USA report number 3. "Beverly Hills", Surfin', Mirraco and the HOF dinner.

Sep 17, 2010

Written by Bart de Jong

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Over the years I’ve stayed at many amazing places but the place we stayed at on our first night beat most of them. Amazing place you got there Sean and thanks for letting us crash. The day started off cloudy but to be honest, that didn’t bother me one bit. Just cruising around in Cali is awesome and we opted for breakfast near the ocean. We found this small surfers shed that had fresh coffee and breakfast burritos. It was possible to see the surfers go off on the waves while the pelicans flew by. So Cali, bro, shakkaa!

Paul recognized a guy at the table next to us, a pro skater (Chris Stopnik) who also works on HD bikes. When he asked him “Is you the guy who took pictures with Maurice recently?” he responded with a yes. First morning there and you already run into people.

After breakfast we asked TomTom to take us to Mirraco. 10 minutes later we were there. Lennie Westfall and Mike Russell were busy setting things up for the Las Vegas truck. Sean Hargraves was around and so was Jim Ford. Jean-Luc Ferre was in Taiwan following up on 2011 production and getting ready for MY 2012.

No time to relax in the bicycle industry especially not with Interbike moving to Anaheim in 2011 the first weekend of August. After spending some time at Mirraco’s HQ’s we drove over to a place near the 5 freeway to grab some lunch. The plan was for Bob Haro to join us but apparently he was up in OC for some meetings. Lunch was so big that I couldn’t finish it, that breakfast burrito was still doing its job.

We parked our Ferrari across the street at the outlet stores and checked out the Oakley, Vans and GAP kids stores. The travel bag is getting fuller now so the “packing light idea” is turning into “can I fit everything in the bag.” By this time it was 4pm and to avoid running into crazy traffic, we needed to move towards San Diego soon. The Cobalt LT did its job but we couldn’t avoid the SD traffic when we got closer to downtown.

TomTom informed us about a Motel 6 on 2nd street and we gave it a shot. They had a room available so we checked in quickly and headed over to the BMX Hall Of Fame Inductee Presentation. We had 10 minutes to get to Balboa Park and found the San Diego Hall of Champions thanks to our friend TomTom. Get one of those things if you don’t have one already, it makes traveling a lot easier.

Right when we parked the car a big white Tahoe showed up with Mike King in it, his wife next to him and USA Cycling president Steve Johnson and another USA Cycling person in the back.

It was a short “long time no see” conversation on the way up to the entrance with tons of these to follow. Before we made it into the actual place we ran into Xavier Mendez, Brian Blyther, Todd Huffman, Steve Blick, Todd Corbitt, Woody Itson, and the list goes on an on. We’ll report about the night in a special post on the site a.s.a.p. but let me tell you that it was an amazing experience to be in one place with so many BMX legends. The BMX vibe was strong and will live on.

BdJ