The mere thought of surfing on a dirt bike is ludicrous.
The reality of it, though, is simply mind-blowing.
Australian motorbike stunt rider Robbie Maddison's dreams of ripping through waves with a dirt bike was brought to reality by DC Shoes, which filmed him testing a special wave-riding dirt bike on the roaring waves of Teahupo'o, Tahiti.
"When I spoke about my idea, I spoke with full confidence," Maddison told ESPN's XGames website about first conceiving the over-the-top concept. "I'm a sincere, calculated person. When I say I'm going to do something, I have always followed through. It was like people forgot. I felt like people were laughing at me behind my back. Even people close to me, friends, people who helped me in the beginning, thought I had lost my mind."
Well, it's unbelievable, seeing Maddison lose his mind on this dirt bike amid some of the best waves in the world. While little is known about the DC Shoes experiment, this modified dirt bike looks to shred waves as effortlessly as a jet-ski. According to ESPN, when Maddison first came up with the idea, he figured if a dirt bike was modified with the right skis, it'd give the bike enough surface tension to ride and catch waves.
He called Bill King, a former rocket scientist who built the RadiX snow-conversion kit for motorcycles. Within a few months, they had come up with a pair of skis to test. ESPN describes the skis as two skateboards with the holes cut in the center, allowing the wheels to rotate on the ground, that fit underneath the entire bike.
"We tried so many different skis," Maddison remembers. "Some went faster, some turned better. We didn't have a water tank and a laboratory; it was just the two of us riding and testing and tinkering."
Time passed, and enough modifications were made for Maddison to test it out in Tahiti — leading to this stunning four minutes of mind-numbing footage. Yes, he did fall numerous times and had many failed attempts before the final cut, but once he stuck it... this pipe dream was made into an amazing reality.
DC Shoes will reportedly release a behind-the-scenes film documenting Maddison's exploits at some point in the future.
