HiRidaz entertain at motorcycle rally

MOSES LAKE - Wheelies, stoppies, cyclones, burn outs and walking the dog - exciting names for heart-stopping stunts brave young men perform in the extreme motor sport known as Stunting.

Riding high-powered street machines, the stunters spend hours a day practicing dangerous tricks that test the riders balance, strength and agility.

"Me and Crow started stunting," Daemian Petretti, founder of the HiRidaz of Spokane, said and "kids just started showing up."

Finding a place to ride is always difficult, he added.

"We've been run off as many as four parking lots a night," said Petretti, who advocates keeping the stunts "off the street" but sometimes there's "nowhere to go."

Stunting on the street is dangerous but many riders start there because it's easier to do wheelies at high speed than slow.

"Riding in parking lots is hard," Petretti said, because it's much more difficult to practice at slow speeds. "Some of them will never come off the street," he added, which gives a bad name to legitimate stunters.

Aaron James, a three-year veteran of the sport, gave a simple answer when asked why he engages in such a dangerous activity.

"I love to do wheelies," he said. "I saw it on TV and just had to do it."

James' bike, a GSXR 750, is his first stunt bike and shows its battle scars, looking more like a machine that's doomed for the junk heap than the crowd-pleasing bike it is.

"This sport, it's like a fist fight every day," Peteretti said, addressing the issue of injuries which range from broken hands and feet to "road rash," which is caused by skin sliding across pavement.

The HiRidaz thrilled the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Rally attendees with three shows on Airway Drive Saturday.