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!
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Literally a few hours after I send the email to pitch the idea for a shoot to the guys over at SOMIC, my computer died. They really liked the idea though, so I decided to go through with it anyway. The turnout wasn’t great, but Willem, Hannes and Michael, who I used to ride and shoot with back home, came out. As did some pretty talented locals. It was a fun session to shoot and I’m pretty happy with the results.
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I’m sorry this went up so late, but if you follow me on twitter, you know what’s been going on. Anyhow I’m doing a photoshoot tomorrow from 3pm ’till 6pm at SOMIC, a new skatepark here in Belgium, so if you aren’t camera shy, come and have your picture taken! Check the official flyer after the jump.
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It’s been a couple of years now that I travel to Cologne with a bunch of friends for the BMX Masters. We usually leave with a couple of cars Thursday morning so we can ride a bit before the masses arrive, but this year I couldn’t make that departure. I only got Friday off so the only choice I had was to take the train Thursday evening after work and meet up with the rest of the group in Cologne. Usually travelling by train isn’t so bad. I do it all the time. And we have a direct Thalys line from Brussels to Cologne that if you book early even isn’t that expensive. Great! I couldn’t make the last Thalys though so I had to take four different smaller trains and in stead of a relaxed ride of about 3 hours, I jumped from one train on to the other for over five hours. But I did eventually get there and that really is al that mattered to me.
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Last Sunday Grounded threw a really chill jam at the public skatepark in Leuven. They announced it only a week or two earlier and the plan basically was to just get a BBQ, free hamburgers, free beers and lots of free water to the skatepark and have a session. Everybody kind of just spread the word and the turnout was great. I was there, rode a little, ate a free hamburger and took some pictures. Good times!
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Rain had been predicted for the whole weekend so it looked like the Fool Jam in Kortrijk was going to get washed away, but Saturday morning it looked like a very nice day out. I checked the weather forecast to see what was up and it stated there would be some clouds but the rain got postponed to the late evening. After reading this good news, I packed my gear and headed to the station to catch a train.
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Literally the first pictures I took with my, back then, shiny new camera were shot at the Suzuki BMX Masters back in 2008. I had zeroed my savings account to buy all my gear and although I had ordered about a month or two before summer break hit, it took the shop until a week before the Masters to get everything and send it to me. Our national mail usually only takes a day or two to get a package delivered so I wasn’t to worried at first, but when after two days there was still no sign of my order, I called customer-service to try and track it. The only thing the guy on the phone could tell me, though, was: I’m sorry Sir, I have no idea where your package is right now. The file reads ‘In delivery’ since yesterday, so it has been in the main depot and is now on it’s way. If you haven’t got it yet it’ll probably be delivered very soon.
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