Travel notes
I spent a lot of years traveling through BMX. Mostly around Europe at first and then later all over the globe. I was super lucky to experience this and met so many amazing people from all walks of life. As you can imagine these times are some of my fondest memories that I cherish and often look back on. In a way, this type of travel is really similar to bicycle touring, apart from the fact that you are using a car or van to get from place to place. But when you break down the actual aspects of it and the experience you get the two are very similar.
From a very young age, I was traveling with my BMX. The first contest I went to was the backyard jam in 1995 in Hastings England. I was 12 years old and most of the guys I rode with were a good few years older than me. One of our crew’s dad had rented a minibus and was driving everyone the 4-hour journey for the weekend at the contest. I begged my mum to let me go with them and at the last minute after handing me two bags of food and £20 she let me go with this group of misfit punks. The world was a different place back then and my mum trusted that this older lot would look after me and she was right. BMX is on the up at this point after it’s death in the late 80’s so when there was a contest going on everyone went. I remember there were 2000 people at that event and the energy was insane. You had top riders from America and all the best UK talent in attendance
Those early years were spent traveling to contests and always involved ruffing it, either camping or sleeping in a car, and this just made the whole experience even more amazing. You didn’t need anything, maybe one clean t-shirt and possibly a toothbrush but outside of that you had your bike, you had your mates and you had the rider community around you that was just booming.
Later on, traveling became more of a destination pursuit, where was the next new skatepark or trails you wanted to ride? Who had you met that had invited you to come see their local scene and the stuff they rode? We were looking for a wider community, for people who had the same passion for bikes and life that we did.
In my early 20’s my traveling became mostly with sponsors. We would travel a little bit to contests but mostly to shoot videos and photos for whatever projects said companies were working on. This was before the internet was a big thing and way before social media so it was a lot slower than it became later on. Video footage was saved for DVD projects and photos were used in tangible media like magazines. This meant that productivity wasn’t as rushed as it has become. We traveled to ride bikes but we got to soak up the culture of the places we were visiting, from skateparks on the coast to squats in the middle of a city. This was the side experience of riding bikes but it became the reason that left you wanting more. To be outside of your comfort zone, to be the minority in a situation, and to take that and use it as a tool for self-growth.
Bicycle touring would be the perfect evolution and exciting new way for me to continue this form of traveling. I love roughing it and always have. I love traveling with as little as possible. It’s exciting to strip away those daily comforts so that you can immerse yourself in a trip and separate from the daily norm of life. This is my preferred way to travel and we all have our ways we like to do it. Some of you might like all the comforts and have front and back panniers full of everything you need to accommodate those comforts. Some people can’t stand camping and the thought of pedaling all day and then sleeping rough in a tent is the last thing they want. This isn’t about fitting into a certain category, this is about growth, creating memories, and putting a smile on your face.
Life only gets more complicated as you get older and this form of travel is selfishly simple and freeing. I want to continue to see new places that you don’t see in any other circumstance, I want to meet new people who are also excited and motivated by these same simple pleasures. But most of all I want to be on a bike and I want to be traveling with my friends.
photos from sfl archive and rimecuda