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well as all the info on whose going to be competiting at the this stop and how the tour works. Along with the packet we also were given a Dew hat and a program guide for the Vans Invitational. We were then allowed to attend the press conference for the beginning of the tour which included athletes Buckey Lasek, Ryan Guettler, and Beau Bamberg along with the tour President Wade Martin. One of the TV Announcer guys for the tour was the Emcee and he began by asking the athletes a couple of questions. When he got to Guettler he asked him about the "Aussie Invasion" that's been going on as well as what's his feelings come off the X Games and does he feel like he has anything to prove. Another thing Guettler was asked was how does he feel about all the up and coming BMXers, since this was the stop when the Free Flow individual city winners would be competing for a wild card spot at the Orlando, FL tour. Guettler also mentioned that on his flight up he ended up sitting next to one the Skate Park Free Flow competitors who asked him 2 main questions, who were his sponsors and how do you get over your nervous before your run? Guettler then said he just replied with think about what you want to get done and go out and just do it, don't think about it, and just know that you can do it and show that. After the press conference the Media was invited on a guided tour of the venues: BMX Dirt and FMX Freestyle were in the Rose Garden Arena and BMX Park and SKB/BMX Vert were in the Memorial Colliseum right next door with the Festival Village and Music Stage in between the two. We opted out of the tour, as there was hardly any media and we felt outta place already and went with Guettler to check out the Dirt Venue. We walked in and there were two riders on the roll-in and Tim "Fuzzy" Hall following us in. Guettler had also mentioned during the press conference that this would be his first time competing in dirt indoors so he was excited about that. Fuzzy asked Guettler what he thought about the jumps and he said it looked awesome, so it seemed the riders were very happy with it. The jumps looked somewhat different from what I was used to, but hey as long as the riders are happy that's all that matters. Practice for Wednesday was only scheduled for BMX: Vert, Park and Dirt all had open practice from 2pm until 8pm. So after our little mini tour of the dirt venue we walked over to Starbucks to kill time. We headed back to the venue at 2pm and preceeded to go watch Dirt Practice. Since there was hardly any media there or people for that matter we got to sit on the side of the Dirt jumps and watch everyone practice. Let me tell you, being in the venue when there's no public, no noise or anything like that, it's a whole different experience. It was actually kind of nice to be able to just watch what the riders were doing without distractions. Another cool thing was you got to hear every little cuss word or scream that the riders would yell when they missed a jump or trick. We stayed there for about 2 hours because we lost track of time just watching what was being thrown down by riders like Ryan Nyquist, Guettler, Chris Doyle, Steve McCann and others. After Dirt we headed on over to check out the BMX Park scene and that was another crazy adventure. There were more people in the park venue but still the number watching the guys practice was around 20. We just took some seats and watched Guettler, Cooke, Darden and others 360, tail whip and flip over all the different obstacles of the course. After about an hour and half of that we headed back over to dirt to see who was out now. It was the same guys pulling the same crazy stuff, so after a few minutes there we went back to the Media Center got the schedule for Thursday and start orders etc and headed back to our hotel, as a bunch of the BMXers had to go attend a Bar-B-Que with the Free Flow Athletes. Cathy