I Spent 2 Years Building My Dream Backyard

I love dirt bikes a lot. And ever since I was a little kid, I had dreams of becoming an X Games athlete, flipping dirt bikes, landing crazy tricks on live TV, just like Travis Pastrana. However, my parents had different plans. They wanted me to go to school. So I went to Carnegie Mellon University, get a degree in computer engineering and robotics, and get a steady job in tech. So that's what I did. And my dreams of becoming an X Games athlete went out the window. But I'm adult now, which means my parents can't tell me what to do anymore. So I'm going to go back to pursuing my childhood dream of doing crazy things on a dirt bike. And that all starts with building the most ultimate backyard ever. And in order to do that, we're going to need big and crazy machines. So the first thing I had to get was a dump truck. Behind me is the rare and ridiculous DumpyCo. We use this to move dirt from one location to another. Because as it turns out, dirt is actually surprisingly expensive. Even free dirt is expensive. That's because you got to pay a guy to drive his expensive dump truck and transport it here. And the amount of dirt we need is a lot. So it was actually cheaper to just buy our own dump truck and move it ourselves. So we have this huge pile that we need to move. I think we're going to try starting with that. We have so much work to do. Once we get this out of the way, we'll better start digging the pond even more. But before we can start moving the dirt with the dump truck, we need another machine that can fill the dump truck with dirt. And so I bought this machine, a massive caterpillar excavator capable of moving as much dirt as little Carter could have ever dreamed. This machine is strong enough to pick up cars and throw them, can easily smash cars, and is so heavy it weighs over 31 million grams. I wonder how many pounds that is. With these two machines, me and Matt got to work. I started driving the excavator, and this was the first time I have ever driven it. It is so big and so expensive. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was determined to accomplish my childhood dream and nothing was going to stand in my way. I'm not great on the controls. I got to take some time. This is literally like my first time driving. So it's going to take me a minute to relearn these things. It's been a long time since I spent time in one of these, and this arm being really long definitely changes things. There we go. That was better. I slowly got better at driving the excavator, and Matt slowly got better at driving the dump truck. We started to almost look like we knew what we were doing, until I made a dangerous mistake and slid the giant excavator into the pond, almost totaling it. Well, we got the thing stuck as I was about to literally park it. Maybe good thing we did move it and that didn't happen overnight. Luckily, our neighbor is a YouTuber who drives one of these every single day, so we called him and he came over within minutes, and I'm so thankful he did that because this machine would have been stuck at the bottom of this pond, flooded by tomorrow, completely totaling it. He was able to get it out just barely. That was a close call. I was like, call Chris. I was like, we gotta stop right there. After many weeks of hard work, long hours, late nights, and a few dangerous mistakes, we have moved so much dirt here to the backyard, but now it is time for us to actually start shaping into something interesting. And to do that, I'm going to need to buy yet another machine. And that is why I got this machine. It's called a skid steer. It's kind of like a bulldozer, and it's perfect for shaping the dirt into jumps. We are making progress. We got it all drained and scraped clean, all the water drained out into the grass, but it is still a little sloppy and muddy. I'm even just walking on it. You can see it's pretty, pretty squishy. That being said, we did get quite a bit of dirt scraped out and put up here, and we have it quite a bit bigger, but once Matt's able to compress it all down and get all the way up there on the skid steer, we're going to really shape this thing up. I can't believe it's up here. That's so cool. Okay, well, now that it's here, I guess I could try to drive down and start grading some of this, but it is pretty wet. Hopefully, it's not too steep. Maybe I could just go straight, bounce through it, and then I could start doing laps. That would be really cool. I am now about eight months into the project, and we finally have our first jumps taking place. I am so excited, so we're grabbing the dirt bike, and we're about to ride the track for the very first time. At