FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

You’d be surprised how civilized the country is. Though I did see a Lada with rear end spoiler, it is not what you should think of. I got picked up by SIN in his 5 series leather interior tricked out BMW. SIN looks like an 18 year old but is a successful music producer (must be!), and had some drum ‘n bass kicking in his sweet ride on the way to the hotel. I got dropped off in the Old part of Town of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, with 370.000 inhabitants the biggest city of the country. It’s Wednesday and I’m already here. Don’t ask why. I haven’t seen anyone all afternoon so I took that opportunity to scan the city. With no Estonian Kroons in my wallet I asked the guesthouse lady for a bankomat. Within 5 minutes I had some EEK’s in my pocket. The money machine worked. I took the first door to the right. It looked like some sort of mall and I stepped on the escalator to get on the first floor. I saw three internet café’s and decided to hit one up for 15 minutes to let the home front know that I’d arrived okay. There are over 500 public internet access points in Estonia, 36 per 100.000 people (one of the highest numbers in Europe). What the hell? How do I know all this? Well, the personal copy of IN TIME magazine from Estonian Air actually had some useful information. I was hoping to buy some cheap stuff as I’d heard that 0.5liter of beer only costs 65 cents. I found stores with mini discs, video camera’s, laptops and shops with Diesel stuff, Quicksilver gear, an Adidas store, tricked out skateshop etc. Even though a big sale was going on, pricing was not interesting. Food and drinks seem to be affordable; an XL Chicken menu with caramel sundae set me back 59 EEK’s, that’s less than 4 Euros. Slightly cheaper than at home. I found out I had dinner at 4pm after I finished my horrible golden arches dinner (why do I always end up there and hate it afterwards?). I got confused by the early darkness that sets in at 3:30pm. Next up was a visit to the grocery store for some Pringles, fruit and drinks. I’ve seen plenty of Saku beer signs around so I think that it’s the local beer. They had different kinds available: 1) 10,20 EEK for the 5,3% half liter SAKU. 2) 10,50 EEK for the 7,5% HARD ROCK version beer. 3) 10,90 EEK for the 7,9% SAKU Strong beer. I opted to test them all. I finished the 5,3% Saku which tasted pretty good for a first beer. I’m now on the Hard Rock bottle which has a bit stronger feel to it. By the time I finish this one I believe the Saku Strong beer will go down without any problems too. Basically right now I’m killing some time. I got up at 5am this morning and am looking forward to a good night sleep. TV here is pretty good. I’ve seen more BMX, snowboarding and skateboarding on TV today than I’ve seen on Dutch TV in the last 4 years. 2003 X-games coverage and a lot of European events. Rebel TV stuff. It's January 27th now. Two weeks after the Simpel Session comp. The attempt of finishing up a quick report for FATBMX failed again. I need to get this done before the end of the month now so we can upload it before the FAT NEWS Flash goes out. Memories on the Tallinn weekend are great. In the end quite a few familiar faces made it to Estonia: Tobias Wicke, Markus Wilke, Dave Osato, Chris Hamer, Zach Shaw, Baz Keep, Alistair Whitton, NielsWheels, Jonas Malmberg and many more. Even two Dutchies made it: Barry and Souf. On the BMX media front Soul magazine (Ben and Oliver), RIDE (Lard) and FreedomBMX (Kay) made it over. With such a big posse in a new country you can only expect a good time. Thursday was spent with Chris Hamer and Zach Shaw. We walked the Old town, ate some pancakes and drank some beers. It was basically non-stop until we decided to go out to the Hollywood club. Once inside we agreed that we would never go to a place like this at home but 10 pints down the road it all didn't look that bad. We even made it to the dance floor, I'll leave it at that. Dave Osato made it too. Dave got stuck in London when he was denied on the plane as he did not have a VISA to enter Estonia. Dave took a hotel and went to the embassy the next day, changed his ticket and made it to the Hollywood club in time to get wasted. The contest was run on Friday and Saturday. Prelims on Friday, Finals on Saturday. The Saku Suurhal, a modern sports hall, was the venue for the skateboard and BMX street contest. The RedBull ramp made it over from Austria for Zach Shaw, Yoke Olson and Jushi to do demos on. Martti Kuoppa was brought in to do some flatland demos. For Martti it was a short trip as Helsinki is located just across the pond from Tallinn. The Kalmre brothers and their posse were doing everything possible to make it a good event. It all looked really good and stress free. The street ramps were a good variety of quarters, hips, wedges, ledges and rails. The riders had plenty of practice time and get this: the BMX contest took place AFTER the skateboard competition. This left the BMX crew with time to sleep in. BMX as the main act, nice. 40 riders from 10 different countries entered the contest. One class only which had riders from Latvia, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden and Holland ride against the elite boys from Germany, the UK and Canada. 20 made the cut for the finals. The level was good. One Russian rider was riding tech-style ala Delarosa. An Estonian rider did flips and whips and he also made it to the top 20. Friday night and we pick an other stupid club. With enough drunk BMX-ers in the house the dancing pole as well as the dance floor was out of control. No pictures were allowed, and that's probably a good thing. Practice on Saturday started at 15:30hr. The semi finals were canceled so it was straight finals for the 20 guys. The contest was run in a contest format with 4 guys riding in a group for a 7 minute session and one last trick per rider at the end of the session. It wasn't X-Games style where a buzzer tells you when to stop and nothing after the buzzer counts. The whole event had a relaxed atmosphere with little security and nothing but cool people. The riders were going off one by one. This was the time, this was the place if you had a trick in mind that you wanted to show the judges, media and the ladies. It felt like every single rider pulled the last trick that they had in mind and left the area stoked. The crowd got behind the riding and the vibe was good. The 4000 Euro prize purse was divided by Tobias Wicke, Dave Osato and Alistair Whitton. To list everyone's tricks on every obstacle wouldn't make sense. You'll see it on TV or in some video some day. With outside temperatures of -15 Celsius we did not want to wait too long to get into the official contest afterparty and opted for the Hollywood club again (big mistake). At 03:30hr we finally checked out the Simpel Session party and it was rocking. It only lasted for 30 more minutes and I was bummed it was over. Well, it was actually not over yet. Lard and I had hooked up with some locals who knew about this 24 hour Karaoke bar that had drinks and food. Sounded good at that point. The microphone was mine for the next 3 hours to the frustration of everyone else in the bar. Sorry about that. We didn't make it back to the Old House until 07:30 in the morning. With a calculated day off on Sunday we got woken up by the Canadian Teddy Bear Dave Osato for some sight seeing. It was well worth the walk even in minus degree temperature. That night I stayed in because I had to get up at 04:30am to grab a taxi with NielsWheels to go to the airport. It was a great weekend and I can recommend it to everyone for next year. BDJ Simpel Session 2004: Winter Bash final results: 1. Tobias Wicke GER 2. Dave Osato CAN 3. Alistair Whitton GBR 4. Sebastian Keep GBR 5. Markus Wilke GER 6. Jonas Malmberg SWE 7. Niels Thanild DEN 8. Jimmy Norström SWE 9. Barry Jerome Köhne NL 10. Sascha Claussen GER 11. Felix Kirch GER 12. Arto Heikurinen FIN 13. Roman Ofitserov EST 14. Andrei Gordeev RUS 15. Vova Kosiakov RUS 16. Jimmy Röstlund SWE 17. Mikko Lehto FIN 18. Vasili Borisenko RUS 19. Anton Ardel EST 20. Soufiiane Belghitti Alaoui NL More info: http://www.simpelsession.com