Adrian was supposed to take a train to Gävle to simplify the 600km long drive to Linköping, but let’s just say that things didn’t work out that way… When I only had about one hour left to Gävle, Adrian called me and said that the plans had to be changed. As he was about to hop onto the train, the conductor stopped him and said that he couldn’t bring his bike. 
Despite Adrian’s complains and desperate attempts of persuasion he soon found himself standing on the platform with a worthless ticket in his hands. A convenient solution was at first hard to see, but as the unbelievably benevolent person I am, I agreed on rerouting the way and pick him up. This meant that I had to drive 100km straight into the country, which in the end not only lead to a detour, but also a route without the comfortable high speed motorway. I was moderately impressed… 
While I had to figure out how I should find the way to the insignificant village where Adrian was located, he not only had time to perform an extremely appreciated freestyle-show at some random school, he also got saved from the fanatical kids by a kind teacher, which additionally lead to a hot cup of coffee and a big bowl of ice-cream at her place. I guess the whole incident wasn’t in vain after all, or what do you say Adrian? After about 8 hours we finally arrived in Linköping, and we drove straight to Martin Dannetun-Törnström to settle down and unpack our things. We were supposed to ride the local indoor park in the evening, so after a quick meal we left to meet up with Peter Riiga and Leif Bergström at the park. 
Thursdays mean BMX-nights at Hangaren, and we were also lucky enough to stay after closing hours thanks to Leif. We had a fun time on the flat box, haunted any kind of lines with barspins and tailwhips, and I especially remember Martin and Adrian both trying to stick a barspin to manual to barspin off. The boxjump lip also got sessioned; Adrian pulled high, clean fakie barspins on the roll-in and Peter cranked over the whole park to do opposite onefooted bermsliders on the biggest transfer in the park. But the largest amount of time was spent jumping a transfer out of the bowl over to a flat bank. I set up my camera and everyone got some tricks done. 
Martin did stretched nofooted cancans and tuck nohanders, Peter was doing clicked lookbacks, 270s and also a toboggan to fakie, and I did downside tailwhips, played around with some xups and for a finally pulled a 270 tailwhip which unfortunately meant the end for my Etnies Terraneas. After we’d closed down the park we drove back home for some sleep. We woke up late and little by little made ourselves ready to drive to Norrköping for some street riding. Afternoon was already present when we got there, but that was probably good since the Rahm-bros and crazy ass Majo was still working on some drunkenness. We didn’t find much to ride, but Peter cleared a tight railhop with ease, Martin bunnyhop-whipped over a rail and Adrian transferred over a rail, onto a bench and then over another rail.
Later on we rode a cool wallride under a tunnel, and I managed to a tailwhip on some bumby shitty bank. After it started snowing when riding a random parking lot, we had enough and headed back to Linköping. 
Saturday morning was an early one, and we packed up quickly and hopped into the car for a drive up to Uppsala. We met up with the locals David Öst and Robert Nikula as well as the Örebro-located funny tot Bahader Gungur. The outdoor miniramp in Uppsala is awesome, it has several sections with different heights, a spine and something you can call a strange, small boxjump. The wind did cause some problems, and the struggle against it ended up in a few unpleasant crashes from Adrian and Robert. Aside from the annoying wind and in places even some hail, we got to watch Adrian ride with smoothness and ease as always, Robert flying around with height and in every possible direction, and also Axel Parke’s unbelievably good-looking opposite 360s. We soon got tired of riding the ramp due to the hazardous wind, so we played around with some loading pallets and at the small asphalt bank and hip on the backside instead. 
After a joint decision, we left to grab some food and then drove to a super cool stepup thing in an industrial area. At a steep bank, the locals had built a kicker of cement so you could jump up onto the deck. That was probably the nicest spot ever to do tailwhips on, so Adrian, Martin and I had to do a couple each before we where satisfied. Uppsala has a few good street spots, so we where cruising around to ride some of them, but the spirit wasn’t really there. But we did get ourselves a good amount of laughing, although on the expense of Adrian’s self-confidence. 