first, the jump started small, but so did my skill level. I mean, you can't just go for a backflip your very first day, and I'm glad we did because I had some crashes. Oh, I think I did that one good. Shoot. Ah, Steven. Ow. Ow. Help. Get it off. Get it off. Get it off. Ow, ow, ow. Shoot. I took that one at the wrong angle. Ouch. Oh, I pinched my leg so bad, Steve. I crashed so bad. My leg. Ow. Your foot looks twisted. Can you move your ankle? No, I can't move. It's tingling so bad right now. Pretty quickly, my skill set grew, and so did my jumps. This is a full-size freestyle motocross ramp, the same they use in the X Games doing the biggest and craziest tricks. I might have jumped the gun on buying this, but I knew I had to have one. We built a massive dirt landing. It's already pretty darn tall, looking way down. Oh, wow. We brought the ramp out here, and to move it, we need to use the skid steer with the forks, slide it into those holes, and lift this heavy ramp up because it weighs too much for me to pick up. It's pretty heavy. It's solid metal. And we saddled up and tried hitting it for the very first time. Things are really starting to come together. It's really starting to look real. We are now loading up the ramp onto the skid steer so we can put it into place for the first time. This is where I'm really going to see it. Jumping this ramp with the dirt bike back with the dirt is going to be insane. The boys are testing it out. They're professional stuntmen and professional motocross racers, so these guys know what they're doing. Oh, and that's Matt. Looks like Matt is really thinking about it. He might actually hit this to dirt before I do, which is pretty wild. Here he goes. Oh, just hit the ramp. That's awesome. It doesn't even feel like you're leaving the ground. It's so, like, smooth. It's just, yeah. I think I'm ready to try it. I've seen everyone else do it. It's going to be my first time hitting this ramp to dirt. Oh, I flew on that. I launched. As soon as I got a taste of hitting a professional freestyle ramp, I wanted more. I was so determined. We picked this thing up. We went to the lake because I had to try a backflip. This was a trick I trained for a full year to accomplish, and I was lucky enough to be trained by Travis Pastrana's protege, Banksy. He came out here to the Timber House to train me, and I started on a BMX bike first. I learned that one pretty quickly, and then it was time to move on to the dirt bike. He taught me about leaning back, pulling as hard as you can, and holding to get that rotation. Unfortunately, that first year did not end well for me. I jumped off the dirt bike twice. One time it landed on my head underwater. The dirt bike got ruined, and I did not successfully land the backflip. But I didn't give up. A year later, I tried it again, this time more determined than ever. I tried it a few times with a huge fail, and then eventually I committed, and everything worked out perfectly, and I finally landed a dirt bike backflip into water. I finally did a backflip on a dirt bike. This is a huge milestone for me, which means the next step, I can start training to go to dirt. So I thought I was ready. So we moved the dirt bike ramp back out here to this jump to try to land the dirt bike backflip to dirt. I was so determined to be the first YouTuber to land a dirt bike backflip, and beyond excited to be doing it in my backyard. If you guys have been following me on my channel, you know exactly how this one went. I did a couple test jumps first, and then I went for it. This was the biggest fail that I have done in a very long time. Here we go. This is it. I'm ready. You ready? First backflip to dirt, man. Here we go. Oh, is that fast enough? Oh, s***. Carter! Carter, get back. Get in the bike. Get in the bike. Don't move. Don't move. Try to hold your neck nice and still. All righty, so we're going to have to get you onto the stretcher here. We're going to get you in the ambulance. So yeah, this fail really set me back. I ended up breaking my arm, going to the hospital, getting a cast, and not being able to ride my dirt bike for quite a long time. And this experience, unfortunately, is not new to me. It's not the first time I've crashed. Breaking my arm in the process and being that much further from my dreams of doing rare and ridiculous stuff here in the backyard of the Team RAR house. The dirt bike track is coming along better than I could have ever imagined. I am quite literally living my childhood dream, and if you guys are interested in seeing my progression with riding dirt bikes, doing crazy tricks, make sure you subscribe right now because I am not stopping. I'm only getting started.