I’ve uploaded some photos I took of our trip up to Oakland and back here - there’s a couple from Hollywood / LA, some from San Francisco, and some from the drive back along the PCH including a stop at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park which was unreal. The scenery along the coast is something that everyone should witness at some point in their lifetime, it really is that amazing.

The drive back on Monday took us literally all day, we set off not long after 10am and arrived back in San Diego at around 1am the next day. We did stop off at a fair few places though including some trails just south of Oakland, Capitola, and later Santa Barbara for some dinner and a couple of beers on State Street.

All in all it was an ace weekend, I got to check out a couple of different parks (Gilman Street in Berkeley and one in Alameda) as well as some awesome street at the UC Berkeley campus. Shame my back was too sore to ride for most of the time but it was rad just being there all the same, the campus was amazing - so much fun small stuff to ride as well as a crazy selection of rails to throw yourself down. And not a skatestopper in sight which is an amazing thing in itself - totally different to how downtown San Francisco is now for example, I still can’t get over the fact that they stoppered the Embarcadero considering how central that place was to the whole skateboarding scene there at one point.

Oh aye, and the new Giddy Motors album is awesome.

Crikey, I’ll have been back in the US for two weeks this coming Sunday but already it feels like I’ve been here alot longer. So far I’ve managed to get sunburnt, flood a Reverend’s toilet, spend an evening on a booze cruise courtesy of Reef and eat myself almost sick at EZ-J’s. I’ve taken a raft of photos although I haven’t gotten around to sorting and uploading most of them yet, although there’s a few recent ones of Steve Woodward here that are pretty rad, and I’ll have some surfing ones up soon.

Currently I’m in Oakland (Bay Area, right near San Fran and Berkeley) staying at Taylor’s mom’s place (which is siiiick!) for the weekend as he’s up here on some family business. We drove up yesterday from LA after staying the night in Hollywood courtesy of a friend of ours, and the drive up along the PCH around sunset reminded me how beautiful this part of the world is. I was supposed to spend today in San Francisco but dodgy guts and poor directions meant that it didn’t happen - so far. I think the plan for the weekend is to get in a load of riding at various parks, maybe some trails, and of course plenty of booze although I’m hoping to do some touristy stuff as well in Berkeley and SF. It feels like lifetimes ago since me, Wes and Ben were in this area in 2000….

Not much else to report on so far. The drama back home in Blighty is pretty grim, good luck to Fletch on getting himself home with the minimum of hassle. More updates with some photos soon!

Rode trails with a couple of people for the first time in about five years on Sunday somewhere down in Accrington. Pretty good setup, jumps were a bit dry and haggard in places and it looks like they haven’t been maintained by anyone in a while but they were good fun all the same.

As it’s a handy excuse when you don’t want to ride I took my camera down and decided to fire off a few shots. This was the first time I’d taken photos of trails so most of the time I was experimenting with what works and what doesn’t:

Oh and it looks like my visa issues are sorted as my trip down to London and interview on Thursday at the US embassy went really well. Was a bit mental going there, security was insane with police everywhere and two checks before you were even allowed in the building. Sitting inside meant waiting for hours (literally) in a sweaty room (no aircon) for your number to be called so that your application can be screened and then your interview progressed.

Anyways, just awaiting the return of my passport now and then I can rebook my flights and head out to San Diego, hopefully at the end of the month for a return near the end of October.

Kellie: “Hey Nick, you do know that the bottom tube on your BMX frame has a split in it?”
Me: “Yeah right, it’s probably just a scratch…”
Kellie: “No seriously, there’s a split in the metal!”
Me: “I doubt it babe, metal doesn’t usually just split and anyway, these frames are practically indestructable.”

* Gets bike out and turns it upside down *

Click the above image for a close-up.

Fuck.

I found a fairly old issue of Ride UK the other day with an ace photo (courtesy of Brad MacDonald) in the centre spread of Pete Augustin. He’s riding a hip at the Home Ave. ditches in San Diego, and the caption at the bottom reads something like “A 28 year old Pete Augustin proves that you’re never to old to have fun riding your bike”. I honestly remember thinking at the time “whoah, 28 is really old - I’ll be stoked if I’m still riding at that age”.

I’ve put up the scans that I’ve done from some old photos here. I’ve a load more of these to go through but I haven’t had time to scan that many more in, so it’ll have to wait until my parents are settled at their new place and their stuff is unpacked before I get chance to sort any more. There’s some pretty cool shots in there though….

Watching this on BBC2 right now. So fucking timely.

Here’s a couple of scans [one, two, three] I’ve done over the weekend from some old photos of taken at the back of Burnden Park in 1995. Good times, good times.

More to come - I’ll upload them to my gallery once they’ve been fixed.