log from september 7th, 2003

I’m sitting here at the check-in area of GVA airport, waiting for my time to, um… check-in (!). it’s about 1am and my flight is at 7am, do the math! I got here around 11pm, by train, but let me start at the beginning: this weekend, Gaby and I went to the mtb world championships in Lugano/Rivera. I packed all my stuff for the upcoming USA-trip and also my bmx & gear and took the train to Fribourg on thursday evening. The plan was to ride some mini/spine, but by the time I got there, it was getting dark. However Stephen and I (Gaby had left already) rode some spine, and I hurt my (bad) knee, dunno how, but I made a bad move which twisted my knee =( , Stephen was getting hungry, so we went to McDo’s. While we were eating he realized that he missed the train, so we headed to Anya’s place to wait for the next one (2 hours later). Stephen showed me a gap he and Gaby jumped earlier that evening (check it out). We chilled a little a Anya’s appartment (Sandro and some his pot-smoking friends =) from Australia were there too), Stephen left, and we went to bed. The next day (i.e. friday), I had to go to the “service des passeports” to get my “temporary passport” (they were able to make one in about an hour, whereas you have to wait min 1 month for the real one, and they both work if you wanna enter a foreign country. a mistery. I met Gaby, Raphi (who are going to the same school in Fribourg) and Stephen during their lunch break… t’was nice. after lunch, I left to ride some more mini/spine and then Gaby called me. he was off school 3 hours earlier, which was just perfect. I grabbed my stuff at Anya’s and we left to Bulle-Fribourg-Bern-Thun-Grimselpass-Furkapass-Gotthardpass-Bellinzona-Rivera. we arrived in time to watch the 4x finals. 4x basically is like bmx racing, only 1) with mtb 2) downhill 3) heats of 4 people (instead of 8). the jumps were huge, many riders couldn’t jump all of them, but Greg Minnaar and Cedric Gracia managed to do a nice kickout and x-up (resp.). one dude broke his fork and landed on his face =). the whole thing was over at 10:30pm-ish and we left for Alessandra’s place. She was at her surprise b-day party in Genova, so we were alone there. Saturday was DH day. we climbed from the bottom of the course right up to the top. the speed of the riders was incredible!! and it seems as if they wouldn’t care for their bikes. I still don’t know who won!! =( It was all over at 15:30, so we had time to go check out the sk8park in Lugano. it’s basically a concrete park consisting of 3 bowls of variable depth, a mini with spine, everything connected to each other with hips. I’m not used to riding pads, so it wasn’t easy. Gaby hurt himself pretty badly on his knee (of course!) but after 30min he was riding again. Nonetheless, we really enjoyed ourselves a lot. in the evening, we went out to eat pizza with Alessandra & Alessandro. t’was tasty =) . on the next day (sunday, if you lost track) we went back to the sk8park. there were a little less people around. I was feeling better too, so I ended up doing nice airs, good spine transfers (one handed, un-turndown, tire-tapped), manuals, 360s out of the pool, Gaby added some x-ups and seat-grabs over the spine. and also manuals over the volcano, oh and he never got a flat tire!! the session ended at 15:00ish, we had a shower and left home Lugano-Bellinzona-Quinto-Gotthardpass-Luzern-Bern-Fribourg. I catched the 20:09 train to Lausanne, where I made a quick stop to eat, then 21:56 train to GVA airport and here I am. it’s now almost 2am, 5hours till flight, 3hours (?) till check in