The Tassie to Melbourne Roadtrip... by Lenny

Its 5 in the morning car is all packed on my way to pick up Wootto so we can make it for our 6.30 flight to Melbourne to ride and to catch up with everyone, checked in our luggage grabbed a coffee now we are set to leave the mania. We arrived jumped on the sky bus and was greeted by one of our good mates and fellow Taswegian the Batchmeister.

Trying not to leave our bikes anywhere for the weekend. We jumped on a train got to batch’s set up our bikes and then headed to Mik Dwyer’s Tattoo studio Purity in Thornbury for some ink, was very stoked with the end result, was good to catch up with Mik too, I would highly recommend it if you were keen on getting some lifetime art.

Whilst at the studio the infamous Ben Moran turned up to ride for the weekend. After that we headed straight Back into town for a ride, we sessioned some crazy place that was definitely designed with flatland in mind just near the crown I think, don’t know exactly where or what it was but It was short lived, Mr security guard wasn’t very happy though.

This photo was too good to leave out. We made our way to the famous Fitzroy bowl, but first we grabbed a long neck each and dropped in to see another fellow Tassie Leigh G at Anchor Bmx we didn’t make it to the bowl, but we did have a lot of laughs and a bloody huge parmy for 8 bucks at the Rochy up the Road. Very tired by this stage so we headed back to batch’s watched Agroman for a laugh it was great even for the millionth time. Ok now its Saturday time for breakfast Luke and Ben took us to a really random place called lentil as anything where they have kickass fresh food cooked and you only pay what you think it was worth, we all made pigs of ourselves, as you would too.

The weather was definitely on our side apart from a bit of wind, rocked up to Imax, had a roll with Grant, Karl, Robbo, Shaun, Luke Wootto, Ben, Jimmy and Marcus, it was an awesome turnout, heaps of rad manoeuvres went down, and there was even a few mechanical technical problems but it was all good, ya get that on the big jobs.

Grant Cruise mid pinkie

Karl - backward steamer

Robbo doing a little pose.

Ben Moran - pedal time machine

Shaun rolling some sweet backward half-hikers

We all decided to go and check out the Bali spot I was pretty impressed, a little small but very smooth and made for riding.

Wooto with a big steamer!

Jimmy with a no handed hang ten, who is a very hard man to take a photo, so I took this when he least expected it, funny guy with a very unique riding style with many tricks up his sleeve.

Ben Moran definitely pulled the weekend’s best trick, a bunny hop nose wheelie across this ledge, everyone was so stoked to have witnessed that, and Ben was pumped too.

We headed off grabbed some snags and proceeded to cook the shit out of em at Luke’s, it ended up being a long night, lots of laughs and random shit went down, I even got to sing a song about Ben Moran’s nose wheelies All in all it was a choice weekend and cant wait till the next trip, cheers to everyone who was involved in making it what it was.

And yeah this was the next day on the way home.

Chris "Lenny" Letchford 2009

Imax Jam report - Rob Barker

Melbourne rider Rob Barker sent through some great pics & a few words about a jam they had recently..

Augest 30th Sunday at 1.30 pm myself and partner Kylie (aka camera girl..lol). And the young bloke Markus got to Imax. Most people arrived around 2.00pm with Shaun, Karl and Grant arriving soon after and Jim around 3.00pm. It was a fairly cold day with a little bit of wind and a few raindrops here and there but luckily winter is slowly leaving us. There was some nice afternoon jamming: Grant was dialling combos as usual... I was doing my usual..not too much..lol... Markus was getting some tricks out... Shaun was clean with some new things up his sleeve.. Karl was just warming up and got a puncture(bums and their bottle smashing) and Jim was powering his combos out. The weather stayed average so we headed for a feed and checked at the Bali spot for a half hour afterwards.. loads of skaters and not much room with all of us guys and them there so we all headed back to faithful Imax for the rest of the arvo...

Great day!!

Most of us were there..and the rain stayed away as best it could!!

Grant Cruise

Jimmy Couwenberg

Markus

Rob Barker
Photos: Camera Girl Kylie

Ben Moran in The Courier!

Top Australian Flatlander, Ben Moran recently got an interview in major newspaper, The Courier. It's a great read to learn a little more about one of Australia's most original riders - check it out by clicking here.

Photo: Daniel Hartley-Allen courtesy of The Courier

Random Oz News bits...

Eric Effinger is enjoying things over in W.A & has been regularly hitting up the infamous Scarborough undercover car park that was also the venue to the West Oz leg of the past Colony Down Underground stop.

Shaun Jarvis has been busy painting his house & through Freestyle Now!, organising a bunch of BMX stuff for upcoming months - more info to come! More problems with his elbow are meaning he's having to take it easy for the moment, but no doubt he'll be back to full force before long...

