So I went to Estonia last week. Yeah, it was sweet. The objectives: to shred, goof off, and hang out at Simpel Session. All achieved successfully. My bike was lost for the first day but it didn’t really matter since I got there a day early to be a tourist anyway.

Practice was awesome. I thought the course, although built a little hastily, was amazing. All the good riding I did was in practice, ha. The contest was run in 4 man, 8 minute jams. Only, they were more like 8 minutes of 4 guys taking turns at riding in 1 minute runs. So I basically did like 2 things and then just fell apart because apparently I get winded in about .01 seconds of riding. Oh well, there’s still best trick, right? Well yeah, but I couldn’t pull my move off in time. I was trying to fakie hop this…

I had it once but I engaged the freecoaster on the rollback and it bucked me off. AH, so close. I half-ass tried it on the first day of practice and ended up rocking my hip into the top corner of that wedge ramp. Not good. Here’s a pic of the bruise a week after it happened. So gnarly, but it was so much worse the day after I did it. It looked like beef jerkey.

It’s pretty cold in Estonia, but a few people still tried to ride some street. Fat Tony (from Ridebmx) and I went on a quick little sesh before I had to catch the shuttle bus to practice. I was trying to ride up some tree and an elderly Estonian lady came and started yelling at us/me. She was pissed that I was riding a tree, “nature,” she said and told me to go ride “stone.” So, she basically told me to go street riding — sweet!

There was this sweet Italian joint down the alley from the hotel that everyone ate at (everyday pretty much) that had the dopest gap ever. Talked to Fat about shooting it the next day only to wake up to snow — bummer. Ah well, next year right?

The whole trip was awesome and I had a great time. It sucks, because now that I’ve done this, I just want to go out and do it again and again and again, etc. Anyway, there was a bunch of coverage over at Ridebmx.com. I’m in this practice day video at the end doing a cab 270 whip (psyched!).
Here’s some flicks that Fat took that I’ve taken off the Ride site.

-Russell