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!

I’m sure that you guys already saw a ton of coverage of the event and read a lot of articles about the insane stuff that went down there, so I’m not going to hurt my brains trying to recall some stories somebody else probably already told anyway. If you would like to see a glimpse of the weekend how I saw it, though, I would like to invite you to look at my pictures.

Amazing turndown three. Nicely clicked, bike completely vertical.

What I do want to get off my chest however, is the fact that the organization this year the whole weekend only allowed competing riders on the courses. And yes I know this is the case at most bigger contests these days, but that was the best part of the Masters for me. Previous years as a visitor you brought your bike along, watched your favourite riders go completely nuts and right after that you could get on the course yourself and have a little session with them. Or a chill early mourning session. After a long night of street riding in the city you hit the showers, caught some sleep and got back up a few hours later to get back on your bike for a run or two before the course got to crowded again. That’s how addicted most of us are.

Brett Banasiewicz did these double tailwhips and made it seem easier than just airing over the damned thing.

This year on the other hand on our first early mourning session on friday I got kicked of the park seconds after I ended my first warm-up run, even though only five other riders were on it. Why the hell was that necessary? I do understand that when you ride in the contest you want some room to practice and that previous years the park was a zoo all the time because non-competitors just kept riding even when asked to leave the course.

Kick them off during scheduled practice runs and please do so aggressively if needed. But keep the courses open when nothing is planned.

But there is a golden middle road here. Kick them off during scheduled practice runs and please do so aggressively if needed. But keep the courses open when nothing is planned. Or even plan a jam session or two in there on these moments if you absolutely want to keep control over who’s riding when, but please let us normal visitors ride a little as well. That’s what we like to do and after getting so excited by the amazing riding during the contests not being able to get that energy out afterwards is really frustrating. Please do this differently next year!

Mark Webb who simply refused to ride in super-ramp, did kill it in park. Here is one of his great invert threes.

Freecaster has some nice movies online, but you’ve probably seen them already. The event’s website is the place to look for the results and the press-releases if can’t remember or just lived under a rock this summer. Other articles you can google for, I bet ‘BMX Masters 2010′ as search query returns you some interesting results.

See you next year!

UPDATE – A whole lot more pictures went up on facebook today. See them here and here. Let the tagging begin!

Like every BMX contest I’ve ever been to, they weren’t going according the schedule. In this case it was a good thing, though. I arrived there little after Amateur was supposed to have started, but since they were still putting together the heats, I still had some time to say hi to everyone and take some test shots.

Kid carving the vert section of the bowl

The contest went by pretty quick altogether. Despite the heavily overcast sky and a few drops of rain, it practically stayed dry the whole day, like predicted. Everyone rode really well. As in the rest of the world, the level of riding in Belgium is going up quite a bit every year. It’s also really cool to see that kids these days not all just go for the craziest tricks, but care about style as well. The old-school racing style has totally made it’s comeback. Which is nice.

The old-school racing style has totally made it’s comeback. Which is nice.

Contest results, additional info and some videos can be found on www.fooljam.be and kemobmx.com. Thanks Jelle and crew for putting this event together! And Sami, a speedy recovery to you!

Greg Van Tulder with a huge table air.

After the contest was over, I went along with the Evolution crew from Brussels to the new skatepark in Roeselare. I didn’t take any pictures there, except for this one of an invert that Willem (Van Gansen) asked me to shoot for his sponsor Hangloose, an all-BMX shop in Brussels, but it didn’t turn out that great so we’ll probably do that again somewhere else on an other day. Although you couldn’t ride with pegs and the park was real slippery and most of the ramps were kind of steep with the coping sticking out, it ended up being a really cool session. Thanks again to Jimmy (Van Belle) and the guys of Evolution to drop me of in Ghent afterwards!

UPDATE – I put a more extensive gallery up on Facebook. If you like tagging al your friends in pictures, you should check that out here.

Can you believe that? They literally had no clue where it was. I was stressing like crazy. Almost all of my savings had gone in to that gear and it would have sucked big time if it had gone missing. The guy on the phone convinced me, though, to just wait one more day. I could contact customer service again if I didn’t have it the next morning. I thanked the man and waited some more. When the next day around noon we still hadn’t seen a post man, I really grew tired of waiting and started calling every customer service number I could find. It took me a couple hours and I probably pissed a person or two off in the process, but I finally got hold of someone that could confirm to me that they had found my parcel laying somewhere in a corner and that they would send it to the nearest post office right away. I could pick it up there around noon.

Spiderman was competing in vert that year. Tailwhip in costume.

