Tell us a little about yourself.
Name is Andrew Tonkery. I grew up in northern northern New Jersey, went to school in Colorado where I was involved in the local trials scene until 2006 when I moved to Los Angeles working as a photographer and lighting specialist until 2020. I switched gears moving to the mountains of Western North Carolina to become a livestock, fruit and vegetable farmer.
How long have you been riding bike trials? What is your riding level?
I have been riding since the late 90s and still enjoy competing in expert level trials competitions and expert 40+ enduro races around western North Carolina.
How did you discover bike trials and how did you get started? What age were you when you started?
My very first real mountain bike came from a LBS [local bike shop] in northern New Jersey, they gave me Hans Rey Level Vibes VHS with the mountain bike and it was all over. I was in my late teens. I began mountain biking at 15 – to get to and from work in Fort Collins, Colorado where I stayed for a summer in 1997. I would ride with neighborhood kids and follow them jumping curbs (more like learning about pinch flats) and finding single tracks around the Poudre River parks were my beginning days. Then riding MTB in northern New Jersey until that entry level Giant Rincon wore out, I got the new XC bike and that Trials VHS. I had no idea what Bike Trials was, I think they had extras of the tape and I am so happy they included it! Life changer.
How would you define/describe “bike trials” in your own words to someone who never heard of it?
Riding your bicycle up and over anything you want WITHOUT taking your foot off the pedals!
What type of bike trials riding do you prefer and where do you like to ride?
I love it all!! I want to say my heart lives in super technical loose piles of rocks/steep hillsides but with the right rider a big urban city can be the greatest experience, hunting for rocks and manual lines just the same – or that perfectly angled rounded top wall… it is all fun! Exploring new cities and finding new places to ride and eat – fabricate a nice experience around the ride, hitting a well timed burrito, ice cream and coffee – each treat with various lines in between them. Or just a bunch of trials riders in Buthier! Been a long time since I’ve seen a group ride in nature. I can ride anything and be happy… A set of tape around 200 yards of boulder – dream ride !!
What’s your favorite trials move?
I guess my favorite move is the Tap!!! Second favorite is a wedge, third bunny hop to 90 or a gap 90!!! Nothin beats a good three pedal monster gap as well… too fun.
Why do you ride bike trials and what keeps you motivated to keep riding?
Trials is a fun mind game, you can practice on a small wall all sorts of different techniques, balance lines – it never ends, there will always be something new to ride. Trying to stay healthy in the mind and body as well, and it is fairly low risk compared to faster biking disciplines. Always a good mind and body workout with trials!
What other styles of cycling do you do? How has trials helped you improve your skills in those other biking disciplines (and vice versa)?
When I lived in California I loved road riding, touring, multi day camping trips, klunkers and about everything to do with biking, I tried one time or another. Aside from modern MTB; I didn’t look at the MTB world for 24 years… Trials helps in all aspects of riding! Rarely having to get off the bike, even at speeds your reaction times and control is already tight. Now I live in some very hilly Enduro / mountain biking terrain all around me. In 2024 I got my first full suspension 29” bike and have been enjoying many high speed falls. It hurts when you are going fast! Trials is safer in that regard. I definitely had a leg up in the first amateur Enduro race I did, coming in at 2nd out of 78 racers – all thanks to my trials abilities (was my second ride on a full suspension bike.) so I went up to expert and got dead last in a national competition a few weeks later. Riding with a near 40 pound enduro bike really works the body out for when you get on your near 20 pound Trials bike – you actually have a lot more control and power once you are back on the trails bike.
How often do you ride trials? What sort of routine do you have for practice versus riding for fun versus making edits, etc. – how much time is dedicated to each?
Oh man, honestly the last 5 years, I ride maybe ten to twenty minutes at the end of a work day, and post every single move I do. All of my techniques and skills were gained decades ago. I just go back in the library and see what’s in there to get a smile. Keeping my body in shape helps the most, and I haven’t done a real edit for a very long time. In the olden days I rode six days a week and would take Sundays off… Now it seems Sunday is my only day to do a longer ride!
What’s the bike trials scene like near you? How many other riders are there? Do you have regular group rides? Comps?
We have a few riders within a ~4 hour drive. One comp the past few years in West Virginia has been fun but I think 2025 the only comp in USA is at Bentonville which is a 13 hour drive each way and a bit rough for me right now. I invite local MTB riders over on Saturdays or Sundays to ride on a few miles of advanced backyard singletrack and some basic trials obstacles at my farm – I have a few extra older trials bikes for folks to play with and try the sport out here. If you build it they will come?!!!! Anyone reading this stopping by western North Carolina reach out for a ride.
