It’s super hot at home and a lot of the jumps were beat because it was so dry so Alex Reveles and I decided to drive up to whistler and stay with some of our friends that have a place up here. We left at 11 pm and drove straight there without stopping. It was a rough drive, I ended up driving 18 out of the 20 hours while Alex just chilled. One of our sponsor’s Camelbak hooked us up with lift tickets for the mountain and air dome while we’re here. I got to check out and ride the 2008 crankworx slopestyle course. Its looking real good. I think the comp will go off this year. We’ve been up here for about two weeks now riding every day so were leaving for home in a couple of days to get ready for our next trip. Alex and I are heading to the east coast for a FSA/Gravity team trip. The trip is going to be a week long at Highlands MTB park in New Hampshire. Were going to build and shoot stuff for our next Gravity ads with Harookz. Then at the end of the week there is a slopestyle contest. Dave Smutok built it so it should be good.  

We got to Leogang Thursday afternoon in time for practice but the weather wasn’t looking to good for the weekend so everyone was keeping their fingers crossed. Thursday’s practice was canceled because the jumps were to wet to ride so a lot of us went over the local go cart track to kill sometime. There was some good racing that went down went down. The next day was full of rain so everyone just chilled at the hotel and drove the hotel workers nuts. On saturday the weather was starting to get better but the jumps were still super wet so they worked on them trying to make them rideable. We had about an hour session on the jumps until more rain came. Since it was already Saturday and we couldn’t even practice they decided to call off the contest. For all the local riders it wasn’t that bad they just packed up and drove home while the rest of us from half way around the world had to sit in the hotel and stare out our balcony’s at the sickest jumps that we couldn’t ride. kind of a bummer.  They decided their going to hold the contest at the end of the year when the weather will be better. After that weekend I had as long 22 hour flight home. Now Im home for a couple of weeks until I go down to woodward with some friends to ride.  

Firestone Walker, Santa Barbara California

This years NMBS #3 race was held in Los Olivos, California. The course itself was pretty fun, it was some what fast and wide open. Had a couple of jumps here and there, and also had this pretty cool tree section, which dumped right into this flat out sprint to the finish. At first i was a little worried about the flatness of the course, and being on an 8.5 inch bike, i was definitely at a disadvantage to the other competitors on there smaller travel bikes. After practicing and walking the course a few times on friday, i was prepared to race on saturday. When race run came around, i couldn’t wait to bomb my trigger down this trail. The race run went pretty well, the trigger ate up the little man made rock garden, flew through the berms, and seemed to eat up every bump that it came in contact with. Then when it came to the flat pedal section, the trigger pedaled great like I was on a shorter travel bike. After sprinting to the end, I had finished with a 2:05, nearly 4 seconds faster than the nearest competitor in the expert men 19-24 class to put me on the very top of the podium.
by: Chase Bohn.

We headed to Linz Friday morning to session the jumps before the contest on Saturday. When we got there we rode until noon. It got super hot so we went to the lake across the street from the jumps and went swimming for a few hours. Its a bit different over here, half the people were cruising around naked on the beaches. After we were done swimming we went back and I made a stupid decision to ride with no pads in board shorts and no shirt. Not the best idea. Of course with no pads I had the hardest crash I’ve had in awhile. I landed low on a jump and went to my side. I didn’t think I was hurt until a few hours later when I was peeing blood. I didn’t want to hurt myself more so the next day I just chilled and took it easy until qualifying started. There were about 30 riders from all over the world competing for the king of dirt. Each rider got 4 runs for qualifying and they took the top 8 riders. I made it in the show so I was pretty pumped. In the finals I wanted to take it easy and try not to crash on my side again so I tried to stay smooth and consistent and the judges liked it. I ended up taking forth 4th. The contest was awesome after the mtb comp they had a bmx comp with lots of good bmx riders. After the finals the best trick contest went off. Tons of crazy tricks. After the comp we stayed in Linz for one more night and headed back to Niki’s house in Vienna. Were going to ride the park for most of the week. Then we will pack up and drive to Leogang for the biggest mtb dirt jump comp in the world Braun 26Trix. I’ll post some more pics after this weekend.