The next day, the day we were leaving for Cologne, we drove to the post office. We arrived there at about eleven o’clock and I asked the clerk if he could get me my parcel. He went to the back looking for it. He left for only a few minutes, but it seemed like hours. I just couldn’t wait to get that stuff in my hands. It’s of course at those moments, though, when you think it is finally over, that it obviously just gets a little worse. The man came back empty handed. It appeared the delivery truck was running late, so they hadn’t got anything in yet. I could barely hold myself from completely going crazy, but the poor man obviously couldn’t help it ether, so me and my mom had a seat and started waiting, again. After about half an hour of almost lethal boredom, the delivery came through and I was glad it was finally over.

About six hours later we were putting up the tent
and strapping on our protection gear to have our first ride on German soil.

The box was bigger then I had expected. But when I opened it on the back seat, I quickly found out why they used such a huge box. To assure safe transportation the shop had stuffed it from top to bottom with padding. When I finished unpacking, it looked like an air-padding bomb had exploded in the back of the car. There was foliage and little bags of air everywhere. In the middle of it all me and my shiny new toys. I was probably smiling like a little kid all the way home. By the time we arrived there 20 minutes later the car still was a complete mess, but all my gear was assembled. After the the batteries got charged, it would be ready to rip. The bitch here, though, was that because we had lost so much time in the post office, I only had about half an hour left to load up my luggage and my bike, lunch and get my ass over to my friends’ house whose parents would be driving us to Cologne. The charging of the batteries was going to have to wait until we were in Germany. What a shame, no pictures from the departure and the arrival. But hey in the end, I was already happy it could come along.

Mike Miller going crazy high over the box with a beautiful inverted three during PRO park qualifying.

About six hours later we were putting up the tent and strapping on our protection gear to have our first ride on German soil. The street course looked fantastic! After a few minutes Willem (Van Gansen) was already blasting out some cool tricks as were several other Belgians we had met up with at the camping site. Among them were Jimmy (Van Belle) and Anthony (Reynaert). I, who had only just started riding again after a two month break to recover from a broken leg and was waiting for the batteries of my camera to charge, had also ventured out onto the ants nest like street course and was cruising around, dodging crazy flairing and double tailwhipping sixteen year olds. It was pretty disturbed, but I was loving it. As opposed to last year, the sun was shining all weekend and there was this nice little breeze. As I was looking around this madness, heavily breathing because my physical condition was still worth crap, I couldn’t help thinking “Damn, it’s great to be back!”

I kindly requested the press department to give me an accreditation and they obliged.

The next day after a relatively good nights rest, we had a quick breakfast and went to the street course. Although it was only just past ten, there were already many riders out there. Being far from a morning person I decided to just lay low and wait for Willem and Hannes’ parents to arrive, who had taken my batteries and charger to their hotel to fill them up and would be bringing them along when they came to watch there son compete. I had already read a couple of pages of the manual and had read a ton of reviews before I bought it so I had a good idea how it worked and what custom functions I had to select, but the whole weekend still was one huge crash course, especially the first day. The number of off timed or simply completely missed pictures was enormous, but the feeling you get when you do nail a shot makes it all better.

The Netherlands crew was there too and it didn't go unnoticed.

On top of just being able to be there and experience it all, I also got in completely free of charge. I had been setting up a website to make this online magazine, called Viewfinder magazine. I was planning on an article about the BMX Masters to be one of my central pieces in the first issue. Because I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to enter with a big camera bag without an accreditation, I kindly requested the press department to give me one and they obliged. I had a blast shooting pictures and writing the article. It was actually completely finished, page layout and everything, but the magazine sadly never made launch. It would be dropping twice a year, once in October to cover my summer adventures and then an other one in April to cover my winter strolls. It sounded like a super cool thing to do and it was a nice excuse to mess around a bit in some new software like InDesign and Illustrator, software I had never used before. I completely didn’t now what I was doing, though, and as a result it took me ages to get things done, constantly skipping back an forth from project to internet tutorial to figure something out. Once the summer was over and school started again, I simply couldn’t find the time to work on it and after I flunked the deadline and still wasn’t close to finishing I decided to just call it a day. I learned a lot from the many hours spend on it, though, so I have absolutely no regrets at al.

Some of the pictures from these first few days with my ‘big’ camera, I still count as some of my best work. Every time I look at them I get sucked back in time and experience the moment all over again. It it is no doubt only like this for me, but I just love it when a picture can do that to me and I really like to share ‘em if they do. Maybe someone who was there too can see them and take a trip down memory lane as well. Be sure to tell me if you’re one of them. I would love to here your story!