Capital BMX » Travel

Epic Woodward Trip

Landozine — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:35:25 +0000

Since 2007 I’ve tried to make it to Woodward at least once a year. This year I was lucky enough to go twice. Somehow when I went in January it was impossible to convince anyone from Ottawa to join and ended up going alone with Jorden to meet up with the Sudbury guys. But then in November we literally could not fit enough people into cars to head down. We had 13 people for this trip, which even by Jeff’s math calculates to way too many dudes in a hot tub.

I know alot of people get stoked on going to Woodward to get their training game on, and many others are content after having gone once or twice as the parks (Lot 8/Cloud 9) don’t change much. I love going to Woodward year after year for the chance to have a good time with good people. Whether it’s riding, shooting fruit with airsoft guns, or drinking in the hot tub until 4am… It’s always a memorable experience. I’ve been twice this year and can’t wait to go back next year.

This year we were bold and bribed the Woodward attendant to let us ride the outdoor courses (40$ goes a long way in a tough economy). I was hurt by Sunday morning and didn’t get to partake in the festivities unfortunately but I did get to see everyone jump the megaramp as well as some pretty cool stuff in the legendary ‘Cage’ contest course.

Legendary Pizza.

These are the sorts of trips that make Jeff miss living in Ontario. Lets keep taking them until he comes back, and then when he gets here we’ll stop road tripping.

Barcelona 2011 – No shirt, no shoes, no Jorden.

Landozine — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 04:52:47 +0000

I have been trying to get to Barcelona for several years now, however each time something came up and I ended up traveling to a different destination. Finally this spring we came to a consensus that Barcelona could not wait any longer and before we knew it 10 riders had bought their tickets. Groups of riders came from Ottawa, Sudbury and Vancouver and we all met at Centre Ramblas; a hostel right in the centre of Barcelona.

Riders included Marc Boudreau and Jeff Bedard from Vancouver, Kyle Lafleur and Joel ‘Ace’ Delongchamp from Sudbury as well as Rich Redmond, Chris Bryan,

myself and rookie tripgoers Nick Stupich, Jay Leroux and Crazy Steve. As you can imagine motivating and navigating a group of 10 grimey bmxers is no easy task, but here is a breakdown of some of the highlights from the trip.

Rich’s Spot Map… Everything is near a subway stop in Barcelona.

DAY 1-

Everyone showed up to the hostel to find Jeff and Marc asleep in the room, miscommunication resulted in them showing up one day earlier than us. The room was 45 degrees at least with absolutely no air flow. The one window the room had opened up to a tiny alleyway into which people had clearly taken shits out of their hostel windows. It was brutal.

After getting all of our bikes put together, we went for a quick rip around the neighborhood just to take things in. We found several spots completely by accident, including a really tight wallride and a super famous bank/hip spot which was much tougher to ride than one would assume from watching people ride it in videos.

Kyle Lafleur with an interesting fakie wallride.

We ended day 1 at the beach, drinking beers and celebrating the beginning of what would surely be an epic adventure. After the beach we found our way down to the club district where Jay Leroux charmed a nice italian girl who put us on the guest list at BLVD club and got us free drinks all week. Thanks Giulia!

This is how Boudreau slept the whole week. On the balcony.

Day 2-

Everyone stayed up way too late and partied way too hard on Day 1 only to wake up in Saudi Arabia. The room was easily 20 degrees hotter than it was outside. The one single fan they supplied us with did nothing. After much haggling and arguing with the girl at the front desk she brought us an “air conditioner” basically a fan that you put ice in… An appliance from the Flintstones essentially. Rich found this unacceptable (as did all of us) and instantly broke into “we flew across the world for this mode” and argued with the front desk until they gave us a new room.

The Oogling perch.

The new room had a balcony and a much better air flow system. This also made it possible for us to oogle girls from above all week.

After a short nap we all went out riding and found a really cool spot with coping ledges, tranny benches and some amazing grinder lines. Unfortunately we got rained out super hard, it rained and hailed for about an hour. The rain was harder than anything I have ever experienced, it literally turned the streets into rivers.

