Tonight we went for a ride in a new place and I took some pictures. This is the first time for about a year that pictures have been up the same day that I took them. I must be keen.

FREE CAR! – I bought a new car so I need to get rid of my old one. It’s got about a month of tax and MOT on it, but I am not sure it will pass the next one, so if anyone wants to have it then they can have a month of free driving. I have to drive to devon to get the new one, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t live near here!

Also, since I am driving to Devon I might as well visit some places on the way. Trip on Monday anyone?

Also The Knife is a really good page. Its interesting to see people doing something similar to building trails. Some quotes I liked:

“Use your tail as shovel, dig up the spots. They are there, you just have to look. Working eyes and poetic licence is all it takes.”

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.” – Jacques Yves Cousteau.

The other day I had about ten dead sheep in my office.Close up!

Digging in the rain is fun. The rain keeps you cool while you are sweating. Summer is a good time for digging as you can get a lot done.

I put up some trails sequences. Sort of interesting.

Still raining still dreaming…

When I am old I will make stuff like this. Its really interesting how they suffer from a lot of the same problems as people who build jumps – people skidding or riding round stuff. I particularly like “The best builders must have played with a lot of LEGO when they were kids”.

You’ve probably heard about this elsewhere, but if not, Stephen Murray had a bad crash last week and was paralysed. Details. More Details
And here is a video of him riding a few days before.

The weather for most of June and May has been bad but I am not complaining. I think having a cooler summer is definately better than last year when it was too hot to do anything. Its a nice temperature at the moment. The rain is not all bad either as it means the trails aren’t too dry and dusty. A nice sprinkling everyday would be ideal.

In other news TheShovelLoad is back.

Some pictures from the other night.

Mark send me these pictures of a temple in Cambodia: 1 | 2

I put the Public Gallery up again as I like to see what people are up to. Or if you can’t be bothered to sign up for that you can use this little upload script. Put your name in the file name so I know who uploaded what!

I have just been playing Virtual Drug Dealer. It is really fun. The most I have made is $390 million.

Summer is so good. The last few days have just been amazing. Even though about half of the jumps are still wet, its still so much fun. This jump is a lot of fun, and quite a few of the new lips are working good.

Rob is always good for providing Food, especially Muffins, and also good for catching kids riding the trails when its too wet.

Nigel has very kindly fixed my bike. It’s still a heap of junk but at least now it doesn’t make horrible snapping noises when I pedal. New back wheel anyone? It’s been good to have someone at the trails to ride with this year, after a lonely 2006, and you can always rely on Nigel being at the woods.

Finally, I do like a good pie.

Red bull got cancelled. You can watch some of the practice runs here.

That event must cost a lot of money to put on and I don’t really understand what Red Bull get out of it. Ok so the would have been a lot of pictures and videos of it in magazines and on TV, linking Red Bull with BMX, but it seems like a very expensive way of getting their name associated with BMX.

I think they should buy some land somewhere and employ a couple of people to build some really smooth trails that are open to the public. If they are good trails then people from all over the country will visit them, and the pictures will still get in magazines and videos. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem if there are lots of visitors as there will be people who are paid to look after the jumps. This would probably be a lot cheaper than the empire of dirt and should give them more publicity