Bart de Jong
Ryan Barspinner and the Team Soil crew are teaming up with Al D and will be doing a bmx show on Monday 21 April at the local college "ESU" at 5pm. The riders for the show are: -James Foster
-Chris Hughes
-Joel Hulsey
-Surfer Mike X
The Sea Otter BMX race today went pretty well, expect for the powerful wind that was pretty much constantly blowing all day long, with stronger gusts of wind every once and a while giving the riders a difficult time in the gate and with the jumps. Most of the riders played it safe by manualling the jumps and rollers instead of jumping them. Even with the riders playing it safe the wind still caused a problem. With the weather being dry and the wind so intense the dust was everywhere, sometimes causing the race track to not be visible. 
Newly crowned National BMX Champion, Melissa Mankowski, has given selectors a reason to keep her in mind when nominations are made for the Australian Olympic Team in June. Mankowski today proved she should not be written off as a chance of making the Beijing Olympics when the sport debuts in August. The 20 year old was desperate for the win on the final day of racing at the Adelaide Showgrounds after apprehension about riding the Supercross course last weekend saw her withdraw. 
Pretty much straight after practice the T-mobile party boat was leaving for a 3 hour ride in Germany's biggest industrial area. The Ruhrgebiet is dirty, it smells and is very ugly. Maybe that's why the boat trip was organized at night. We didn't see much as we were staying close to the bank (A to the Z) and had a few of those German beers. Good times (always) when everyone is at the same spot and noone left the party early this time. 
The contest with the longest name in contest history is about to take place in Duisburg, Germany. Today is practice and the full program will be held tomorrow. Of course I forgot the battery charger and my camera indicates that the battery is half empty, of half full. We'll see if we can fix that to give you some more shots of the riding over here in Germany. All riders have arrived. Ben Wallace got here without his bike which got stuck at the infamous "Terminal 5" at Heathrow airport. Let's hope it shows up in time so he can ride here and fly to the USA with the bike for the LET on Monday straight after the comp.The jumps are nothing too spectacular. A big roll in followed by three big sets. The first one is huge, the second a bit shorter and the last one the shortest. Built by Benny Paulsen and whoever was around yesterday to lend a helping hand. The dirt was super wet and they left the heater on all night to make the jumps rideable. Because of German regulations the some pallets were used underneath the jumps to save on weight. Strange how that works as they are building up a stage at the end of the jumps for a live concert and drive in the 
Crupi Parts, Inc is proud to announce the signing of US Olympic hopeful, Tyler Brown. Tyler has been shopping for a ride since the end of last season and Bill Ryan from Supercross had stepped up to support Tyler since early on this season. But now Tyler has found a home with Crupi and Crupi is lucky to have him! “This was a big and bold move for Crupi” said Crupi President, Greg Swingrover, “but one we could not afford to pass up”. Swingrover went on to say that “Tyler is not only an accomplished rider but a terrific fit for Crupi.” 
GOOD NEWS !!! Day 82: Today's exam showed that both of Mike's retinas are detached. They feel that they have been detached since the original accident. Next they will call in or send Mike to a retinologist. This will have to be on a cash basis per the Ophthalmologist. Detached retina's are more common and we hope 
We are sorry to say we'll be busy moving FBM for the next several days, and we will likely be without phones and internet for about 1 week. Earlier in the week we were informed that the building we are attached to, was being condemned, and its our only access to our loading dock. We then found out the building was going to be sealed, and torn down, giving us no access to anything, but a stairwell, putting us in code violation, and also trapping us in the basement space we rent. We basically found out yesterday, we had until sunday to find a