my friend mike

my friend mike. i first met mike in france last summer. i was dressed in a spiderman outfit and being tossed headlong into a hottub. we spent the rest of the 2 weeks, riding together, getting grumpy with to much chatter and not enough riding, causing international incidents, winding up the locals, hiding in vegetable plots, stealing toilet seats from night clubs, childrens play equipment and cement mixers and generally becoming good friends. Mike moved to london a little while ago to become a internationally recognised photographer but was back in the west a couple of weeks ago to take photos of bombholes in westbury on trim. he popped down the pumpie and took these rather good photos. he has a blog: westcountrysnapper, maybe bigsmokesnapper would be more appropriate now?

better bowl

a better picture of the freshly dug epicentre. needs some dry days before it can be packed down and shaped. good job the BBC 5 day outlook predicts nothink but rain. guff. bank holiday weekend looks to be cider and cereal bowl rather than cycling and dirt bowl.

dirty bowl

Set about a digging the dirt bowl today with oscar. We shifted literaly tons of dirt and just about got the main bowl dug, needs to packed down and shaped. The weather was playing silly buggers, really warm and dry this morning, got a ride in then it rained, then rained a little more and a splash more for good measure. Think him upstairs saw our new bowl and decided to try and fill it up. the rest of the day was muddy to say the least. Phil popped by on his way to the airport wearing the worlds whitest shoes. they werent so white when he left. couple of photos, phil's poor choice of trainer, the dry bowl and then the wet bowl,

whats been dug so far

new trails

Boredom can to lead to good things, sometimes bad as well. My boredom lead to a place to ride bikes being dug. It all started out after becoming bikeless after mine got pinched from outside the Mardyke during the day about October time 2007. Being bikeless sucks. It wasnt insured and i couldnt afford to buy a new one straight away. Well, i could sit around pissing and moaning for the rest of the winter, but finding a little spot to move some dirt around seemed like a better option. Thats where google earth comes in. I remember watching a documentry about some old school backyard pool skater in LA, for years and years he spent his time hunting down empty or disused pools, it took him forever to find maybe one or two pools, running around following up tip offs, looking over fences, behind bushes and whatnot. Then one day somebody stumped up with a bunch of money and hired the old dude a helicopter for the day and he flew around the cailfornia sky with a camera and notepad and found a load of pools and went and skated them. it was great. Now, my helicopter licence has just been revoked, besides with the cost of aviation fuel these days its costs like £2000 just to fly to ASDA. Google earth to the rescue, now i could fly all around Bristol looking for places where i may be able too dig up. I looked up another spot and rode a couple of times last summer and worked out what size patch of land i would need. it didnt take a very long time before i found a couple of likely candidates and went to have a poke around at the next available opportunity. The first one ticked all the boxs so the hunt was over and the digging could begin. It was January 2008 before any real work got done. At first it was just a pump track, little rollers and berms. Timmay and Phil S where there to lend a hand and bounce ideas around. More and more has been dug, with more riders finding it through word of mouth but Oscar and Duncan helping out the most. Loads of options and lines popping up all over the place. The first little line of trails has been started, as well as a big line round the back. roll on the summer.