We returned to the spot once everything dried to shoot some photos and chill out.

Jay Leroux, manual to barspin with Rich in hot pursuit.

Ginger with a hangover toothpick grind.

After riding we went back to BLVD club and had some pretty epic adventures. And thanks to Boudreau’s incredible tolerance for alcohol, we had beer street vendors following us more or less all night.

Unfortunately Chris Bryan was subject to some shady business that night, walking home after the club alone, he was accosted by a tranny hooker and had his iphone pick pocketed.

Day 3 -

We all woke up hung over again, however Boudreau (the last to go to bed) decided it was too much work to clean off his bed so he just slept on the balcony (a trend that would continue for the rest of the week). This being the first good sleep any of us had gotten since arriving in Barcelona, we were all ready to go out and shred. The day before we had met a couple of brothers from San Francisco (One BMXer and one Skateboarder) and they told us about some spot that had a bunch of vert spines in a row and told us the subway stop they were near. We all packed up and headed out to check this spot out only to find that it was actually a skatepark, and a really crazy one at that (and not in a good way). We rode there for a few minutes before discovering that there were some amazing metal banks, ledges and wallrides across the street.

Jay icepicking a miniature concrete vert ramp.

Ace spent a good chunk of time trying a manual to gap to double peg from a bench onto an above bar height ledge, he managed to clock several gnarly crashes before giving up. Kyle Lafleur shut the spot down with a wallride gap to barspin over a rail into the street.

Kyle wallride to hop barspin over the rail.

Once we were finished at that spot, we had grand plans to gradually work our way back to the hostel but didn’t get more than 100 yards before finding one of the most magnificent bank spots. Hips, sub boxes, manual ledges, gaps to grass, everything… literally in view of the last incredible spot we rode. The entire group felt doomed, and that we might never get back to the hostel… but nobody really cared. Jay quickly got to work with some hop whips from the sub box into the bank, Nick Stupich broke out his signature decade 180 footjams on the bank and Rich Redmond gave us a scare with an enormous 360 running man to grass explosion.

Jay hop whipping his way to OZ down the yellow brick road.

No frog legs on this one. Kyle Lafleur downwhip.

Boudreau was hurt, but he sessioned the fuck out of every soft grassy patch he could find.

Finding food in Barcelona that 10 guys can agree on is hard. We ate Donair and Shawarmas almost exclusively for the first half of the trip.

Once we finished with the amazing bank spot, we managed to make some distance and see a bit of the city. We rode a few spots here and there before we came to some pretty crazy brick bank hips… the same ones that Mike Aitken did a crazy gap across in the old Fit Barcelona video. Everyone threw down a few tricks for the camera on what turned out to be an amazing bank to bank hip both ways. We rode there for several hours, until 11pm or so when the store across the street stopped selling us beer.

Crazy Steve jumping over Jeff and Kyle

This trip was Ginger’s first time back on his bike riding hard since knee surgery, he did pretty well considering. Big Turndown.

There was also a super cool zip line swing in the park next to the banks, and after we had all given it a go, Ginger decided to try and attach his bike to it somehow… of course the guy in the knee brace is the guy to go for this…

It started off so positive…

Ginger got dragged a good 30 feet like this before he let go.

We made it to the beach eventually where we sat and drank beers while Jeff built a toilet paper hobo fire.

DAY 4 -

Our mission for the day was to hit the metro station and head north to the famous quarter to metal wall. Rich had mapped out all the spots using google street view prior to arriving but when we got to the metro station we were unable to find the it as easily as the spots we had found the day before. The crew became frustrated and almost mutinied on Rich (the trip’s unofficial captain) but at the last second we came over a hill and found the magical quarter to wall.

Me doing fastplants. One of my 4 tricks. This is actually a street spot… really.

Crazy Steve right up at the top of the wall.

This spot was my personal favourite of the trip. It was more interesting an obstacle than I have ever ridden in a skatepark. So many different lines and possibilities. And somehow it is a street spot… it is mind boggling.

