Friday, April 5

BMX Update 04.05.02

By Josh Root
EXPN.com

This Update comes to you from beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark. Blond girls, excellent candy, friendly local riders, and a language I can't begin to understand. What more could you ask for? I finally figured out where Nathan Penonsek has been hiding. To escape the dismal Canadian winters, he's been living in Madrid, Spain and riding with Jorge Gomez and Martti Kuoppa (another rider who has to flee the nasty winter). The bad news for him is that I have his phone number now. Which means that he'll have a group of Northwest riders on his floor as soon as it starts to rain in the fall.

Ian Morris and the Seventies crew did a great job of putting on the Telford Backyard Jam. If you don't remember, the BYJ's were a contest series that was pretty huge back in the early 90's. But the guys decided to take a break for a while and just this year have started them up again. I was pretty blown away by the level of riding. Especially from riders who I hadn't known much about before. Dan Price, Sergio Layos, Mike Lausman, and a bunch of others all joined Miron, Wiz, Reuben, Berrenger, Rob-o, and the usual cast of great riders who show up at events like this.

It's always hard to remember what exactly went down at a good contest . There's just so much going on, it starts to all blur together. Wiz feebled up the long box ledge to manual off to 180 truckdriver off the other side. Miron tailwhiped the long box to manual down the other side. John Heaton flip-manualed the snowplow/subbox setup. Reuben once again pulled an amazing giant transfer out of his never ending bag of tricks. The list goes on and on and I feel bad because I can't rememeber all the amazing stuff that people did. Basically, you should have been there. Check out the various video magazines if you want to see moving pictures of the crazy riders on their little bikes. Jay won, if you're one of those who find that sort of thing important.

The Bike 2002 contest also happened recently. While the vibe was kind of weird at the venue, the riding was good and I got to see Gary Young win street. Gary rides for Dirt Bros and is a great guy, so I was stoked for him. In between those two contests Seventies ran a skatepark tour around to the various London area parks. The riders were a rotating cast of all the pros who were in town and felt like showing up. Sounds like it was a pretty good show. There should be an article in an upcoming issue of Dig. So you can check it out there. Van Homen was up and riding in the Telford Backyard Jam. He looked a slight bit rusty ......maybe. But it's probably just that everyone holds him up to such a high standard. So anything less than mind blowing makes us think he's off his game. In all truthfulness, he rode great and pulled as inventive of tricks as ever. Huge wallride to 180 out anyone? Another guy who seems to be almost done recovering is Joe Rich. Sounds like he's itching to get back on his bike. And after over a year off of it, I don't blame him.

The Palavas Contest is fast approaching. The amateur on April 6-7 and the pros (and top am's I think) on the 12-14. I don't know what the story is on getting into the Am contest, but the guys at Fresh Bikes in France are getting the whole thing together and should be able to help you out. Even if you are a dumb american who can't speak french. While we were all in Toronto, Dave Freimuth's sweetie left him a message to say that he was now the proud owner of a giant snowblower (since he had ditched her for the contest and wasn't around to do his household chore of shoveling the driveway). Dave seemed strangely excited about the whole thing.

It's easy to get let down by videos you thought were going to be good, but I can't seem to stop being stoked for the Etnies video. The preview looks great, the riders are all stoked about the parts they filmed, and it should be out next month.

And finally, Mat Hoffman is back riding Skyway Tuff Wheels (mags to those of you who are young-uns) again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

P.S. Speaking of old school BMX. "ET" is back out in theaters (well I think it is, I can't read anything here in Denmark). So go check out the radabonzical 80Os BMX action by Bob Haro and the rest of the ET crew.