Archive for July, 2007

Although Gilly is old enough to be my Dad, and is probably older than most people’s grandmas, he can still manoeuvre a bicycle around a little bit. Last Wednesday we had a final ‘Gilly’s day off’ session and had a little blast around King’s Park. These foot plants were pretty obscene, real old school. And if anyone’s old, it’s you Gilly!

Sometimes the photographs you just turn around and tae are the ones you like most. This is an example of that happening, except for the shadows across his ugly mug.

More seriously Gilly is proper ancient, but I’m going to miss the sessions we have at random places, and the fun times had by our trails chaps in the woods. Digging always involved constant banter, and was a good time, every time. Here’s a Vic Murphy inspired stunt.

Job hunting isn’t quite the easy task that I thought it would be when starting earlier this week. Agencies advertise jobs they don’t seem to have, and going round places the laborious way, one by one, is a time exerting task. Here’s what I’ve been up to lately. Firstly, my chick, someone put a photo of her on the side of a phone box. She’s amazing.

This sign is out in the sticks, about 2/3 of the way back along the 4 Mile walk I sometimes think is a great idea when I get leathered in town. Took a lot of concentration to take this.

Rum is officially the most dialled liquid ever. Pirates drink it too, which has got to be a good thing.

This rabbit is having a nap in the same place every time we go in the woods lately. Must be tired, it’s stiff as anything too.

We’ve been building something rad at the end of a line in the woods this week. More on that later. In the mean time, go watch the new cheltbmx.com video from Luke, featuring Cheltenham guys, and two weird looking hillbilly kids. Epic jam tonight because of the horrible weather I hear, lets do it.

Sat in my room glancing around last night, I thought I’d have a look through some old photo Cd’s from films that I took many years ago. It’s really fun to have a look at how things were way back when things were a little easier. This is a real gem, bikeshowmaster.com Poll down the old big line at his place, Kiddy. This was at the time I was still learning to really ride bigger trails, and always looked up to Poll when I saw him ride there, bossing everything and riding super smooth and flowy. 2002 some time.

Most of these pictures are taken pretty haggardly, with really bad composition. They were all either taken on single use cameras or this old basic 35mm I used to have. Eddie Chaffe, who I’m heading to Aussy with later this year, was twisting his Curtis MTB way before almost anyone else in the MTB world, and over pretty big jumps too. He’s still the raddest kid ever.

Dave Alexander was always pretty much my favourite person to ride the trails with. I grew up riding at Hornton Hill, and Dave started riding there a load soon after me, and whilst most people practiced racing the majority of the time, Dave, Harry and I would never leave the trails. Miss timed no foot can with Ed from Oxford posing in the middle of a jump at one of our last ever sessions there. Dave rode an S&M cruiser for a while, and now rides a little BMX still and a lot of motocross.

Laibes used to ride for 24seven for a while, and was famed for MTB street stuff. He too has not ridden a big wheel in many years, and I occasionally catch up with him a little in Route One in Oxford’s covered market, which he manages. Pretty sweet table from summer 2003

Here’s an overview of the bottom of the trails. They were pretty fast and downhill, and always really easy to over jump. Although a lot of the sessions, they were not in the best condition possible, I for one had some of the best days of my life hanging out down there. A 9 or 10 Mile ride from my house, I was always spent by the time I arrived, but never once was it not worth it.

This was probably late 2003, not long after I first got a BMX. That Macneil Miron was the heaviest damn bike in the world, but I always loved it. This spot is one I’ve wanted to go back to for ages, random hump in Leamington Spa. If Nick Thompson is reading this (who incidentally took this photograph), let’s make it happen! Tabletop hipping the boob shaped brick mound.

Tuck the same line. This is one of the best spots I’ve ever ridden, from what I remember. Maybe not quite as good now, but I remember it being dialled.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane as much as I have. Might do another similar update one day. Look out for some more recent content when this apparent monsoon season that we’re currently enduring finishes. Make the most of this rain, fix lumps or build new ones. Tallyho old chaps.

The old BlewBMX budget doesn’t quite stretch to cover flights to Canada so you’ll have to do with other peoples photos and videos… My cousin lives in Whistler so he might have taken a few photos, will find out. Red Bull have a few photos up.

Qualifiers

Finals

Double backflip mid run or triple whip mid run?! Way too nuts. Ryan Nyquist took the win, sounds like he wanted it too. Some good fly by the wire filming in there too.

Fat BMX have a good Elevation finals report. Picture from there. The last jump looks scary as hell, if not just because of the conctrete blocks at the bottom. Anyone who knows me will know how much I like to faceplant the back of jumps at every oppourtunity!

Also go read Homer’s new passion zine. Some fancy photos, the best of which is someone jumping a tractor! Too loose.

From the Dig site. Photo © Brad Simms. A boost at Matt Hoffman’s BMX park in Oklahoma.

There are some videos that EVERYONE should see. Marc gave me a mix tape of old videos a while ago and one of them was Home of the brave. It’s basically just a bunch of people flowing trails real good… Watching them just always made me wanna ride real fast. Anyway, Transmission have posted an interview with Stew Johnson which is worth a read.

The dirt at NASS has been cancelled apprently so that pretty much sucks, dirt jumping has taken a beating this year… The main event is still on and you can win a pair of tickets here on the Dig site!

Here’s a Goods BMX video, worth a watch.

Also a trailer for the Empire BMX Chill Bro video. Icepick grind to tailwhip?

I sorted the site hacking problem for the moment so hopefully it won’t come back…

Some people have said the site comes up with a hackers page… This hasn’t happened to me yet so it’s probably a DNS hack, if your reading this then it hasn’t filtered through yet or it’s been fixed! I don’t know whats going on yet so hopefully it will be okay. Keep checking back, cheers.