that would always hang out wherever we were riding. He was into racing, but he was getting bored - you couldn’t keep a guy like Paul on a track. He must have been 11 or 12 when he started hanging out with us, back about 1987. He wasn’t like all the other kids. He didn’t ask the stupid questions - you know the ones, you hear them all the time.
Being five years younger than the rest of our crew, I imagine Paul took more than his fair share of the jokes and teasing, like a rookie race car driver - but week after week, he’d be back for more. It didn’t matter what we were riding, Paul would be there before we got there, and long after we left, that’s for damn sure. The difference between Paul and all the other kids was that he was just a ripper. He was always going for the burliest stuff. Tricks out of his grasp, hell, tricks out of our grasp, but he was going for it at any cost.
You see, Paul hasn’t always been the smooth rider he is today - in fact he was quite the opposite. Back then he was known for his wipe outs. Paul ate shit bigger than anybody. He was so hard on bikes. He’d destroy more parts in a month than I would all year.
What stands out the most for me was the day he decided he was going to learn 360’s over this near-vert 4’ spine at the Launch Pad skatepark in Oakville, Ontario. Paul was about 16 at the time, and the older guys were doing them - so there was no reason why he couldn’t. Now granted, this was a weird ramp, the transitions were pretty tight, and being 4’ tall, it was hard as hell to ride. He rolled in, hit the spine and hucked that 360 for all it was worth. The second he hit the coping things weren’t looking too good. He over-rotated and went straight to his face, didn’t even have a chance to get his hands down’ he’d knocked his teeth out. Thousands of dollars went back into putting his teeth all back together, but he couldn’t let a small thing like that hold him back. He had to get back on the bike. And get back on the bike he did.
Paul really started blowing up around the time I moved out west to Vancouver, so I missed seeing the transition in person, but you’d keep hearing these rumours of how good he was getting. And the rumours kept coming. Paul’s success could never be measured in dollars, but rather the passion he has for riding his bike, and it couldn’t have happened to a more genuine and modest person. Paul rode long and hard to get to where he is today, wherever he is anyway, Take care out there Paul. - Chris Young
In the two years that passed since Paul arrived in Austin, he has accumulated a lot of shit. A house, furniture, clothes, wild experiences and countless new friends. He also acquired the knowledge of what every kerb and wallride in Austin feels like on a daily cruise. Now that’s what i call baggage. But when the landlord sold the house, Paul decided to buy a van and tour Canada, solo. Which meant, basically getting rid of everything he owned and starting all over again with a bike, a walkman and a bag of clothes. There were a lot of items on Mr. Buchanan’s “things to do” list before he left,
and this was one of them.
Mystery man: It’s exactly how I would describe Paul even when we were living in the same house. Not many times we rode together, probably no many people seen him riding neither. But he rides a lot. He just take off and pedal for hours far away listening to his music, taking super cool pictures and riding by his self. He told me crazy things that he did by himself (big gaps, rails.) Every time that I seen him riding, he bring some thing that’s fun or crazy. I heard the craziest histories and successes that happened to him (police persecution, wild people that he met, etc). He always impress me with some thing, riding or not…
I have a lot of memories of good moments with him. he has a great personality. He is very sensitive with animals and persons. He totally listens to you and respects every body. I like his company. He is a good friend and I’d like to spend more time with him…
Talking about his personality, some people probably thinks that he is too negative about BMX industry, even when he tells me some comments about it. They at first sound negative, but when I stop to think for a second, I understand his point and it totally makes sense .............
“Paul es un personage inceible y misterioso.” – Ruben Alcantara