In Jason Parker news courtesy of Freestyle Now!, a belated Happy Birthday goes out to him & he's also working at Tom Price & the mine there. He's able to take his bike, so sessions are still going down.

Kit McKenna is also keeping busy in the UK. He recently visited London & Southbank & rode with the TGM crew as well as hitting up a bunch of street along the way including sessions in Birmingham. He'll be finishing his job in the UK at the end of September before doing a bit of travelling & back to Oz on October 13. I'm sure the guys at Imax will be stoked..

Colony rider Shane Badman is riding hard/travelling hard - currently in Hungary. Colony have an update on what he's been doing recently by clicking here.

June Dungca over from New Zealand!

June Dungca has been in Melbourne, Australia the past week riding & hanging out. He's a constantly busy man, also responsible for the New Zealand's flatland website, NZFlatland. While here a couple of the Melbourne guys caught up with him & James (Jimmy) Couwenberg put this little piece together from their day....

We (Rob and I) met up with June on Wednesday, 19th August 2009 at Imax at 10am. We knew the day was going to be great: the weather was on our side, a sparkling 19 degrees - just perfect except for a little wind. We rode at the famous Imax spot in Melbourne for about 2 hrs then headed off to the Bali memorial. This spot has a marble like surface that is so smooth you wish you had the memorial in your own backyard... :). The atmosphere is excellent and great for photos as you can see in the pics of June - I recomend some jams here especially if you're an interstate/international rider looking to get some great photos for back home or a BMX magazine (2020?). Maybe Matty Holmes will decide to do an Australian flatland scene cover and have all of Australia's riders in it?

June - Backwards Half-Hiker

Back to June, when asked about his reason for being in Melbourne and how long will he be here? he replied: "i'm in Melbourne for 1 week visiting my parents and to get some riding in with the Melbourne crew". When asked what he thought about Australia and its flatland scene, he responded with a huge smile and said he loves it and was thinking about moving to Melbourne :). He also said he wanted to meet up with long-time friend, Karl Hughes (aka Paradoxium) but was a little sad to say he has going back to NZ too soon, and will catch up with Karl next time he's in town.

Jimmy - Hang 5

We spoke about the the riders and he talked a lot about Ben Moran and the level of skill he is showing. He said Ben is on a level all his own, and also replied on my riding saying that he has to watch out for little old me! (Jimmy) hmmm as i'm competition to him...hahaha I laughed! He also spoke about Paris (the NZ rider, not the city!), saying that he is riding a lot & progressing - maybe we'll see him at the 2010 BMX games??

June - Hang Nothing

On that note June did say he will be competing in the next BMX Games in 2010 and also the Melbourne Downunder Ground. June is a superb guy with such openness to any fellow rider. He was great to ride with and have a chat and more than I expected. Keep an eye out for June in future updates, this rider takes no prisoners and has a lot to show the Australian scene. I won't say anything about what tricks june is doing but rest assured he will be a getting a lot of YEAHS when he comes to the BMX Games in 2010.

Rob, Jimmy & June

Photos: James (Jimmy) Couwenberg

Ausbike 2009 - Melbourne, Australia

Held at the Melbourne Showground’s over Sunday 16 and Monday 17 August, Ausbike Australia 09 was a bike expo covering all things cycling, including BMX and even a little flatland.

Mike D and Kickass were there, Kickass had probably the best range of flatland gear at the show with Taka’s seat tubeless Giga frame and slotted everything from St Martin as well as nice stuff from Mankind.

Ummmm, and that’s about it. In fact that is the total extent of flatland specific stuff on show at Austbike 09.

However had Mike’s van broken down on the Hume it is completely likely that an event essentially designed to bring everyone involved in the industry together would actually be an event the brought everyone in the industry together, except flatland.

Whist physical flatland product was lacking, talk abounded… well, talk only abounded when people were poked for it, as it turned out.

In media news, a prominent flatlander is getting a feature article in the next 2020.

Both 2020 and Rebel Yell had stands at the event and both were probably the best stands at the expo. 2020 had a Spartan setup with a sofa, free copies of the mag and a camera so you could take photos of yourself sitting on the sofa and presumably doing any number of wacky things.

Rebel Yell had a fair bit of furniture that looked like it came from the op-shop arranged in their space as well as free back copies of most editions of the magazine and even stupidly small free coffees. The coffees were stupidly small because of expo politics and when it was suggested that they setup a bar instead, Pollack said that he had planned to but were told they could have nothing so they bargained to the 30mil cups of espresso.

The rep at the DK stand said that they had about 50 complete flatland bikes for sale at $699rrp. The bikes are the model after the DK Signal and contain a number of upgrades including three piece cranks but they did not bother bringing them to the show because they were part of the 2009 products.

Paul Knox from Elite Cycle Imports informed us that that he was expecting another child, that S&M were doing more LTF’s and that he was unaware the Paul Chamberlin had left the country six months ago saying “that would explain why he hasn’t been round to pick up his wheels”.

