What's missing in the list of London, New York and Paris? Amsterdam of course. It might not be the most exotic trip to do since it's only a 2-hour drive (or less), but there was a good reason this time for a day-trip to the Dam because Ben Hennon invited us to have a couple of drinks for his B-day. The plan was to go by train for obvious reasons but sometimes the train system doesn't work well. Some of it was blocked so parts of the trip would have to be done by bus, adding to the travel time. On the way up that might not be much of a problem but going back, you don't want to be stuck somewhere. Instead we drove over to the NDSM-Plein North of the city centre. Parking in Amsterdam is a problem but at the NDSM-Plein it's lots cheaper and if you can find an empty spot, parking is free. We managed to find a spot hoping it wasn't false parking but it was worth taking the risk.
The NDSM Plein has hosted several BMX events. Also the former shipyard was used to build ramps for the Red Bull Framed Reactions event back in 2012. Red Bull used to have their offices there and the place is full of graffiti which is always nice to look at. Next to the restaurants there are also some bars where we met up with Ben Hennon and family. They had taken the wrong ferry from the city centre to the NDSM-Plein and were thirsty for the first beer to say the least. Ben and his dad Tony are legends. We have traveled to many events where we ended up closing the bar.
Knoxfield skatepark was already a good park to ride but now with the new plaza extension it's become one of the staple parks to ride in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Heading to Switzerland, and not to the UCI offices, that's a thing of the past now. For the third year in a row Philip and I have driven to Frauenfeld for the MXGP. It's one of the first ones of the season (in March) and the past two years it was held on Easter weekend where we took our bikes to hit up the local pump tracks, Winterthur BMX track, Skills Park and more. This time however we had no "day-off" to enjoy ourselves.
Hit me up for any trip really. Doing this together with my son Philip has been enjoyable. This year it almost felt like he was taking me on a trip. He had taken home the Twin Air Sprinter van the day before departure which we loaded up for the 4-day trip to Frauenfeld. Philip's 22 now and works for Twin Air as a Jr. Product Manager where he develops air filters and such for factory teams like Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, KTM, and Triumph. With Philip driving the van, I had the chance to continue doing my computer work from the road. Hotspots + laptop = work from wherever. It made the 8-hour trip a breeze really.
For the weekend we experienced "van-life" as we had parked in the paddock of the Grand Prix and weren't going to leave. The only time we used our BMX bikes was to eat a pizza with Eric Mulders, who runs the Twin Air Grand Prix Services and had also parked his van between the factory rigs.
Friday afternoons are for clocking out and dropping in. We caught up with Sean Gardner, Mitchell Campbell, and Renato Rancso as they headed straight from the LUXBMX warehouse to Woodridge Skatepark to burn off some weekday steam.
Okay, the reason for the flight to Vilnius was the Ride The Dragon comp, but thanks to Martynas Martin we got to see a big part of the city on our weekend trip. It started off with the event host taking me to a traditional Lithuanian restaurant. The locals know what that means: pink soup and potatoes with meat inside. That berry drink that they serve on the plane must be a Baltic thing as well as the restaurant offered the drink with the lunch meal. Cold Beetroot soup isn’t normally my thing, but hey, gotta dig in and finish it up. It’s healthy apparently so why not. The Cepelinai meat potatoes were very good though. Very filling as well so no food was needed after this. Martynas showed me his killer park but more on that in the event report. My hotel was a bit outside the city centre but I got to hang out with Martynas, his girlfriend, Markus Wilke and Jacub Benda who all stayed downtown.
Vilnius has reached 1 million inhabitants and is the capital of Lithuania. Most of the old town is on the Unesco list which should tell you something about the history of the place. Lots of churches, statues, castles, parks showing its history. Of course we had to stop by the local White Bridge skatepark along the Neris river. It was packed on the Saturday night. The park has some bowls, plenty of rails, banks, and it made of concrete. Right next to it there were basketball fields, ping pong tables and shops across the street will provide you with the food and drinks you need. Nice location for sure.
Diamond Creek skatepark is an old park with one of the best 6ft mini ramps you'll ride in Melbourne. It's also built from old crete so it is grippy and dries quicker.
Valencia, Spain. I’d never been. Spanish sun early March was the plan but it turned out to be the opposite. 17 degrees and full sunshine at home and clouds, wind and rain at 16 degrees scheduled for our destination. Damn, that dark cloud keeps following us this year. The 5am departure for Eindhoven airport was early, but that meant the arrival in Spain was in the morning, which left us with some time to explore.
Basically I had no idea what to expect. Valencia isn’t really known as a BMX city. The big white buildings are what comes to mind, but other than that, not much really.
Dandenong skate park is located 40 minutes south east of Melbourne, it's one of those parks that you would ride if you were in the area but not specifically rive out to ride. It has some unique fun setups and the box jumps work quite well.
There’s a risk in booking a trip to New York during winter. But we did not expect record low temperatures. -16 Celsius (feels like -27) with snow on the ground isn’t what we expected when we booked a few months prior. Sometimes KLM has these good Holiday Deal offers. This one was €550 for a flight including a hotel near Times Square for 3 nights. They don’t come around like that often, so you can’t be too picky. Currently they offer the same trip starting at €989.
I kept an eye on the weather forecast for weeks prior to the trip and it was bad the entire time. Doing that helps prepare your packing. Knowing it will be cold the entire time, you don’t need flip flops and shorts. There is no bad weather as long as you bring the right clothes. The plan of doing a FATBMX Power Hour at the Brooklyn Banks did not work out.
New week, new city. When my buddy Hans sent a message asking if I would be interested in joining him for a Newcleus concert, I was all in. Little did I know that the concert was going to be held at the London Jazz Café in England. Once I found out, I started looking for flights/hotels, starting off with KLM Holidays, which several times have offered good deals. When I told Hans I had found a decent deal, he mentioned he had just booked a return flight for €50 from Eindhoven. Yup, it wasn’t KLM, but in the end the return ticket cost me €41,50 for the Ryanair flight. London hotels aren’t too cheap either, but since the concert was held in Camden in the northern part of town, the Premier Inn charged 52 pounds for the night. I flew in on the 18th and out on January 19th.
Since we had an early flight and Great Britain’s time is one hour earlier, we had a full day of roaming around in London. The Stansted bus took us to Tottenham Hale underground station. The bus tickets have doubled since the last time I used one, but it still was the cheapest way of getting closer to London. I’ve almost made it a point to use the bus on every trip, for the heck of it. It’s cheap and you’re above ground so you see some stuff along the way, just like the Nottingham Forest football stadium just before the metro station.
By the time we made it to the city center it was about 11am. I had a few places in mind I wanted to visit.
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.