In search of the sun (Part 7)

A three-man trip to the south of France, Barcelona,...
Words: Fabio
Pics + italics: Drooze

Next day we went to a small concrete park next to the coast, whit a small
pool and a spine ramp in it, fun to ride. Then we went of following the coastline,
found a pretty cool bank to bank thing. I tried to 180 it, didn’t worked out as
I wanted tough? Dimitris tried to hop from the lower of the two banks on to
the highest; which was made of a 5mm steel plate, ending up short whith a flat
tire and an ugly scratch in his rim. Thanks to Repsol gas station for selling nail
files to fix up his rim!

Decent air out of a small concrete bowl.

Synchronised 180's.

Art. Pure art

First try: Fail.

Dimitris putting nailfiles to good use...

The bank-to-bank gapthing that killed dimitris' rim, here nicely gapped by Fabio.

Big gap at small skatepark.

Seriously, who builds this stuff? Fabio with a tuck from an airvent into a dirt bank.

In search of the sun (Part 6)

A three-man trip to the south of France, Barcelona,...
Words: Fabio
Pics + italics: Drooze

So every morning it was the same, we got up at around 10.30am, ate
breakfast, chilled for about half an hour, prepared ourselves to ride, got
in the car and drove to the center of Barcelona and parked the car in an
underground parking lot. It wasn’t very cheap, but we all agreed it was
better than a couple of broken windows...

The street riding was amazing! It’s like a big skate park whit houses
build in it. I don’t know what the architects were up to when building it,
but it was great! At almost every corner of the street there was something
you could ride.

The first day we parked the car near the coast, because we thought it was
the easiest. Immediately we found a bank that was in the Fit Barcelona
movie we watched the evening before, then we cruised around a little,
found a square whit some pyramid shaped flower-boxes that you could
ride like a set of trails.

The rest of the day we explored a bit of the inner city, found a really fun
statue, like a bank to wall. Dimitris did a sick manual down some benches
starting about 5m above the ground to the left, for about 25m long, respect.
In the evening we met a local, but as we noticed not much guys there can
speak English, and so was he. It was amazing, he kept on talking and talking
in Catalan, even if we tried to explain him several times we couldn’t
understand a word of what he was saying

Flowerbeds, or concrete trails?

I love this picture, because it tends to mess with your head.

This city was built with streetriding in mind.

Lovely March weather.

In search of the sun (Part 5)

A three-man trip to the south of France, Barcelona,...
Words: Fabio
Pics + italics: Drooze

First, some leftover pictures from the last day at the trails:

Dimitris with a nice one-footed table

Fabio and Dimitris flowing through the trees.

Fabio with a reasonably sized transfer.

Swollen pinkie?

Dimitris, not sure what to think...

So three days later we left the trails behind us to continue our journey to Barcelona... The ride to Barcelona was pretty chill, just for the last 20 to 30km before we crossed the Spanish border it was extremely windy! 
Once we were in the city of our destination, the search for a place to stay began. We got to a tourist information desk to ask for the possibilities and got left whit a few options, hotel, apartment, hostel or a camping at about 15km outside the city in a village called Gava... Since we were whit a car and didn’t want to spend too much money on a hotel or apartment whit a decent parking space, and we brought along some expensive stuff, like cameras, laptop, bikes,... a hostel wasn’t a very good plan ether. So we went to the camping in Gava and got us a nice place, only 10m between the tent and the beach.

Just left, heading for Spain...

Me and Fabio, through a pair of sunglasses.

A nice sunny landscape, just what you'd expect from the south of France...

Closing in on the Pyrenees.

Quite shabby Welcome to Barcelona?

Not so shabby sunset on one of the main streets in Barcelona...

The view from our campground, after putting up our tent in the dark. Not too shabby either.

Closer look at the gaint moon above the mediterranean...

Check back in a few days, for riding pics of the our very first day in streetriding nirvana!

In search of the sun (Part 4)

(it's been a while since part 1 through 3. they can still be found in the archives, in april 08)

A three-man trip to the south of France, Barcelona,...

Words: Fabio
Pics + italics: Drooze


Although we were able to ride in short sleeved shirts, the nights were pretty cold. The second morning we even got up whit snow on our tents! And if it wasn’t the cold that kept us awake, it was an owl that was making just too much noise! We eventually stayed there for three days; it was great riding, chill locals, some guys from Switzerland, guys from Marseille, and guys from elsewhere in France...
I also noticed quite al lot bmx racers riding the trails, something we don’t see that often at our own trails. One thing I learned about those guys is that if they are following each other through the jumps they are taking it a little bit to serious, at a certain point the first guy bails to the left side of a jump, and the second went just strait after him. When he was at his highest point, around 2 - 3 meters above the ground, he noticed that there was no landing in sight, so he drops his bike centimeters behind the head of the first guy. I heard his explanation later, “I thought it was a transfer to the left”. Everybody had a good laugh about it, no problem.




Snow? In the south of France? Oh come on!



Forgot to take a bowl with him. But a little creativity goes a long way...



Rider from marseille. Hadn't ridden his bike in quite some time, not that I could tell...



Also quite a lot of fourcrossers... These guys were from Switserland. They spoke German, of so they said. I can speak a little German, but I couldn't understand a single word they said.



Fabio on the transfer line.



Dimitris on the transfer line.



Fourcrosser tweaks one out on the speedjumps. You could park a Hummer between those jumps.



Dimitris with a tabletop on the last jump of the hip line.



Marseilledude with a transfer from the hipline to the big line.

Same, but from another angle.

Part 5 will be online in 2 days. So check back soon!

In search of the sun (Part 3)

A three-man trip to the south of France, Barcelona,...
Words: Fabio
Pics + italics: Drooze

The next day we woke up whit the sun shining through our window, got back in the car and went to search the trails. we pretty fast found out that the trails were not hard to find, talked to some kids who were riding there and they said us that the locals were going to be there at around 2pm. So we went to the nearest camping, put up our tents, had a good meal and made ourselves and our bikes ready to ride.
When we arrived at the trails again it was crowded, we had a chat with the locals, found out that were really friendly and rode the jumps for the rest of the day.


looking good out there!



The campsite




A lot of people there, even for a sunday!



The locals kicked ass



Backflip invert...







Dimitris with a NacNac



Dimitris again



That night, watching a movie on Fabio's Mac.



It was F*cking cold!

In search of the sun (Part 2)

A three-man trip to the south of France, Barcelona,...
Words: Fabio
Pics + italics: Drooze

Day 2: Back in the car.

On day two we continued our way to our first stop, the trails in the south of France.


Decent weather


Less than decent weather...


Snow storm. The last 3 pictures were taken in a timespan of less than 30 minutes...


Traffic jam again. It's that time of the year where they prepare the roads for the summer traffic flood, roads torn up all over the place.





Not much had happened that day, we made a short stop halfway, took one bike out and had a small street session, for what was possible in a gas station parking place...






Dimitris crashing, putting nice scratches on his new bike... (click image for large size)

At around 10 in the evening we arrived at our destination, a very small but picturesque village. We went to a small restaurant and then to the nearest F1 hotel to spend the night.


Arrival in ******