And again, that’s about it. Attending these events really shows the third world country that Australia is when it comes to flatland.

Whist you often come across riders complaining about the lack of flatland products available locally, a trade show like Ausbike reveals the other side of the coin.

Almost every distributor had a well founded horror story about loosing a large amount of money on flatland products. Whether it is because of low consumer numbers, high minimum stock purchases or the way the Aussie dollar goes up and down like a hookers panties, each seemed reluctant to invest large amounts of time and money in flatland products.

But can you blame them? Scottish John from Triple Six said anecdotally “for every 1000 BMX frames we sell, only one would be flat”.

The non flatland news worth mentioning to come out of Ausbike is short and sweet. The SE PK Ripper and Quadangle re-releases are a mish mash of the old and the new with things like US bottom brackets, 48 spline three piece crank sets and external headsets. There were a lot of cool arty helmets available for the consumer including some sparkly Nazi style ones. There were some cool wooden bikes for toddlers with 12” wheels and inflated rubber tires. The most contrived head tube ever invented (even for a track bike) was on show. And lastly there were these cool camper trailers for bikes that include a huge bed and solar panels (the perfect Christmas gift for Ben Moran).

The highlight of the event was the Freestyle BMX Australia stand which was completely empty except for a large steel crowd control barrier and whilst it was not great in the traditional sense, it did set up a fantastic metaphor and made important self comment on the relationship between FBMX Australia and the rest of the community.

The biggest trend for the event was plastic pedals, fucking plastic pedals, everywhere you looked it was plastic pedals in every imaginable colour. Matt Holmes said all the plastic was part of a twenty year cycle in BMX part design however it is possible that BMX riders are just cheap.

Last observation, it is unknown why a bicycle expo, held in Australia and called Ausbike would need to suffix its official title with “Australia”, but a guess would be so nobody confesses it the Austrian event of the same name.

Ausbike is set to be in Melbourne for the next five years as well as another expo type event in Adelaide in January 2010.

ali

Photos appear courtesy of: David Apostol

One sunny Winter session at Melbourne's Imax

A few of the Melbourne crew got together over the weekend to session the infamous Imax spot. Enjoying the winter sun, they snapped a few photos to share with us all. Good to hear & see the scene is holding together strong & sessions are still going during winter...

Riders: Jimmy, Karl Hughes & Grant Cruise

From West to East to South - sessions are going down...

It might be winter in Australia, but the sun is still shining (in most places!) & the sessions are happening...

Chief motivator at large, Shaun Jarvis sent me this cool email about a typical day that he Andrew "Buff" McDermott & Mike Brandt just had over in Western Australia...

I rode to the train station to meet up with Andrew as we were heading to the city to ride. There was a lady at the train station who commented that our bikes were to small for us to ride. I told her that we were stunt men and that my bike is my life and i look at my bike with the same admiration as I do when I look at my girlfriend. She did not get it.

We got to the city at about 10am and stopped at the coffee house for awesome coffee. Always a good way to start off the morning. 30 minutes later we got to the concert hall spot and we both started to be shredding... and then Charlie Chaplin comes alive and how can you miss a photo opportunity like that?? Mike B showed up about 2 hours later and he to got into the real deal. As there was a really large seniors concert on we got mobbed with old people and we were asked to move on as it was becoming somewhat hard to ride there. We were cool with that and the director dude said no problem any other day.

Off to our new spot but we were a bit unsure as it was a weekday and it might be a bust and it was. We got jacked about 2 mins into arriving there. Don't want to screw up that spot so off to the library spot...

Arrived there about 2pm and rode there till 4:30. The spot was a little bumpy but sometimes that can be good to keep your ability to ride any surface when the time is needed. I managed to pull a link I've been working on and it was the first time to get it done right. So stoked oh yeahhhh

From the library spot I decided to ride home. I thought that this was going to be the last non rain day in a while so make the most of it. The 80 minute ride home was awesome. Jump kerbs, dodge traffic, pop wheelies,bomb hills and make people in their cars coming home from work think what the hell is that guy on a bike doing - you gotta love that feeling its awesome!!

As I'm riding along I started thinking how privileged I am to be able to ride a bike. So I dedicated my day of awesome riding to every one who cant ride a bike for what ever reason that might be.


And then over in Melbourne, Victoria - Karl (Paradoxium) Hughes put a few words together about their recent session...

Weather was messued up but we had a great session all the same, using the dry area under the roof. It was my first session in months due to working everyday, so I was really stoked to be there. The guys have progressed a little since last time, so its all good from the Melbourne crew. In attendance were Grant, Jim, Michal, Ritchie, Karl and Jake.







And don't forget Tasmania. I caught up with Damon Fox recently & it was great to hear that along with his family & work commitments he he is now getting back into riding... stay tuned for more on that - but check some of the pics below...