Finally arrived back from a weekend of madness late last night at about 11.30pm. The drive back was fairly painless with very little traffic, so we made it in about 4 1/2 hours or so. This is the opposite to the journey down there which took almost 7 due to the usual delays at Birmingham and around London :/

So yeah, the Backyard Jam 2003 was fairly mental. Ben did pretty good in amateur, pulling most of his stuff (except that damn flip :p ), but he didn’t make the final cut. I reckon he was ripped off, and I’m not just saying that because I’m biased I honestly thought his run was a hell of a lot better than most of the other riders’. Ah well, not enough trendy tricks I guess. You should learn crankflips Ben ;)

The venue itself (BIC) was pretty cool, although I’m not sure it was ideally suited for bikes as I heard a ton of complaints about the floor being way too slippy. The course setup was similar to previous events, with a few changes like a curved wallride and a wallride-rail-wallride setup. The curved wallride was a good idea but its position on the course meant that you couldn’t actually see some parts of what was going on. You can’t have it all though I suppose.

Saturday was am day and therefore fairly low key. After hanging around and watching Ben’s run, we shaded off for a couple of beers in one of the BIC’s bars and returned later in the day to witness pro practice. Highlights were definitely watching Brian Terada - he was going nuts with all kinds of crazy stuff on the 5ft vert wall thing like barspin to icepick, and attempted icepick to tyretap. Seeing John Heaton ride too was really good, that was until he sent himself over the spine with a huge 360 that ended up in him nosediving on the way back in and landing pretty much face first one the floor. That put him out for the weekend :/

At night we headed out to a bar called ‘Consortium’ where they were premiering a few videos. We caught the new Fit Team video (the one in Barcelona) which was good, and hung around catching up with people on the days events. It was cool to see the bar being invaded by the BMX crowd - basically when we turned up it was full of your usual ‘trendy’ bar drinkers, but soon after tons of scruffy riders turned up they all got the idea and left :)

Sunday was pro day, and was what we’d basically came to see. Standouts were definitely Brian Foster and Dave Osato. Foster was using his AA Pro skills to gain ridiculous amounts of speed and hit seriously huge wallride gaps, not to mention his god-like style being evident in enormous 360s, tables, and pretty much everything he did. Osato was going nuts - he had almost no warm up (he didn’t ride pro practice on the Saturday), and yet his run kicked off with a 360 tailwhip over the spine to a 720 on the way back. He definitely pulled the trick of the weekend too - an toothpick *over* the vert wall to back in. It took him a couple of attempts, but it was pulled clean.

Was good to see some of the upcoming UK riders doing really well too - some kid I can’t remember the name off was totally going off pulling pretty much everything he went for in pro, and he can’t have been much older than about 16 or 17. Will Jackson killed it also, with tons of tech tricks and unique lines.

I took a few photos, some of which turned out OK but the lighting in that place was so funky which accounts for the orange tinge to everything.

It has to also be said that there were a TON of seriously fantastic girls present at this comp. Normally these events are just one big sausage fest, but not so this time around. As some random guy who was sat next to me at one point as about five stunning women floated past exclaimed: “Bloody hell, I’m certainly getting my £10’s worth here!”.

What about Bournemouth itself?

What Bouremouth is:

» Hella far;
» Packed with gorgeous girls;
» Full of Southerners;
» Quite purty;
» Lacking in decent beers to drink.

What Bournemoth isn’t:

» Cheap;
» Not as full of old people as I originally suspected;
» Easy to navigate round;
» Especially warm at this time of year.

I didn’t take many photos of BM itself, but the ones I did take I’ll upload later.

And er, that’s about it I guess :)