More Flatland

Andrew was doing some sick stuff — gliding junkyard to deathtruck, backwards-rolling halfpackers, full barspin right into halfpacker, turbined forward deathtrucks — but his bunnyhop tailwhips and whoppers (rollback to 180 bunnyhop tailwhip) were the most insane...and intense: I've never seen crashing so hard on flatland in my life. Chad was also bringing street style to flatland with a rollback to 180 bunnyhop with a barspin, but my favorite trick was his no-handed gliding switch-b on the pedal (impossible).

After the flatland demo I went to check out skateboard vert. No such luck — the small stands were completely filled, and the line to get in was the longest I'd ever seen. No sense waiting around for hours, knowing full well that my chances of getting in the stands were nil.

Street

Sunday was street finals. After some riding at Impact (including shooting some of the GT team and friends who stopped by), I was actually able to watch some of the street practice. It was a pretty big setup, but I heard some riders didn't like it much and had a hard time coming up with good lines. I'll just have to check out the finals on TV to see for myself, I guess.

Extreme, extreme, extreme. Deodorant, beverages, food, sports — it's all extreme now. Yes, most of the extreme stuff — including the coverage of our "sport" — is pretty cheesy. Yes, some rich white executives are probably getting rich off our "sport". But from what I heard and saw, so are the riders — excuse me, "extreme atheletes". Not to mention the publicity that riding gets to the general public. Rather than start a discussion about the good and evil of corporate America getting involved in BMX, let me just say this: I'd much rather have people know what riding is from seeing things like the Gravity Games, rather than thinking it's like what's in the movie Rad...

Results

Bike Dirt 1. T.J. Lavin 2. Chris Doyle 3. Ryan Jordan

Bike Street 1. Dave Osata 2. Ryan Nyquist 3. Mike Laird

Bike Vert 1. Dave Mirra 2. Jamie Bestwick 3. Jay Miron

Check out all the results at the Gravity Games site.