Chris Young Answers pt3

Chris Young is a good guy.
Says good things.

"It was also around this time that Jay's Schwinn sponsorship was coming to an end, and he and was already pretty far along with starting MacNeil, but it wasn't public knowledge yet. That year at Interbike, just days after X-Games 2000, MacNeil was born. I wasn't too involved with MacNeil until about 2002 just as things were starting to peak. By this time, Ten Pack Distribution was in full swing, we'd started the Metro Jam contest series in 2003, and that was a huge part of my life. I was planning, designing and doing the event management, and then come the weekend of the contest, staying up for days on end getting it up and running, then partying through the whole thing. Good times.

Since we were only working 20 hours per day, we figured we could find something to fill the other 4 hours of time, and so Red Bull Elevation was born – and that changed everything. Those events were really big time, so it kind of took over our lives. The day-to-day design duties for MacNeil had been passed over to Harrison Boyce by this time, which helped to free up some time on my end. So with all cylinders firing, we were able to keep that chaos running from 2000 until 2008. I hit the burned out stage in late 2007, and then left Ten Pack/World Bicycle Sports in 2008 just after Red Bull Elevation in Guadalajara, MX. Might as well leave on a high note, it was an epic contest, one for the history books for sure.

It wasn't long after that Jay hit the wall. His frustration with the industry left him wanting more, and that's when he sold MacNeil to Darcy and Jamie.

So, wow, that’s almost more of a biography – but that’s just how stuff went down – that was the job. It was never the same thing day in and day out. While the job started as a right place right time kind of a gig, it continued on because of dedication to making things happen and because Jay knew that we could do it, and even more-so, that he could take off for a few weeks at a time to tour Europe and we’d get it done. There were a lot of late nights and hard work that we never got paid for, but we got to travel a bunch, see and ride things we’d never be able to do otherwise. It was a lot of fun, and I miss it from time to time, and I’m glad I did it.

Feel free to hit me back if you’ve got any other questions.

-- chris"