getting the first rays and to watch some surfers play with the waves – welcome to California! After that we headed back to the hotel to build up the bikes and to check out the area. Our hotel was located in Costa Mesa, 10 min drive from Huntington Beach and pretty central to some SoCal cities and spots. 
Our first mission was a trip to Santa Monica, pretty much 1 hour drive up north, passing LA area. Red Bull has their HQ´s based in Santa Monica and we wanted to say hello to our friend Ilana Taub who was kind enough showing us the office and flowing us some “wings” for the upcoming 8 days. Pretty impressive office!
Leaving Red Bull and Santa Monica behind we were back towards Huntington Beach to visit the Vans head office. The whole Vans operation is managed here – marketing, sales, design, brand management, store management, etc. ProTec is in the same building so Jerry Badders walked us thru and introduced us to some really nice people.
WOW, the Vans office is awesome – keep an eye out for an extra Vans office edit dropping in the next weeks.So after the company sight seeing it was time for our first bmx session. Vans has a pretty neat miniramp back in the warehouse, 50 ft wide, elevators, bowl corners and some ledges too. G
reat laydback sess and a great way to start riding.Jerry took us out for dinner later that night and after some cold ones everyone was pretty beat and ready for some heavy sheep counting arround 10pm. Stay tuned!
Andy Z.
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.