He Provides the Vanilla

The most extreme athlete at the X Games sips on his plain Pepsi and smiles.

He is thinking about the plumbing fixtures for his new house. He is talking about an episode of “The Sopranos.” He mentions the crazy thing he’ll do next.

“When I leave here, I think I’ll have lunch with my wife and read USA Today,” he says.

The most bizarre competitor at the bizarre olympics is Dennis McCoy, a stunt bike rider who sticks out at this gnarly-fest like a manicured thumb.

He is -- gulp, wheeze -- 36 years old.

“They call me ‘Grandfather’ ... but they’ve been calling me that since I was 22,” he says.

He doesn’t have a tattoo.

“I tell some of these kids, ‘If I got a tattoo at your age, I’d have Judas Priest on my back for the rest of my life,’ ” he says.

He doesn’t wear earrings. He doesn’t wear a mohawk. He doesn’t wear an apple-adorned T-shirt that reads, “Rotten to the Core.”

And, miracle of miracles, he is the only male within a three-block radius of the Staples Center mosh pit whose underwear doesn’t creep halfway up his back.

“I’m amazed the guy is still going,” says fellow biker Josh Harrington, a middle-aged man of 19.

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You watch these kids flying and spinning and even somersaulting on their bikes during Thursday’s opening day of X Games competition, and you wonder.

Did any of them ever stick playing cards in their spokes?

Old man Dennis McCoy did.

“All the time,” he says. “We did it with clothespins. We wanted our bikes to sound like the car on ‘Smokey and the Bandit.’ ”

You watch the first practice round of the Bike Stunt Vert competition, serious kids doing serious leaps that could seriously injure, and you ask.

Does anybody around here remember what it was like when bikes were bikes?

Codger Dennis McCoy does.

“We used to have a brick-and-board jump on the sidewalk in front of our house,” he remembers. “One time the guy across the street was offered a half-gallon of ice cream if he could jump with no hands. He ended up in an ambulance. Those were the days.”

It is those days that make McCoy so refreshing these days, a man with that rare X Games commodity known as perspective.

“I remember what it was like to ride around at night with a bunch of friends, police and security guards chasing us, the rest of the world hating us,” he says with a grin. “Now, everybody wants to know what makes us tick.”

Twice as old as some of his competitors, McCoy has competed in each of the eight previous X Games, holds championships in all four bike disciplines, but one statistic amazes him most.

“I’ve never held a real job, ever,” he says.

Yet he pulls in more than six figures annually and has made enough money to retire today in his nearly completed 5,000-square foot home outside Kansas City, Mo., a legend whose name rarely makes the newspaper.

“People used to scream, ‘Isn’t it past your bedtime!’ when I rode past their houses,” he says. “Now look at us.”

Now look at him, indeed. He has become thirtysomething in a sport where stars retire in their twenties. He has grown leaner while pants have grown baggier. He has grown quieter while music has grown louder.

An extreme survivor, this guy whom a competitor recently called, “Mr. McCoy.”

“Now that freaked me out a little bit,” he says.

To those who think the X Games are a fad, Dennis McCoy is an important reminder that they have become as steady as his 12-year marriage and as suburban as his huge new home.

This weekend’s downtown trappings will seem like those of a wild and wanton youth -- think heavy metal, heavy piercings, heavy attitude -- yet the reality is that the X Games have become a Why Not event that has helped a man exist for 15 adult years without regular work.

“It’s bizarre,” he says.

How long has he been around? Sometimes his competitors act like a kid dunking on Michael Jordan.

“After an event, he’ll say stuff like, ‘Man, somebody just beat me with a trick I invented!’ ” says Harrington. “The guy is, like, a legend.”

How much of a price has he paid? Just look at his wrists. After four surgeries, he can’t bend them back.

“I can’t open jars, but I can still spin the bars,” he says.

He has suffered a busted knee, broken jaw, collapsed lung, and been hit in the head so much that he winces when he hears stories about former quarterback Troy Aikman.

“He retired after five concussions and I’m like, ‘I’ve had 20!’ ” he says.

Some of the kids compete for huge sponsorship money and national fame. Old man McCoy competes because, well, he’s still a boy, and it’s still a bike.

“No matter how injured I am, when I’m on the bike is the only time I never feel any pain,” he says.

So Dennis McCoy will climb aboard again Sunday afternoon for the bike stunt vert finals, on network television, ABC at 7 p.m.

He’s come a long way from cruising down sidewalks after dinner, listening to his wheels chirp in the twilight, sweet music to those who wouldn’t know a tailwhip from a sprocket grind.

“You should have seen my banana seat,” he says.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.