Airing out over the top of the wall.

After riding there we searched around for a while and ran into an interesting stucco quarterpipe on the side of a highway onramp.

This was an odd find indeed. Kyle with a solid stucco toothpick.

The quarter was wavey and bumpy, not really good for much but Kyle had no problem toothpick stalling it.

Clearly by this day on the trip most of the guys had gone far too long without porn and were becoming crotchety towards each other. Bickering over which way to go, and what to do… until we stumbled upon (appropriately enough) a pair of spongey nipples in a playground…. The same ones that are prominently shown in some of the Nike 6.0 barcelona videos.

Rich stretching out a nice no footed can over the second nipple.

I suffered what has been dubbed ‘one of the best crashes ever caught on video’ while riding this spot. When you’re running up to this obstacle you have to weave between two small boulders and I somehow clipped my pedal coming through and scorpion grinded all the way up the takeoff. It really sucked. I was virtually unscathed but that was the end of my session. It didn’t slow Jay, Rich or Steve though. All of whom got some pretty decent clips on these nipple jumps.

And that night we drank Absinthe…

It seemed like such a good idea at the time…

One key quote from Ginger, while waiting in line at the club, he leans in to a red headed girl who is clearly with a guy and says “hey, do you want to make more?” (implying they could make creepy red headed babies together). At which point they began to flirt. I’m not sure exactly what was said, but when it was pointed out that he was trying to pick up a girl who has a boyfriend he just said “picking up a girl who’s with someone is just like cod fishing… you just gotta troll for a couple of hours”. Ruthless.

Day 5

Recovered from Absinthe drinking.

Day 6-

We started the day at Macba… a pretty famous ledge spot. Ace took another ruthless chest to handlebars crash first run to get everything going. We then went and rode a really interesting bank setup where Kyle Lafleur got real sweaty trying a bars to manual down the bank.

Jay Leroux – Maniac.

We eventually made our way to the Sea Wall where we met up with Crazy Steve who had been solo running it for a few hours already by the time we got there. The sea wall was a lot of fun, everyone carved the doors and then we started having a quarterpipe session on the shorter area. Rich was going super high and blasting perfect tables. Jay whipped it as was expected but some of the sand from the beach got into his usually well groomed vagina and kept him from going upside down and flairing it.

Jay did alot of whips.

What a haircut… I mean table.

After the sea wall we went and rode some night time street. The most notable happening was while riding a bank to subrail spot, Kyle was trying to 180 over the rail, turn around and half cab back into the bank over the rail… well some spanish dude was yelling at us from his 10th story window, we knew he wanted us to leave but apparently we didn’t know how BADLY he wanted us to leave. On Kyle’s last try, a large bottle came hurling from the sky and missed him by inches, smashing all over the bank. It would have been devastating if it had hit him. That put a pretty big damper on the session, half the crew headed home to the hostel and the other half of us pedaled around looking at spots but didn’t ride much.

Day 7-

On day 7 some of the guys went riding, but Ginger and I went and checked out the Sagrada Familia, an insane church in Barcelona. For any fans of architecture, this place is a must. Absolutely stunning. The lineup usually takes several hours, but we just cut in line about 50 feet from the front. We’re probably terrible people.

Everyone had different flights to catch the next morning, but most of us went out and partied more or less right until we had to go to the airport. Before the party started however we all got together to get our Caricature drawn (as seen at the top of this article). The artist did a great job. He really captured the essence of the group!

Rich, Nick and I closed the club down at 6am and hopped in a cab for our 9am flight. Rich fell asleep at the airport mcdonalds and we couldn’t wake him up… I think that means we partied properly the night before.

I’ve been on a few euro trips now, and I can say positively that spending a week in Barcelona with 10 awesome dudes was definitely one of the best times of my life. We rode hard, partied harder, ate way too many donairs and oogled more women than any of us can possibly remember. This was a classic BMX road trip.

Jeff and Marc’s Most Excellent Adventure.

