TERRY

A personal portrait of Terry Cox, collector and trader of cool stuff, bicycle rider, dragster driver, and family man.

I grew up before the Internet and cell phones, when kids were kind of free-range.

You know, we left in the morning when the sun came up and were expected to be home when the sun went down. And we had a lot of freedom.

As we got older, you know, I grew up in a car family, and my dad was into drag racing and hot rodding, so there was a lot of crossover in the early years of BMX.

So, a lot of the guys who could weld chromoly tubing were making drag racing race car chassis, and they started making BMX frames for their kids. Like, Gary Turner, with GT Bicycles. You know, that all started because Gary’s kid kept breaking frames.

And so he made him a chromoly frame, and it did really good on it, so he made one for the neighbor kid, and then they ended up creating, you know, an international bike company that’s still in existence today.

Driving the dragster is like nothing else, and I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s full sensory overload.

Every single atom in your body is at attention, alert. When you first start driving those cars, they drive you, you know; you’re just playing catch-up.

I can’t say that you’re not nervous at times, but as soon as the motor starts, you don’t think about fear. There’s no room for it. Everything happens too fast. Very small actions have huge consequences when you’re dealing with that kinda horsepower numbers.

But when you get a few laps in, and you’re really on top of that beast, and you’re actually the driver driving it, putting it where you want it on the race track, and making it do what you wanna do–there’s no more incredible feeling in the world.

More often than not, things find you. Like the phone rings, or something comes through the door at the shop, or you’re driving down the street, and you see an item that catches your attention.

As much of a collector, like, you know, we view ourselves as caretakers. Yeah. Things come to you, and you take care of them. And then sometimes you pass them onto people that maybe will take better care of them than you.

To some extent, I’ll drive, race, buy, sell, and collect until I’m dead.