A Conversation With Biker/Skater/Rig Pig/All Around Cool As Fuck Kid, Kynan Tait

Many of you have surely seen our VBS special ‘Doin It Baja’, which followed skaters Arto Saari, Heath Kirchart, Keegan Sauder, Patrick O’Dell, Hime Hu, and their guide, Bill Bryant on a 2200 mile motorcycle trip from San Diego to the tip of Baja California, Mexico. You may also remember the two calm and collected Canadians who joined them, Kynan Tait and Harvey Foster, providing a very endearing bromantic subplot. Kynan provided us with these beautiful photos of the trip, so I thought I would call him up to find out if he’s as modest and mysterious as he seemed through Patrick O’Dell’s camera lens. As it turns out, he is.

VICE: So you’re in Mexico?

Kynan Tait: Yeah. Tonight I’m in La Paz but I’ve been staying in Loreto, Southern Baja. I came down here about this time two years ago on what was supposed to be kind of a skate trip, I came with Keegan Sauder and Arto Saari and Heath Kirchart and we came down here on a motorcycle/skating trip but we quickly learned that there really wasn’t much of anything to skate here.

And you met those guys on the Emerica Wild Ride in 2008?

Yeah, I had just bought myself a bike and I was planning a ride down to Baja but then when I was doing the research for it I found a posting on Emerica’s website that they were getting ready to do the Wild Ride so my friend Harvey Foster and I put the Baja trip on hold and met all of them somewhere in South Carolina. Luckily enough, Patrick O’Dell and those guys did a Baja ride the next year so I finally got to do it.

What bike had you just bought?

A brand new 2008 Sportster. That was my first bike. My parents had Harleys and when I was 6 they took me and my 4-year-old brother out of school for a few months and we did a huge US trip, it ended up being a sturgis kind of vacation. I knew as soon as I got my motorcycle license that I wanted a Harley.

So does everyone just ride Harley’s?

Heath really started it for the Emerica guys. He was the only one on the team who had a bike, and he and Justin Regan started the Whole Wild Rides thing and Harley Davidson sponsored it and gave the team a discount on bikes so a lot of the guys on the team ended up buying one, but I think Heath and Leo are the only guys who still have bikes on the team.

Were there any bad wipe-outs on the Baja trip?

At the end of the Baja trip, Keegan had the worst slam I’ve ever seen. Because we were in Mexico nobody was wearing helmets the whole time, but on the last day we were heading through Ensenada towards Tijuana, and the cops are a little more diligent that close to the border so everyone put their helmets back on. Keegan had gotten pretty cocky throughout the trip riding through these old washboard dirt roads and he was going way too fast on a really dusty road and he didn’t see this really steep bump in the road, hit it way too fast and went head over handlebars. He was basically sliding on his head on the side of the road – if he didn’t have that helmet on he would’ve been seriously injured.

What’s the worst accident you’ve been in?

Nothing too crazy, I think the worst I’ve gone down is riding around Victoria one day with a few friends and I ended up riding through an oil slick for a full city block and I didn’t really realize it until I got to an intersection, slid straight through it and went down. The bike and I were ok, luckily enough.

You’re from Victoria?

I was born and raised on Vancouver Island. I still love it, I moved to Vancouver a couple of years ago and I kind of regretted it. I really like the island I much prefer it to Vancouver to be honest.

Where do you live now?

Uh, I’m homeless right now, actually. I went to work in the oil patch in Northern BC, like near the Northwest Territories, for a few months, but then when I got back, I did not want to be in Vancouver anymore so I packed up all my stuff and put it into storage and came down to LA. I’ve been in LA since September, and I’ve been staying there up until about a week ago, when I came to Mexico, but yeah I don’t really live anywhere right now. I stayed with Patrick for like a week on and off… I stayed on everybody’s couch; Randy from No Age, and with Jerry Tsu, it always worked out that someone was going on tour, so their apartment was open for a week, I was kind of just floating around.

Why do motorcycles and skating go so well together?

I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s the best combination for me. It’s a nice natural crossover for some reason. I don’t really know what it is. Sometimes, riding down the highway, in and out of cars kind of feels like maneuvering around a skate park.

What’s the story behind the photo with the gutted cow?

That’s classic Mexico. Nothing goes to waste here. I think it was pretty freshly dead. I pulled over first and then some guys pulled up in a truck with machetes, and they didn’t really say anything to me, they just walked up and started cutting it up.

If you could bring your bike and skate anywhere in the world where would it be?

Arto Saari had a really good idea after we finished the Baja trip of doing a trip where we’d go up to Anchorage, Alaska, and take a Ferry across the Bering Strait into Russia and then through Mongolia and Kazakhstan and basically zig zag your way down to the very tip of South Africa; Tiera del Fuego. But I think next year I’m going to do a solo bike trip through India.

Say you’re chillin as a crew with the Emerica team, and you got all your bikes and your boards, do chicks ever come up and lurk hard?

Um… no. Some of the guys, maybe, but not me.