Although it was a BMX jam, many didn’t really managed to stay on there bikes that long, myself included. Temperatures were absurd, the sun was burning, not a single cloud in the sky. Luckily the skatepark had a little strip of grass right next to it with plenty of shade to relax and refuel. The very nice guys from Grounded were handing out hamburgers, beers and water. Awesome atmosphere!

Brecht from Grounded feeding the hungry.

Why don’t they happen more regularly actually? I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t enjoy riding with other people. And that really is al there is to it, right? Getting people together to ride bikes and the only thing needed is getting the word out. Maybe we can start doing one every month or so? Every time in an other city/skatepark? Wouldn’t that be nice? Grounded, are you up for it?

I also linked a gallery to this post with more pictures shot at this occasion. Click one off the thumbnails to jump to that picture or click here to jump to the gallery itself.

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!

I also linked a gallery to this post with more pictures shot at this occasion. Click one off the thumbnails to jump to that picture or click here to jump to the gallery itself.

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!

I also linked a gallery to this post with more pictures shot at this occasion. Click one off the thumbnails to jump to that picture or click here to jump to the gallery itself.