http://watch26.tv/video/3330/Short+trail+session

http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/4076746/?trk=favimg,1

http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/4076697/?trk=favimg,1

huge superman from tim

tim dialling in his 3s

toby perfect flip no hander 

I’ve also been doing a lot of building around my area including a dirt quarter pipe thing which turned out sick and I’ve been able to learn flairs on it to.

Check out this cool edit that Chris Seager made of the annual Guildford jam where they give us some ramps and a big dirt landing to mess around on. Riding from me and Tim in there.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/97965/

In early July we packed up our big bikes and flew out to Western Canada to sample two weeks of the holy grail of gravity riding – Whistler.

There is little left to say about the place that hasn’t already been covered by every biking publication in existence. Whistler gets a great deal of hype, and I can honestly say that it deserves it. It is the only place I have ever experienced that everybody can ride and enjoy. From Dirt Jumpers to XC riders to World Cup level DH racers, everyone we met had a huge grin on their face.

Where else in the world can you ride perfectly sculpted high-speed linked trails with jumps, drops, step-ups and berms for over 3400 vertical feet?

Everyone has heard of the stereotypical ‘Whistler trails’ like A-line and Dirt Merchant and freight train. I would challenge anybody not to have a good time flying down one of these. I spent most of my time throwing whips, tables and X ups off everything I could find while Tim made it his mission to superman and no-foot-can almost every jump on the mountain. It was great to witness the open mouths of many Whistler locals and they watched “that crazy British kid” get ridiculously extended off jumps that most people would be scared to do anything other than straight jump. The RAM freeride performed its job admirably, allowing Tim to hit the slopestyle features in the boneyard while still handling the super gnarly runs up at the top of the mountain. While the bumpy stuff doesn’t get as much attention as the jump trails it is every bit as good.

All I can say is that every rider should make the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. For a small sample of our trip check out Tom Grundy’s Webisode. We got very little footage because we spent the majority of our time squeezing as many runs in as possible but Tom still managed to put this together.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/91181/

Since we got back from Canada I have been doing a lot of digging and some riding.

I finally got a huge weight of my shoulders by getting rid of my no-foot-can phobia. I’m looking forward to improving them further. A trip down to 4a a couple weeks ago also turned into a great session, a few of us worked on cork-flips with varying degrees of success!

I have been putting quite a few hours in at a local spot, trying to resurrect it. All the effort is starting to pay off now as we’ve started riding them again. Ryan “Trail Doctor” Nangle came down yesterday and we sorted out the lip of a step-up. This resulted in a sweet little session. It culminated in me trying to figure out some sort of upside down flatspin thing. It didn’t go so well but I think it is more than possible if I can figure out how to hold onto the bike! Here’s a little video to show you what I mean.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/94901/

Another spot I’ve digging and riding at is Kech’s trails. Here’s a very quick video made by my friend who was testing out his camera. Nothing special but its something.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/94079/

Anyway I will be filming a proper edit with Tom in the near future and I will get that to you as soon as possible.

Rory.

A week after our jam was wisely king of dirt which was amazing. Me and tim had the best days riding of the year so far and i ended up 6^th and tim got 7^th which  was cool.

I just got back from a mini road trip to Chicksands, Woburn and corby which was awesome, the guys at Chicksands let us rebuild the pro line so we got that running sick and it ended up in a cool session till sundown..

The last few weeks have been really good for me, just finished my finals exams and been riding loads. I rode in a demo for the bike shop cycleworks with Mike smith, Sam ren and Dan black which was cool. The weather was perfect and in the end we had a pretty big crowd going.

Me and Tim are going to be making a new webvid when he gets his bike fixed so look out for that but in the mean time check out these 2 vids I made a few months ago.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/68024/

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/73242/

Had a sweet sesh at the trails the other day to, a few new pics:

Thats it for now, I’ll be going up to redhill king of dirt this weekend with a few mates which should be a good time, cya all there.

Ive also been up to my mates house in cobham to help him plan out his backyard jumps which will be cool when they are finished, he took me to his local trails which were really over grow but had some cool techy lines:

The rain has come in hard these past days so ive been rebuilding and building a new line at my trails which is super flowy and fun so i mite have a vid of it next time i blog, cya.

After a 6 – hour drive from Guildford to Cornwall I was hugely grateful of a bed to sleep in at Tim’s flat. I went to bed nervous, but thankfully too exhausted to let it keep me awake all night. Saturday arrived and we were all up early for a fry-up breakfast courtesy of master chef Kech Williams! A half-hour drive through the rolling Cornish countryside got us to ‘The Track’. Even at 10 am the car park was already overflowing and the place was buzzing. As it was my first visit to Portreath I was blown away by the sheer amount of lines and features squeezed into an area the size of a large field. We padded up and went up to check out the start of the dirt line, teeming with riders dialling in their lines. Ryan was already hard at work on the small line, looking smooth as ever.

I got to work riding the technical smaller lines and started to wish that I’d taken the sat-nav with me! We practiced for the rest of the day, and I struggled to get the entire line down, a few weird jumps in the top section were putting many of us off, one in particular resulted in a K.O. for Jim Davage and a nasty dislocated and snapped ankle for James Ioannou (get well soon mate!). Ryan and I had an awesome session in the pit and resi-ramp, with Ryan working on superflips and no handed flips, while I tried to dial in my no foot cans and barrel rolls/ cork flips.

By the time the elite comp came around at 5 pm I was exhausted, a mistake which I will try not to make again. As the wind started to pick up there was some grumbling around the pack of riders, many of whom seemed less than stoked on the imminent competition. However this was blown out of the window as all of the riders started putting down their runs.
Then my name was announced and it was go time! I dropped in and realized to my horror that I could barely hold onto my bars due to arm-pump and a sprained wrist. If anything this helped me though, I was forced to relax and breezed through a line that had been giving me problems all day. I did basic tables, kickouts and X ups most of the way down the line then threw a flip off the last step-up. A slight case was too much for my hands to take and I cheese-grated my way down the landing.

My other two runs were nothing special; my back was stinging like a bitch as I flowed through the line. A small no foot can followed by a nice wallride with a little table out ended my day on a relatively positive note.
The highlight of my day however was watching all of my mates absolutely slay the course. Tim dropped in and put together an amazing run which included a superman to no-foot-can (in one jump) and the biggest superman seatgrab I’ve ever witnessed in person. Ryan laid down his trademark smooth style and a completely sideways cork-flip (see Tom Grundy’s picture).

As you all probably know by now the day belonged to Sam Reynolds, who threw down a succession of potentially winning runs as well as a final run that included a massive frontflip and an almost-landed 720. He followed up his dirt win with another in the slopestyle, to bring his tally to three after his 4X win earlier in the day.

Big thanks to Cliff and Bret who supported us amazingly throughout the day and delivered us all sorts of new Fox goodies! The same goes to all of the sponsors who have sorted us out with amazing bikes for the season.