On Monday morning after the FISE contest in Montpellier Sean Hargraves, Ryan Guettler and Andy Buckworth made it to the 12h23 TGV train to Paris. However at 12h00 Maxime Charveron and Dave Rytell were still missing. Sean had the tickets for both of them and they literally had to run to the train station in order to make the ride. The train was running late (strike in France?!) so the two met up with the others and were off to Paris for a few days of shooting pics for the Mirraco site, the 2010 online catalog
When I entered the Home Depot Center (HDC) I did not believe what I saw. I felt like I had shrunk to the size of Minimi or something else that is really small. The Big Air set up was unbelievably huge. I had seen photos and videos of it but that doesn't do it justice. The roll-in was massive and lead to two 70 feet gaps (21 meters) with a 50 feet (15 meters) gap in the middle. The take offs were the size of freestyle motocross jumps and the landing was even bigger than the trucks these FMX-guys are usually using. The quarterpipe that followed
Actual Journal Entry from March 16th, 1996: Woke up real early with Melissa. She dropped me off at the LAX & I flew to Brownsville, Texas. Got in at 5pm & drove to South Padre Island for the ESPN “Destination Extreme” Freestyle Contest. I got there & hooked up with Dave Mirra & the Hoffman Bikes crew. We went to their room & drank & hung out. Then the whole crew walked to a huge club. There were people everywhere (It’s Spring Break here). But it was mostly full of lame “jock” types. We walked back & Mirra & I tried to sneak into the Hoffman crew’s hotel but security chased us out.