Landozine — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 04:37:29 +0000

Ottawa alumni Jeff Bedard and Marc Boudreau decided to visit California for Christmas, and Jeff did a little write up about it.

Thanks to the cost of plane tickets during the holidays me and Boudreau were too poor to fly home for Christmas. So we did the next best thing and went south to California, Arizona, and finished it off with New Years in Las Vegas.

The trips started off with a 15-20 hour drive straight to San Fran and meet up with a friend named Reid who we meet in Timmins on our last Van trip. He drove us around in his dually dad truck that had a hoist attached to it for picking up fat chicks.

We went to a cool skatepark, checked out some street and In n Out burger for supper. Check that place out if you have a chance. and make your burger “animal style” you won’t be disappointed.

We also went to the Google Compound.

After that we went to Hollywood for some street riding and sight seeing.

All the schools in Cali are on lock down with 10ft steel fences to prevent you from going in after hours but Boudreau was able to bust out this cute head duck to smith grind at the famous Hollywood High.

Chuck Norris is so badass he broke his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame. Sadly we didn’t find Arnold’s.

Our next stop was LA for more street riding and sigh seeing. Here’s a picture with the great one.

Alot of the famous spots we checked out were way gnarlier then what you’d expect.

Anyone that does anything on this doesn’t make any sense. It’s like 2 ft over bar.

From there we continued south to Santa Ana. We were really excited to ride the famous Civic Center Banks but when we got there most of the hips were gone and all that was left was the little pyramid. I had fun doing hang5s and rocket manuels but Boudreau ended up just getting really soaked.

We went south again to Irvine CA. and went to UCI. There are tones of good rails and ledges but bring you A game cuz everything is pretty gnarly! Here’s Boudreau putting in work on and 18 stair. (EDITORS NOTE: Boudreau overcoming his fear of handrails could mean that someday he’ll come swim in the shallow end with us, only time will tell)

I was really looking for a good rail to feeble. I thought this kinker would work in my head but it really didn’t in real life. Thank God for long legs or I would be a Ken Doll right now.

On our way to San Diago we stoped in Santa Fe we stopped for the night. This is were we meet a really cool guitar playing hobo who spent his last 20$ to buy us som real american beer. We chilled out and drank with his that night. In the morning we went to the beach so I could go swimming and we chilled on the pier.

We went to Sandiago and tried to ride the Home Ave. ditch but because of all the rain Cali got the week before there was too much water to really ride so we chilled out for a bit and had a couple a beer. Some locals brought us to a cool underground spot and some really shitty street. We stopped at a skatepark in Ocean Beach then headed to Arizona.

On the way to Pheonix we some dunes and lots of crazy landscape. Mountain made of boulders. This pic doesn’t do it justice. We rode a really good park and my favourite spot of the trip, the Rat Boy wedge to wedge that Anthony Napolitan frontflips on road fools. We left cuz it was really cold and windy and headed for Vegas. On the way we drove threw a really gnarly snow storm wich made the drive even worse. And yes we drove threw a snow storm in the freakin desert!

Capital BMX Taz Rental/Snowboarding Day.

Landozine — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:57:08 +0000

We all loaded up into the Craz-E-Crew van yesterday morning for a trip to Montreal. Not only did we have the Taz rental last night but we decided to go to a ski hill north of Montreal beforehand to hit the slopes. 8 guys, 6 boards, 2 sets of skis and 8 bikes all packed into a van full of fart spray and pinkeye. It was great.
Early on in the trip, it was discovered that Emile was contagious… having gotten pink eye from doing amateur rectal exams without goggles.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures from the actual hill that we went to. I’m not comfortable enough on a board to trust myself carrying a camera on the hill. But some pretty great times were had by all. One of the highlights was watching Ben and Emile bombing down a closed run while people on the chairlift yelled at them telling them they weren’t allowed to be there.

