OGDEN (AP) — Even dinged, dusty and derelict, Mike Poulson's trophies shine like a sea of treasure. The gleaming chrome and polished gold glint, reflecting not only sunshine but his youthful glories.
So many glories that they present a problem.
The uncounted trophies, hundreds of them, many 4 feet tall or taller, were stored in his parents' shed until last month. Now his parents are gone and he either had to bring them home or toss them.
He brought them home, but what do you do with your past glories when they clog the back yard?
His trophies are huge because his glories were huge. In the 1980s Poulson, who now lives in a neat little home on Harrison Boulevard, ruled bicycle motocross the way Lance Armstrong rules road biking.
Poulson was Utah state champ five years running.
He was world champ, in his age bracket, twice.
He was on the cover of magazines, featured in bike catalogs and a star of the Schwinn factory team. He endorsed shoes and helmets. Magazines hailed him as one of the 100 best ever.
He even had his own bubble gum card. And what does this world champion do now?
He is "Mr. Sprinkler." He installs lawn sprinkler systems. One year in high school he made $60,000 riding his bicycle, but you can't race a bike forever, and even a champion has to pay the rent.
Poulson, now 41, was a kid in Layton when the motocross bug hit. His dad bought him a Stingray bicycle that he tricked up, but the jumping scared his mom so his dad switched it for a bike not suited to that sort of thing.
It didn't work. "I busted the front fork jumping," he said.
He pulled out a picture of a little kid on a bike suspended in mid-air over two parked cars. That's him, about 12, he said, trying to be Evel Knievel. "My brother rigged up the ramp. My parents weren't home, of course."
He dug out a home movie his dad shot of his first race ever, up at the track near Smith & Edwards on the Box Elder-Weber county line.
"I was just, like, 12 years old and I won all five of my motos that I raced," he said.
The movie showed a skinny little kid on a skinny little bike, pedaling like mad around hay bales, always in the lead.
"I won the first race and was really into it because it was kind of your own thing, you didn't have to rely on teammates or that," he said.
He started riding competitively, first with the sponsorship of Bingham's Cyclery, then with Schwinn, the bicycle maker.
When he was 14, his parents took him to Corona, Calif., for his first national race. At that race, he said, he was told he should sign up as a novice, "but I said if I'm going to get beat, I want to get beat by the fastest," so he signed up in the expert class.
"I got sixth place in the open. That kind of gave me a gauge."
He went home, trained, went to Las Vegas the next year and came in third in the 14-year-old expert class.
After that, "same thing," he said. "I went home and trained until the February race in Phoenix. I wound up winning the 15 expert class. It's like the country dude from Utah beating all the city slickers."
And so it went. He won the world championship when he was 15, joined the Schwinn factory team, then turned pro when he was 17.
But it was a grind.
"I raced probably three times a week," he said. "When I was a pro I was gone 45 out of 52 weekends a year. People say, 'Hey, you get to go to all these places.' But you go, you put your bike together, you ride all day, you go to sleep, you get up, you ride the next day, you get on a plane and go home."
It got old. He quit wanting to win.
"I just wasn't into it, I was into going and seeing my friends," he said, which is, of course, not the right attitude.
The biking world changed, too. Regular BMX went out, "freestyle" came in, where riders do tricks and jumps. He found himself an old man, in his 20s, in a younger man's sport.
"I just kind of stopped," he said. "I ended it myself. I got tired of being pumped. You've got to breathe it, to be psyched. I had raced every weekend for 12, 13 years. I had missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, all those things."
Biking was tough on his body. He broke a leg and a collar bone, dislocated both shoulders. It all left him, in his early 20s, deciding what to do next.
"I could have worked for Schwinn, they offered me a job in California, but I didn't want to move down there," he said.
He got a job at Bingham's Cyclery for a while, worked for a local department store and finally went into the family business with his father installing sprinkler systems.
Now his bikes hang like ripe fruit from the ceiling of his jammed garage. He can name each one, discuss its technical specifications, talk about the races he won on it.
His basement is full of memorabilia: pictures, posters, models, pins, badges, autographs and more.
And his back yard, for the moment, is a sea of trophies. Pick any trophy, he can tell which race it was from, describe the track, tell who came in second.
"It's like it was another life," he said, looking over them as they glinted. "And I guess it's an accomplishment."
Now his day is filled with scratching his dog's belly and discussing the woes of running his own business: the customer complaints, the employee problems, the stresses and strains.
Does he still ride? He has to.
"When you're riding you can't think of anything else," he said. "You aren't thinking of the bills to pay or anything. You have to concentrate on where you're going, what you're doing. I liked it, that's why my parents didn't let me get a motorcycle."
But his parents aren't around any more.
A little while ago he bought a gasoline engine kit for his mountain bike. He pedaled it down the sidewalk until the engine caught, then let in the clutch and took off.
He zoomed down the street, weaved among the cars, turned sharply, one foot down to skid on the ground, zoomed back, turned again.
He didn't jump over anything. Harrison Boulevard doesn't have any ramps.