The Simple Session in Tallinn, Estonia is one of the biggest BMX contests in the world and Belgium hasn’t ever been represented there. The Grounded crew decided they had to do something about that. They got in touch with the organisation, pointed out the fact and asked them politely to consider one of their team riders. The Simple Session people checked out the Grounded team and their eye fell on the young gun Willem Van Gansen. When Grounded pushed out the news and I saw Willem was riding the contest, I just had to come along! With about a week and a half to go until the contest it was quite a struggle to get everything sorted, but we managed to get there and I can tell you it was definitely worth it. What an adventure!

We all had to travel on the lowest of budgets so after a bit of research we booked some cheap flights from Charleroi to Riga with Ryanair and took the bus from there to Tallinn. I had been partying the night before we left and as a result was completely wasted. I figured since we’d be travelling all day I would easily be able to sleep a bit along the way. Every time though I could finally catch up on some sleep on the plane or the bus either the clumsy flight-attendant bumped into me with the food car, and the ass did that twice, every time I just managed to fall asleep, or we would get passport control and some rude officer I couldn’t understand would come poke me for my ID. You can’t believe how happy I was to finally arrive at the hotel!

The next two days were practice days and we’d spend all day at the arena. The first day though we immediately messed up. We had gone into town to look for some lunch and a supermarket to get some stash, but we got terribly lost and we arrived way late for Willem’s first two hours of practice leaving him with only half an hour. We decided to stick around to watch the other groups ride and lucky for Willem security wasn’t all that tight so he could sneak onto the course and get some more runs in that first day. Second day went pretty good, too, though I hadn’t slept that well and getting up at 8am for another two hours of morning practice was horrible. This time we were one of the first there and Willem enjoyed the free space that first half hour very much. We stayed again until all BMX practice was over and than went back to the hotel to wait for the rest of the Grounded crew to arrive.

A couple minutes and some google searches later we found out there were two Tallinn City Hotels and we were on opposite sides of the city…

Later that evening we got a text from Brecht (the Grounded TM) that they had arrived at the hotel and we had to come meet them in the lobby. When we got there the lobby was empty though. All a bit confused we called Brecht and a few weird moments later we realized we were in different hotels. A couple minutes and some google searches later we found out there were two Tallinn City Hotels and we were on opposite sides of the city… Why nobody checked this before we left I still don’t get! Both hotels were fully booked though so there was nothing we could do. In the end the other guys were only staying for two nights so it wasn’t that big of a deal, but still was pretty stupid we couldn’t hang out now. It also was Bart’s birthday though on Friday and he was hungry to go out so we got on the bus across town and met up with them at the first Simple Session party for some celebrating. It ended up killing me the following day as the harsh cold and the by then serious lack of sleep had caught up with me. And it hadn’t really been such a great party either so that sucked a little!

Waking up with a terrible headache and a sour swollen throat really made me want to stay in bed, but we headed out to the arena for qualification anyway and I struggled myself through the day trying to focus on taking some good pictures. Willem was stressed as always at such a big comp so his first run wasn’t verry good, but in his second visit he was clearly over it and rode a really good run. He ended up finishing in 74th, which doesn’t seem all that great, but if you know he rode against the best of the world and you see who finish under him or barely a few point above him it was pretty impressive and obviously he was stoked.

Like Catfish raves all day on his mic, when you visit Tallinn you get an overdose of beautiful women and this club was no exception. It was stuffed with ‘em!

I can’t report on the Saturday party as I was crashing hard at the hotel that night and probably slept for like 11 hours straght, but from what I heard from the rest of the crew I missed the best party of the weekend. I couldn’t care less though ’cause Sunday I felt a lot better and was ready to see some crazy stuff during the finals. I’m not going to get into details of what went down as that has been all over the web already when we hadn’t even sobered up from the afterparty sunday, but history got written that night. The two tricks I can clearly remember are the insane cliffhangers that crazy Pat Casey was firing out all weekend, and of course the amazing no-handed cashroll Brett “Maddog” Banasiewicz pulled of as his last trick like he did them all day every day. That kid is so smooth!

It was Drew Bezanson though who took the win yet again this year, the judges and the crowd both love this guy. He has so much control over his bike, sees crazy lines that no one would ever think of doing and does both the crazy tech stuff like the icepick to footjam on that huge vertwall, as the big complete mental tricks like his huge tailwhip drop, first trick of his final run, and the caveman and bars to ice way up on the judges tower. A deserved winner for sure and if you want to get all the good stuff that has been posted of this years edition in one place, go check out the Simple Session’s website. The got it all there!

Sunday night was an insane afterparty! Like Catfish raves all day on his mic, when you visit Tallinn you get an overdose of beautiful women and this club was no exception. It was stuffed with ‘em! You also get to congratulate the riders in person as they are all hanging out and you even get to witness some of your heroes go completely nuts, drunk as hell. Good times!

We stayed two extra days to check out the city and go play tourist and shop a little, and it was great on the one hand as Tallinn truly is an awesome city and it looks almost fairy tale like in winter with all the snow, but on the other hand it’s so damn cold and we all returned home with a huge cold which wasn’t all that fun. Overall I had a blast though and I’d probably return next year if I could, maybe even come out this summer for the Summer session… We’ll see! Enjoy the clicking through the pictures, I brought back a ton and I’m pretty stoked on how they turned out!