After the hill we went to Taz for the rental. The rental of course was a reward to all the Ottawa riders who helped raise money for the Orleans box jump. Exactly 20 riders from Ottawa showed up to fill the park. The session was pretty tame due to half of us being exhausted from snowboarding/skiing all day, but some good stuff still went down.

Jorden with a ruben wallride on the slant wall.

Unfortunately there was some drama surrounding the rental. Although the event was advertised as a private engagement from the beginning, somebody invited a bunch of french kids from Montreal on the facebook page for the rental and they all showed up expecting to ride… The evils of facebook. Although it was a huge disappointment to them, we had to turn them away.

Ben Kaufmann with a wallride to no hander.

Riding Taz during a private session is unbeatable, its so much fun being able to pedal at stuff not and worrying about running into people who aren’t paying attention to where they are going. Also not having to listen to the terrible music that is usually being played was a plus too.

Crazy Steve with a flip 180 over the box jump. He landed this perfectly, rolled back about 10 feet and then blew the rollout. Still counts in my books. He crashed pretty hard on the next attempt, doing some damage to his tailbone and ending his session.

Vancouver Odyssey: Day 7 + 8

Prashant — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 12:18:49 +0000

I am sitting at the airport, killing time, so I thought I would put up some photos from the last couple days of the trip. Little to no BMX in any of these as Chitaroni and I spent the day at the Museum of Anthropology at the UBC campus, followed by a stroll down a nude beach, a ruthless night out, then a day of recovery and packing to head home.

Cruising UBC campus again we spotted this show setup.

The announcer, RT, let us know what’s up. Scary ramp.

Then we went to the museum.

This visual/auditory piece was very interesting.

Lots of interesting things.

Pieces from around the world.

Sri Lanka.

Mexican shark masks.

Then we hit the beach.

Only a few creepy, naked, old dudes.

Spotted this hobo raft.

The next day we had to pack up our stuff and bid farewell.

Packing sucks.

Waiting at the airport while Rich airs out his sour feet.

Vancouver Odyssey: Day 6

Prashant — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:16:19 +0000

Yesterday we went to UBC campus and met up with Shawn Henderson who showed us around. Amidst all the back-to-school week festivities we found plenty of things to ride, even some dirt jumps next to the campus. After all of that we cruised around downtown and took in some spots and sites. Check out more photos after the link.

We got asked to leave this one spot in particular a few times this day.

Checked out some potential spots.

Ginger gapped to this slant wall while security chatted on their cellphone. Security as a whole were pretty relaxed.

Jeff was convinced that his handlebar grinds were really good.

Constructed a take off for this hip and Shawn blasted one footed tables.

Jorden whipped it.

Bob Villa did some handy work to the inside of the van. We now have benches.

Cruised around campus more.

Boudreau manualed to 180 this long curved ledge.

Ginger found a tight Berringer grind.

Made our way back to the yellow walls.

Jeff amused himself with these.

Went to some dirt jumps next to campus.

Rich made it through all the jumps.

Ginger popped over this setup.

Made our way downtown.

Rode this spot in the dark.

Did more cruising.

Sessioned this pizza.

Numero Uno beats the hell out of Fresh Slice.

Saw some sites.

Tried to ride the Georgia bank.

This is what happens when you have wide bars, a baggy sweater, and pop tables.

Vancouver Odyssey: Day 5

Prashant — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:28:51 +0000

We got an early start to our day and went back to the New Westminster park to ride it in the daylight. After a couple of hours we went up to North Van to a great water spot and then rode the Kirkstone park before a few injuries started taking people out. Click below to check out more photos.

Rich Red – turndown

Neighbourhood.

Marc did some texting and took a nap on the flat ledge.

Jeff did this first try.

Chitaroni – no hands.

Jamie with the cross up.

We made our way to Lynwood Canyon.

We crossed a fun suspension bridge.

Mighty trees.

The water was absolutely freezing cold but some people adjusted better than others.

Shortly after this photo I fell in the water and the only thing that stayed dry was my camera.

Jeff braving the glacier waters.

Drying clothes on the van.

Jeff’s not afraid to get buck.

Then we rode Kirkstone.

