Flew into Vancouver last night for the third UCI Olympic Round in North America. I am staying at the Nyhaugs house because it is really close and they have a FULL house. I think theres about eight of us plus the four Nyhaugs. Theres a lot of room though so its fine, you don't even notice all the people here.
Practice was today and I felt pretty good. I am pumped to ride everyday now after being off my bike for a month so it gives me a little more motivation and adds more fun to it. All the top Americans are here so it will be a good race. The tracks going to be really shady though, loooose turns, rocks everywhere, and Canadian Cycling officials.
Last time we were in Canada for a UCI round last year the officials were HORRIBLE. They knew nothing of BMX because they were a bunch of roadies and all they did was follow you around with a TWO YEAR OLD UCI rule book and read everything off to you. Just walking up to the gate for my first lap of practice the dude stopped me and told me everything that was wrong. He told me I couldnt practice with my ipod because someone might be transmitting messages to me. Yea dude, I want to win practice that bad?haha... gotta cut that 5 year old going into the last turn to be the practice champ! The rest of the weekend was stuff like that, the worst part was they had an old rule book so the stuff they were telling us wasn't right. They must of had study time with their rule book flash cards because they knew every rule right off the top of their head! Afro Bob and I were fans and couldn't put up with them. They literally followed you around flipping through the rule book reading it all off to you. BMX isn't a "follow the rules" kind of sport though, they are more or less guidelines for most stuff. We can go to a UCI World Cup or even the UCI World Championships and they dont care if you ride with an ipod or any of the stuff they were goin on about. Khalen Young was so over it he left Sunday and went whalewatching haha. I got DQed all three rounds because people complained it was too windy to jump the pro section so they closed it, and I didn't want to practice the AM section because we werent going to be racing on it at worlds so I kept bunny hopping over the cones to jump the pro jumps haha. The Sunday race was just a Canadian national or something so it didnt matter to us, we were just there to get time in on the track.
Lets see how they are this weekend, I will update throughout the weekend and try to get some video of the rule book guys. Just today during practice they were a pain about the plates, made some people spray paint their background yellow saying elites have to run yellow plates when they dont. We run white plates now, yellow was two years ago haha, great, here we go again!
Later - JB
