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.

After the final in London A-Rev and I flew over to Austria and met up with his teammate Niki Leitner. Were staying with Niki for the next two weeks to ride his park and do some more contest. I got here about three days ago and we have ridden his jumps that he calls the park everyday. There so much fun. Here are some pics from our session today. Tomorrow were waking up early to drive to Linz for the Austrian king of dirt contest. It should be a good weekend. Ill post some pics in a few days of the comp. see ya later

I got to London Thursday morning and got in the shuttle with a couple of other riders. We just chilled most of the day on Thursday and checked the course out. All day Friday was practice. In the morning we went and rode practice and then around noon had a riders meeting to see what could be changed on the course to make it better. After they made the changes we rode the rest of the day. That night we went on a jet boat ride through London. It was rad we went under the famous London bridge. Saturday was qualifying and finals. We were all kinda bummed when we showed up for practice because the wind was bad. I tried to make the best of it but in both of my qualifying runs I lost my speed and couldn’t make it to the last jump. The finals were good but a lot of riders were getting blown around so it could have been better. There were a couple of riders who didn’t ride in the finals because riding in the wind was to dangerous. Hopefully next year they will figure it out and put the events in places where it wont be affected by the wind.

(Qashqai course in London)

(From the water)

(London Bridge)

So after madrid we flew to the first main stop of the qashqai tour in Munich. Once we showed up and checked in we went over to the course to check it out. The course was some doubles into a drop with two more doubles. The jumps were pretty good size. The first day of practice it was real windy so a lot of riders just watched. Then the next day when qualifying came around, same story. My runs went pretty well but it was hard to trick the jumps in the wind. I ended up missing qualifying by a few spots. The finals were awesome to watch. The wind let up some and people were putting together some good runs. The top 3 were Martin Soderstrom, Trond Hanson, and Brandon Semenuk. Now I’m on my way back home for one week since the Paris stop was canceled because they couldnt get the location they wanted. In 2 weeks I’ll be flying to London for the final stop of the qashqai tour.

I decided to race the dual slalom this year at Sea Otter using my Versus Jab, which is set up for dirt jumping (Single speed and rear brake only).

I was a bit apprehensive at first considering most of the slalom bikes I have seen are larger, have a rear shock and run a derailleur.

I went with the gears I had on it (31 tooth up front, 14 in the rear) and raped my all-mountain bike for a front brake.

I definitely needed a better gear ratio because I was spun out. I was pedaling so much with no resistance that I felt I was slowing myself down!

I was stoked on how the Jab handled on the course. Having the smaller bike was so much fun…I could throw it around effortlessly!

I placed 4th…losing out of the finals round by nobbies!

I plan to change my gearing and use the Versus Jab to race dual slalom for the rest of this season.

Dirt Jumper on weekdays, DS bike on weekends!

(Note: The derailleur rule has been eliminated from the NORBA rule book (just found out). You can pretty much just slap a front brake on your dirt jumper and race Dual Slalom or Mountaincross…yay!)