Adrian had just got his drivers licence before the trip, and he was constantly nagging me and wanted to drive. So I decided to let him take over the responsibility of the steering wheel, but it didn’t really end up as he probably wanted it to. Everyone was teasing him about his driving skills, yelling at him even when he did the smallest mistakes, and it finally resulted in a thud when he hit a pile of gravel. Adrian was pissed of the rest of the evening, and after we had hung out at Robert’s place for a while, we drove back down to Stockholm. We arrived to Jens Nilsen’s terrace house in Skogås close to midnight, and tired after a long day of driving and riding as we where, we passed out quite quickly. 
How well rested we were on Sunday morning is hard to tell, but in a little while everyone got up and enjoyed a superb breakfast, the magic trick for a successful day at Skogås Bikepark. The park in Skogås is one of my absolute favourites; it has big quarterpipes, a boxjump, spine, wallrides, subbox, hips, a big miniramp and not to mention the complete dirt course next to the park. We rode there all day long, and it is always a treat to watch Jens ride the mini. 
He does the best turndowns that can be done, his inverts and darkside tabletops are not far behind, and he goes higher than anyone else. Adrian was seen flowing around doing smooth 360’s over the spine, barspinning everything and doing his renowned footjam nosepicks; more stylish and clean than anyone else. It’s not often you se Adrian miss a trick that includes a footjam; he can not just do 540 footjam nosepicks, he can also jump around the whole park on his front wheel, rad for sure! I rode around catching some decent height on tailwhips over the boxjump, worked on some barspin- and tailwhip-variations and tech lip tricks. Peter rode with speed and height and easily cleared a big wallride transfer first try. 
Martin was cursed with bad luck this day. At first he woke up with swollen eyes due to his allergy, and when he later on tried to ride, he managed to experience a full throttle head-on collision with a wobbly, ratty kid. As the park was pretty crowded with kids and mountain bikers, we decided to escape to the trails. They where all bumpy and scary to ride, but Jens, Peter, Axel and Fredrik Khilanki didn’t really care. Jens delivered his signature massive turndowns along with darkside tabletops and 360’s, Peter went high as usual and did nice looking turndowns and tabletops, the youngster Axel did the classic trail-moves with style and confidence as always, and lets just say that Fredrik is fun to watch. We pretty much rode until it got dark, and then went back to Jens’ house for a barbeque and some beverages, the perfect way to end a good day of riding! 
Monday morning was a disaster! Woke up tired and worn out, and the sight of a fresh layer of snow outside didn’t make it that much better. Outdoor riding was therefore excluded, so we decided to drive to Capital Bikepark, Stockholm’s best indoor park. Although we weren’t too excited about that, we simply had no choice. Despite the pricey entrance fee, all the irritating kids and mountain bikers along with the lack of motivation, we came through with a good session anyway. The spine got ridden quite frequently, and everyone worked on different lip tricks on the deck and played around on the flat rail next to it. The miniramp is awesome, and Jens rode it, to no one’s big surprise, better than anyone. 
We were mostly just flowing around in it, caught big airs and saved us from the consequences of enlarging our bag of tricks. But all of a sudden Martin came out of nowhere and pulled his first ever double tailwhip. It was clean as glass, and we were all stoked on it. The park was only open for 3 hours, but kind as Andreas Lindqvist is, he let us stay after closing time to ride and take some photos. Within the last hour, Jens did crazy turndowns all over the place, higher and more clicked than I’ve ever seen. Peter did smooth 360s over the boxjump along with neat tabletops and high tucked airs, Martin did big tuck nohanders, nofooted can cans and tailwhips over the box, and Adrian did a barspin over the boxjump, tuck nohanders and 360s over the spine and finally a few ridiculously clean 360 footjam nosepicks on the spine. 
