6:15 A.M. Cold aluminum under your palm. You wheel the bike out of the truck bed ramp, and the whole machine feels heavier than it did the night before, when you loaded it. Heavier the way things get when they’re about to matter. Fog sits low over the track, clinging to tabletops and gathering around the corners. Gear goes on in ritual order: socks pulled tight, no wrinkles. Wrinkles become blisters by lap three. Knee guards, pants, chest protector, jersey, boots, then gloves. You flex your fingers, make a fist, release it.
Helmet last.
The world goes muffled and your own breathing is suddenly louder than anything else outside.
Motocross was written into Anthony’s story before he was born. He started racing at five years old alongside his brothers and cousins. But beneath the competition and comradery, there was an undercurrent that was rarely spoken about: getting hurt. Riders were carried off the track more often than anyone wanted to admit, but talking about it simply didn’t happen. It was part of the culture. You rode, you crashed, you got back up. Or, you were supposed to.
Anthony usually took jumps on the right, but on the day of his accident, he was forced to the left. As he launched into the air, he saw another rider’s bike lying across the path. He knew he was going to hit it. The impact was violent. It broke 10 ribs, bruised both lungs, and fractured vertebrae T3 through T8. As onlookers and riders rushed to help, Anthony repeated the words “I’m paralyzed. I can’t feel my body.”
10:56 A.M. The starter turns over and the engine catches with a vibration that goes straight to your chest. You keep it idling low, twisting the throttle just enough to feel the surge. As you roll toward the staging area with forty other bikes, the smell hits you. Exhaust, oil, and wet dirt warming as the sun finally breaks the fog. The front tire taps the steel gate. Time begins to slow.
You’re staring down the forty feet to the first turn, already reading it, running the sequence in your head. The bike isn’t idle anymore while your hand feather-holds the clutch at that razor’s edge between nothing and wide-open.
When we walked into Anthony and Kayla’s home, we saw the stairlift and Anthony immediately offered Nick a ride. A few minutes later, Nick was heading down the stairs at a snail’s pace, a stark contrast to the velocity Anthony has known for most of his life. He had always been in motion, admitting that the demands of racing meant he was hardly ever home. After settling into a career with UPS, his life took shape around work and riding: bike maintenance, weekends on the road, chasing start gates and the next challenge. The accident may have changed the tempo of life, but in slowing down, Anthony found a deeper connection with his friends and family. Still, no one stood closer to Anthony in the aftermath than Kayla.
11:00 A.M. The gate drops before your mind has finished bracing for it. Reflex takes over built from hundreds of hours of practice and racing. The rear tire bites. In an instant, the front wheel goes light as thirty-nine other bikes accelerate simultaneously. Dirt sprays off your helmet and shoulders like hail. You can’t hear individual engines anymore, just one mechanical roar swallowing the morning.
Kayla, Anthony’s wife, sat mostly quiet at the table during our interview, but she didn’t need many words to make an impression. Her story with Anthony began when she worked at a salon in the same shopping strip as his pizza shop. Anthony describes himself as the people-pleaser of the two, and Kayla as the fighter. She was the one waiting on hold with insurance, holding down the fort at home, managing renovations, and organizing fundraisers all while advocating for his care at the hospital.
Kayla stepped into the difficult work of loving Anthony through one of the hardest battles they had ever faced. Kayla sat quietly, but everything about her spoke of a fierce, steadfast love. Maybe that’s why Anthony has never stopped being himself, despite everything he’s endured.
11:01 A.M. You weight the outside foot peg through the first turn, elbows up, eyes on your line. Ahead, the first jump rises like a wave about to break. Your body knows what to do before your mind catches up: stand up, throttle up. The jump face surges under the front wheel. Then, the ground is gone.
Although this was the first time meeting in person, Nick’s first impression of Anthony wasn’t the stairlift. It was a picture of Anthony sitting in a hospital bed, on the phone, hospital gown on, a shit-eating grin on his face. That image says almost everything you need to know about him.
Anthony calls himself a “goofball,” someone who likes to have “too much fun,” and maybe drink a little too much. But what's most obvious is his light. He is easy to talk to, quick to smile, and even quicker to make you laugh. As he retells stories of being the first guy to send it down an unfinished double black on his bike, it’s also obvious that he’s the type who’d rather grind through difficulties than miss out.
11:02 A.M. There’s a half-second when the suspension finishes unloading, and then you are floating. Squeezing the bike between your legs, your stomach drops. The sensation is the same hollow, falling-up feeling as the top of a rollercoaster. Except, you’re the one steering.
Some people are cynical, believing that what happens to us simply happens - a roll of the dice, statistically rigged for losing. Anthony doesn’t pretend to understand why the accident happened, but he does believe we have a say in what comes next. We can either let circumstances write the rest of the story, or choose what comes after. His words have stayed with me:
“If your life is a story, there's no way you'd write a bad ending.”
11:02:22 A.M. Inexplicably, while in the air, there’s a moment of meditative stillness. The world slows to a crawl. Milliseconds stretch into what feels like minutes.
Like a race, life never tells you what is waiting on the other side. You don’t know how you will land, or how hard you will fall. Sometimes you turn the page and find yourself in a chapter you never expected to read. Anthony is learning to navigate a life that no longer follows the story he thought he was writing. Part of what drives him now is making sure fewer riders suffer life-altering injuries. He advocates for more open conversations about safety and for changes that could improve how accidents are handled. As bikes get faster and tracks grow more demanding, injury protocols must evolve with them.
11:03 A.M. In the air, your body instinctively makes the tiny weight shifts and corrections needed to level the bike. The crowd, the engines, the chatter through the foot pegs, the vibration in the bars. All falls silent. Above you, the blue sky stretches out, like the empty pages of a book.
Anthony is between floors, suspended somewhere between his old narrative and a new one. No one can predict the plot twists life will bring. Sometimes circumstances rip the pen from your hand and scribble in something you would have never chosen. Open Heart Outlaws exists to help pick that pen back up and hand it back when things are falling apart.
After Anthony was paralyzed, insurance refused to cover a "non-essential" stairlift. A whole story could be written about what, exactly, is non-essential about accessing every floor of your home. But Open Heart Outlaws isn’t bound by the same red-tape and was able to say “yes” when insurance said “no.”
This may not be the story Anthony expected to write, and he still doesn’t know what the ending will look like. But he knows he will fill the pages ahead with persistence, laughter, and the same irrepressible spirit that has carried him this far.
“I never gave up and I'm not going to give up. Even throughout this whole process, I'm me. I’m still Anthony.”
Still laughing.
Still smiling.
Still the light in the room.