How do you manage fear when doing new/bigger moves or lines?
Fear is the mindkiller! Take a deep breath and see if it is worth it; as long as I won’t get hurt bad I can send it, but risks and age seem to be linked somehow :). I haven’t lined up to anything too scary in many years, riding solo in your 40s and you stay chill if you can! Have felt the fear on the enduro bike, you’re going 20+ mph and headed to something you’ve never ridden before. Been in a few “grab them bars and just hope for the best” situations and I’ve been ok so far.
Tell us a little about your history with bike trials. Did you used to compete regularly? Who else was competing on the North American trials circuit with you? What was your favorite event?
When I went to college in Colorado, year 2000, they had a series called the Mountain States Cup Series. This would be an event in every ski town over the summer – every event would have DH, XC, DS (dual slalom) and Trials. There were 5-8 events in each series – one at Copper Mountain, Beaver Creek, Steamboat Springs, Durango, Gunnison, Salida, even Albuquerque, NM was in it. Trials [was] one of the fingers of the hand at every MTB event. This was NORBA days… Different world. Real Oldschool trials, amazing sections always set up often by Akira from Boulder and others… If they didn’t have enough rocks they would bring in old cars; trials riders were respected and a major part of the events. Dozens of competitors in each comp… Women, kids, adults. Different world then with big crowds following us around between sections, actually being paid attention to. Lucky to have seen it! I moved to California in 2006 and there were still some comps here and there – Kernville, Fontana, Keyesville. Scott Thompson was a super fun competitor. I ALMOST beat him before he retired, within a few points… But that ended long ago as well, the riders were the only folks keeping them alive and once they got older/had kids – nada… One big USA event back in the day was Motorama – would happen in late winter/early part of the new year in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, inside a big motocross land full of gasoline smells – that’s where you would see everyone in the USA at the start of the year, often mucky wet mushy slush cold outside but inside you would ride on cars, Old gas cans, farm equipment, all kinds of stuff. It was great. JJ was always the highlight of that event to me! On a totally different note, Koxx days was an unbelievable favorite event, over in Buthier, France – dream trip for sure, that I was very lucky to attend with lots of great people.
You took a hiatus from trials riding for a few years, then came back to it. What inspired you to pick it up again?
I guess I really took a break when I went to Los Angeles and got immersed in that world for a few years. I started road riding a good amount in the late 2000s. 2008 – I lived in downtown Los Angeles and rode street trials often, then I moved to a neighborhood in 2010? and mostly only rode vintage 70s and 80s steel road bikes for years. Trials was always in the background this whole time, just pull the FTW out every now and then to keep the rust off at Griffith Park… In 2013 I had a severe Traumatic Brain Injury while road biking and was out for the count for a bit- I was in a coma, fractured my occipital bone in my skull and fractured my left collarbone and scapula. The amount of brain bleeding had the neurologists telling my parents IF I woke up out of the coma to prepare for me being a vegetable. Well I got up and have been healing ever since, they said I wouldn’t be able to drive or see for a year after my injury and under 6 months later I entered a trials competition in Fontana – the following spring I believe that was – for its last year. Years later in 2016, took third in expert at NATS in Colorado, and have enjoyed riding the past couple years at Arrowhead Bike Farms competition. It is great to see other trials riders! Especially nice to see all the young kids trying it out and I hope some stick with it for life. Awesome to see older folks trying it out as well.
What are your personal goals with respect to trials (near-term and long-term)?
Just to keep riding and hopefully get Trials a bit more respect in the mountain bike community, as we have been forgotten in America. I would like to keep at my level for as long as I can, and hopefully influence or help folks with their bike control because it really does help if you want to ride mountain bikes.
Who are your bike trials ‘heroes’ and/or influences? Favorite trials video(s)?
Too many to list! In the beginning days it was all about VHS vids – Hans Rey Level Vibes, Cr Films Revolution/ Evolve, bouncing Czech – Libor Karas, keeping it real – Jeff Lenosky, Ot Pi, Martin and Martyn Dirty Tricks. Living in north New Jersey I got to meet Jeff Lenosky as a teenager. That was a big deal. Then in 2001, the Vail Colorado worlds brought Koxx and the French to the USA… They rode like no one ever saw. Bruno Arnold… Young Vince, babyface Kenny, that was a mind blowing experience. Before that the Trialskings was the only thing on the internet for the most part, waiting overnight for small clips to download. A different world! Today has so much media out there, really can watch anything you want. There is a lot of greatness all over the biking world these days… too much fun out there today!
What are your perspectives on the trials biking scene in general and in North America in particular?
