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The 7 rider crew from Aarle-Rixtel had shrunk to 3 for the Boekel race. Paul, Edward and myself made the trip on the early Sunday morning. Sign up was a lot better handled than the weekend before and once back at the vehicles we set up camp and got ready for practice. Another fast track but the soil was kind of muddy so not too many uncontrolled wheelies out of the turns this time.

The StoppelCross season has started. The first race was going to be in Handel. The Aarle-Rixtel locals met up at Paul's place at 08:15am. We waited for Lippe to come over from Germany but he either got lost (again) or never got out of bed as he didn't pick up the phone when I tried to call. 7 riders left in 5 vehicles. Harm "CR 23" Vogels and Edward "Texas Ranger" Schippers in the front, followed by Bart "Shift" de Hoon in the company Caddy and the three vans of myself, Paul's Ford van and Bern Buster's Benz. Rob Nouwens scored a ride with Bern. 20 minutes later and we had arrived. It was going to be the first race ever for Harm, Edward and Bart de Hoon, all of them riding 250cc Honda's.

Through my job with HARO bikes I made another trip to the MTB World Championships. If you have to pick one race a year, it might as well be the biggest event. After a long drive I arrived in the French Alps, Les Gets to be exact. I ran into Dale Holmes who was already looking for hot bitches on his Free Agent MTB. I soon made my way over to the Boomerang bar which was supposed to be the hot spot in town.

If you're living in the United States you might think that Flatland is dead. Yes, it got dropped from the X-games and it seems like there are not too many riders around in SoCal to shoot photo's of for the magazines. This doesn't help the popularity of flatland riding. But do the riders care? I don't really think so. The tight flat community is making things work for themselves. With Braun, Eastpak and RedBull as supporters of the flatland art, things are even looking quite good. A rumored 5000 flatlanders live in Japan with 800 based in Tokyo alone. Must be big-time there. It might not be as big in Europe but it's not slowing down either.

Street The street course had to be put together in 2 days. 3 days were planned for the set-up but when the crew arrived it was cut down to 2. This meant long hours for the ones involved. The course had some new obstacles with a huge angled curved wall in one corner and different types of quarters in the other 3 corners. In the middle they'd put up a spine with hips on the west side and a jump box on the east side of it. On the far far west a double jump-ledge-hipped-quarter obstacle was constructed which all in all made for a decent street course. The street area was open all weekend for practice. The HARO duo of Ryan Nyquist and Dave Mirra showed up and were accompanied with Euro boys Anthony Pill, Ben Shenker and HARO distributor riders Senad Grosic, Ben Hennon and Ben Manuel. Yes, the 2 British Ben's are now forming the HARO squad in the UK. Further riders from SE, FELT, Standard, WeThePeople, Country Bikes, MacNeil, Hoffman and a bunch of UK individuals were enjoying riding the course without much pressure.

Right Guard BMX Championships - Results from Vans Triple Crown of BMX Stop #1 The next stop for the Vans Triple Crown of BMX is the Tylenol National Championships of BMX at Denver's Pepsi Center June 25-27. NYQUIST CLAIMS BOTH DIRT AND STREET TITLES AT THE RIGHT GUARD BMX CHAMPIONSHIPS IN SALT LAKE CITY Last Year’s Overall Vans Triple Crown Champ Wins His 10th Straight VTCS Dirt Comp Dating Back to 2001

With covering street riding and flatland at the 25 years of BMX event in Eindhoven earlier this month, the Mini-FAT-JAM (little brother of..) had miniramp riding and dirt jumping in mind. On Saturday the PA was installed at the rather new miniramp at the Bosscheweg in Aarle-Rixtel. With a bunch of banners, flags and EZ-Up tents set up, it actually looked quite good. The weather cooperated with sunshine all day long and that was exactly what we needed to open the BMX outdoor season. From 13:30 - 17:30 the ramp was used non-stop. Highlights on the mini were brought by Ricardo Moes, Dennis Keunen and Daniel. Let's start off with Daniel. The name had been circulating on the Dutch scene as "The New Barry". We don't have many talent in Holland so "another Barry Kohne" is always welcome. Daniel has the flow and pulled the first fufanu on the fence and made it look so easy. He also pulled tailwhips, high airs and tech liptricks on his pegless bike.

To be honest, we had not ridden dirt at the Sugar Hills all winter. With some shaping (and no time to test) during the week, we were hoping that things would work out for the mini-FAT-JAM. It's a good motivation to fix the trails up as you are inviting people to come ride and they're expecting something rideable when they show up.

With months waiting for sunshine it was the MINI FAT JAM to start with the good weather, so the party started at 3 p.m. instead of 9 p.m. I was surprised to see a poster taped on the Mini ramp says that OJA had a band playing that night: LUPU NEGRU. Never heard of the band so I thought it couldn't be any good cause they booked them only a couple of days before but when Corné visited my shop he said he was at a Lupu Negru concert the day before and it rocked so I might got it wrong.

For the second year in a row the Backyard jam is an indoor affair. The series of three is divided over three indoor spots in England. Round one took place at the BIC in Bournemouth. Paul and I had left in the Vito on Thursday evening. We opted for the ferry so we could bring all the beer we wanted and had a place to crash in case we needed it. England is an expensive country. Diesel is more expensive than gasoline so we luckily filled up the tank before we started driving on the left side of the road. We gained an hour on arrival in Dover but were too tired to make it directly to Bournemouth. We threw all the bags on the front seats and installed the fishing stretcher and mattress in the back of the van. Luckily it wasn't cold and the night went by quick.