When we felt that the riding was fulfilled, we crammed 5 bikes and 5 persons into my small Wolksvagen Golf and strangely made it home safe and sound. The alarm clock rang earlier on Tuesday morning since this was the last day on the trip for Martin, Peter and Adrian. We got up and packed all the things, ate some breakfast and then made our way to the bikepark for an ending session. It was windy and chilly, Martin and Peter didn’t feel to ride that much, but I, Adrian and Jens concurred the cold.
The park was still a bit wet from the snow, but we rode at the dry places and stuck to the task to learn new lip tricks on one of the smaller quarterpipes. Adrian learnt tailwhip drop-ins on a bank, I learnt a couple of tailwhip- and barspin-included liptricks and Jens enjoyed us with all sorts of funny trial-tricks like tailwhips to 900 tailtaps to pedalstall to fakies; yeah, you get the grip! When time had reached afternoon, we packed up and drove to the train station, said good bye to everyone and officially ended the roadtrip. Since I had 400km to drive back home on my own, and as the weather report predicted sunshine for Wednesday, I decided to stay another night. I had been longing to experience Stockholm’s range of street riding for quite I while, so I couldn’t resist taking this opportunity. Later that night Jens showed me a few spots we could visit, and I was really psyched. 
Yet again an early morning, but my anticipations overcame my fatigue and fear for the strong wind outside. I collected all of my things, enjoyed a last meal at Jens’ house and then drove down to the bikepark to warm up. Fredrik Khilanki came to join us, and we had a fun time playing around with bunnyhop tailwhips and barspins on the small banks and pyramid. Since we had ridden Skogås Bikepark for the past few days, we soon had enough and left for the street tour. Grabbed some food on the way, and then made our way to Hammarby Sjöstad to meet up with the Tumult-crew consisting of Jocke Olsson, Jesper Stern, Patrik Swenson along with Jens Lindberg. We started off by riding some strange thing next to a bridge; I can’t even explain how it looked. Not to fun, so we moved on to some kind of ledges that surrounded a flower bed. Skinny, rocky ledges that slightly pointed upwards made you able to grind and get a god pop off at the end, or you could just ride out on one and drop off at the edge. Jocke, Jesper, Patrik and Jens. L did all sorts of grinds like feeblegrinds to 180, feebles to nosemanual 180 at the end, grinds to manual to 180, tireslide-things and Patrik even did an awesome feeblegrind to barspin. I would definitely not considered myself being an experienced street rider, so I was happy with pulling a barspin and tailwhip drop-off the end, and
Jens joined me with the tailwhip-drops and also managed to do a 360 off it. Jesper closed things down after putting up a cone at the end, riding out on the thin ledge and pop over it. Both Jesper and Jocke had to leave, but the rest of us continued to ride a cool wallride under a tunnel. The time was scarce, but I got a got snap of Jens getting almost up to the rafter on a wallride. I was supposed to drive all the way home after we had finished riding, so we where in a bit of a hurry. We hasten us to the last spot, a cool brick bank that not just allowed popping tricks in the bank, but also the ability to jump over the small rail and up onto the deck. The wind was wily and cars were passing by and blocking the run-in, so we satisfied ourselves with a few tailwhips and barspins in the bank and then packed up. 
I had forgotten one of my bags at Jens’ house, so I had to drive all the way back to get it before I could begin with the drive home. The 400km long drive was a chance to relax after a hectic week, melt all the impressions and laugh at all the things that happened. Although you know that weeks like this almost every time turns out to be awesome, you don’t really get that genuine feeling of appreciation until it’s over. It’s always nice to get back home and return to your every day life, but being on the road with bike-riding friends is just the best thing ever, I wish I could do it all the time! Thanks to everyone that rode with us, let us stay late at the parks and especially Jens mother who not just let four sloppy guys barricade her basement, but also made us numerous of delicious dinners, you’re awesome!
Text by: Jon Bokrantz
Photo credits: Jon Bokrantz, Peter Riiga, Jens Nilsen
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.