It is hard here. Always has been for trials but at least we used to be the red headed stepchild of mountain biking. Now we aren’t even in the picture. It takes a beginner a lot of time spent practicing Trials to get to be able to look moderately interesting… whereas you can jump on a Surron and twist your wrist and maybe go 100 feet in the air for an instant viral video. Trials may just be an old engineers game – someone that’s ok sitting and practicing for hours. From what I hear, no one wanted to continue being a Trials liaison with USA Cycling in the late 90s and that was basically it. I reached out to many different local MTB race organizers here when I moved, hoping to go and set up a trials comp or something in line with their events and only one was interested; the majority didn’t reply. It isn’t easily marketable here in the USA for some reason.
What would you like to see happening in North America with respect to bike trials?
I would love more events in the USA. They used to be at many MTB events, like an added bonus – tape around something you could ride through with your own MTB that you are already riding in whatever you are competing in. Trials was part of mountain biking. Now people just think you misspelled trails. USA had different factions in different parts of the country all doing their own series. There were tons of comps in Colorado, easy as pie when there are 30+ riders close by and unlimited rock piles everywhere! I fear I will blink twice and it will be 2048 and folks will be talking about “antique trials riding” as the modern MTBs suspension and new 38.75” wheels are finally made to remove all rocks and roots on the trail.
You seem to enjoy tinkering with old bikes and resurrecting them to ride trials (and MTB). What are your favorite types of bike projects – what aspects of these projects do you enjoy the most? Any builds that stand out in particular?
I do love playing with and riding older bicycles! Finding a cheap full bike on Facebook Marketplace, or finding some old bike at a Goodwill and using my hands to clean It up and make it back into something enjoyable to ride is good for the mind! I spent 2020-2023 kind of taking older MTBs I would find around North Carolina and fixing them up – sparked my new MTB love for sure. I have a little fleet of 26” older bikes that I can lend out to folks to ride about, simple V brakes and 26” tires will be an antique soon enough. Love working on real metal bikes, when you can bend something to make it work…that’s the ticket 🙂 In California I would recondition older bikes and make them 1x road machines, a brass bell with porteur bars wrapped and shellacked – those were some of my favorites. But Southern California has the great roads to cruise, now I am playing with older MTB frames and a 1989 rockhopper is still my favorite feeling geometry. Fully rigid, a fun machine to ride! You feel like a deer running in the forest on that bike, nothing I have ridden comes close.
Any interesting / funny / crazy bike trials stories or experiences you can share?
When headed up to SF to film with Dominik Raab – me, him, and 2 bikes in a tiny Jetta – it had rained, we were 20 mins outside of San Francisco. Back left tire hydroplaned then all four tires hydroplaned – we are in the fast lane – hydroplane into a pregnant woman’s car two lanes over, spin our car around at 70 mph – as we fly uncontrollably through 5 lanes of traffic we gave each other a look I’ll never forget – end up flying off the highway going backwards into a field through a fence. Car totaled. We were safe, it just slid for a while down a wet grassy hill. Still had the best riding trip ever after that. San Francisco is a special place to ride – a true 8-10 hour epic ride covering tons of miles and seeing beautiful parks and the sea.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start bike trials or has just started?
Just have fun! Take time practicing and when you get frustrated, just switch gears for a bit, go ride something different for a while. No reason to ever be angry riding a bike! Try to get a comfortable bike with decent brakes and enjoy yourself. You can start on any bicycle, trackstanding and feeling your connection to the bike. Slowly gain skills balancing and educate yourself on bike maintenance. Stick with anything you’ll get good – it takes time!!! Today’s equipment is amazing. I used to snap chains almost every ride. FSA power pro square taper cranks… Man, we rode with some crappy stuff!! Today even the lowest level stuff is better than a lot of what we had 20 years ago. For the budget minded, get a small older 26” wheeled MTB on Marketplace for $100, put decent brakes on, and have fun getting the basics down. If you are into it for sure, spend the money on a decent bike that hopefully a local rider can let you feel out and see if you like. Good luck!
Anything else about bike trials that you’d like to share?
If you get bored, try to ride with your opposite foot forward – now you get to be a beginner again! All the great riders can ride with their opposite foot forward, just pedal kicking is a mind melter! Have fun!
How do people find you online?
My Instagram is @tonkshred. My YouTube is @tonkshred where I recently uploaded a lot of the 20+ year old Trials videos from around Colorado.
Who is the one North American bike trials rider (any skills level) that you think I should interview?
I would love to hear from two people! One is Phil @tis_phil on YouTube. He has stories from back in the day competing in merry old England and he has lived in Colorado, USA for ?! decades now. The other person is a super-OG Jim Trigonis. He is over on Facebook and competed in USA trials in the very very early days. He used to be at California comps still shredding!!
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