Not many photos from here as many of us fell victim to injuries and a long day.

Vancouver Odyssey: Day 4

Prashant — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:02:56 +0000

Day 3 was full of rain and rather uneventful, so I’m going to skip straight to day 4. After an unsurprising late start to the day we drove out to Port Coquitlam and rode the Railside park. More rain chased us out the park by the end of the day and out to New Westminster. Click below for more photos.

Butts, butts, butts.

Rich Redmond showing off his Giant Tiger v-neck fashion.

Jamie sitting on Jeff’s car, that somehow made it across Canada.

Filthy monkey on the hood.

Back in the uncomfortable van.

Unpacking the van.

Railside aka PoCo.

The bowl was really great and the focal point of the whole park.

Rich handplanted the big wall.

One handed, one footed opposite table.

Topside can can.

Jorden – table

Jim feebled this curved ledge to 180.

We were stoked to see this kid with the same bad taste for paintjobs as Rich has.

Flat ledge crew.

Double manuals.

The day dragged on and Jeff started to get weird.

Then the rain came.

Double rainbow.

So we went to check out the New Westminster park.

It was a little too dark for some of us to feel comfortable riding.

This little guy was driving around in a motorized mini police car in the park.

Some people still rode anyways.

Vancouver Odyssey: Day 1 + 2

Prashant — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:11:16 +0000

Rich Redmond, Chris Chitaroni, his cousin Ryan, Jorden Guth, Jamie Lawlor, Chris Bryan, and myself (Prashant) are out in Vancouver staying with Marc Boudreau and Jeff Bedard. We’ve been riding parks, sleeping on floors, and driving around in the back of a Uhaul van. It’s a wet and rainy day here (day 3), so I’m uploading a bunch of photos from days 1 and 2. Click below to check out more from the trip so far.

It starts at the airport.

Chris familiarizing himself with the emergency procedures.

Flying is boring.

We all finally made it to New Westminster.

We rented a Uhaul cargo van to get us and our bikes around.

Two seats, and bikes in the back.

The rest of us sit on the floor.

First park: Bonsor

Riding the smaller side.

Andrew Lazarick (Lazerdick) with a full speed 10:30 carve.

Then we went to the Surrey area and rode the Whiterock park. Ryan did a wild gap here at the end of the night.

It gets cold at night. After this photo was taken, Jeff tried to make a hobo fire to stay warm.

Day 2: Back in the van

We went to this bank to sub somewhere in Burnaby area and met up with Jeremy Deme.

Boudreau trying to double peg.

Rich trying to vader nose manual to 180.

Back in the cars. Ask any Vancouver local where something is and they will say “10 – 15 minute drive” which really means 25-30 minutes.

Went to the Hastings Park and Jorden eyed up this big sub.

Got a little too over-ambitiouos.

Again, we rode some of the smaller ramps on the backside primarily.

The bowls here are no joke.

Rich getting his nothing flyouts dialed in.

This is how you have to enter the park.

Big park.

Pedaling around with a big backpack can be miserable.

Back to the van.

Witnessed a near fight break out.

We were going to ride some trails in the city and arrived to find they were plowed.

Jeremy took us to this spot instead.

Then he and Lazerdick took us to this amazing burrito spot.

Those who indulged were stoked.

Made our way downtown to ride the plaza.

Rich with a blurry wallride.

When we were packing up we had an encounter with a crazy dude holding a rock, looking for an alibi, claiming he was being followed, and threatening to smash a guys head in. Police showed up to handle it.

Back to the human cargo.

Boudreau and Jeff forgot their keys so they had to break in to their own place. Climbing through window, snatching your people up.

Back to home base.

Keep checking back for more updates as the trip continues.

Germany B-Roll

Landozine — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:48:26 +0000

I realized I had a tonne of clips left over from Germany that hadn’t made it into the last video, so I whipped up another. Not nearly as good of riding as in the first one, but still fun nonetheless. I also dug up an old german punk song I remembered from an old fat wreck chords cd…