VMT 2008 Colmar / Strasbourg

Strasbourg airport — this was the place, where the third stop of the Visit my Town series began.
Mike picked me up with the Carhartt van and we pulled out right away to the hometown of our host Arthur, Colmar!
Our hotel was placed in Turkheim. A typical Alsatian town with the look of the 7th century.
Half of the crew already had arrived, and Barry was getting picked up from the airport by Michel Carmona in the evening. At night, Michel, Barry and Karin brought a couple of BMX girls with them to Colmar. At that time, Karin was leading a Girls BMX Camp in Basel. Damn cool, to meet so many girls, who seriously ride BMX. They definitely make BMX look sexy. By the way, a good combination: BMX and Sex! We all took a couple of drinks to celebrate Arthur’s birthday, and partied at a local discotheque till sunrise.

The first riding-day started with a backyard wallride session, which was accompanied by some residents. But Arthur told them something about a local home-magazine writing a report about the city and youth culture of Colmar. So they were down to it, and they even told us to keep on riding! Remember that, for your next street session!
After riding that spot, we drove over to Strasbourg right away, where you can find an awesome spot! The first stop was the airport again, where we saw a great ridable traffic circle, the other day. Barry resolved to do a handplant over some road barrier, but unfortunately the airport police came and collected our ID’s. What happened then, was kind of strange, because they gave us our passports back and asked Barry to try it again. I guess they enjoyed doing something else besides their regular job! What a pity that Barry injured his ankle by riding the handplant again.
Mangoose preferred Strasbourg’s step-sets and proofed that by riding a 9 step-set, which included 2× 1meter flats. He accomplished this maneuver with a fine 360° Further more, he wipped a 5 step-set right after. Other people call that “riding trails”. The Hot Spot of the Day was some kind of inner courtyard of a couple of skyscrapers. But it wasn’t that typical metropolis atmosphere- it was cultivated, clean, and no Ghetto kids were hanging around. Instead, this place was almost built like a proper Skatepark. Quarterpipes, banks, little bowlcorners and a picture-perfect Curve-Wallride, which David rode. In the end he icepicked it on about 1,90m! Respect! In case you visit Strasbourg, you just have to check out this spot!
At the end of the day, the last member of our crew finally arrived — Tobias Wicke! Spontaneously Sergej Geier and Mark König came with him. Our tour group was completed! The rest of the day, Mister Wicke showed us how to drive a rented car! We all felt sorry for the Benz, and even more for the car rental service!

After a very long night, the next morning began with slow starting engines!
The plan for the day was visiting a skatepark. And of course Arthur knew it and could ride every centimeter of it with blind eyes! He nailed a 270-doublewips, Boost MotorStyles and Wheelgrabs on Strasbourg’s sky. Tobias and Sergej are true Lip Trick Masters! Is that some kind of German natural ability? A Lip Trick battle between Sergej and Tobias started, even though none of us knew what the bet was. Maybe they were fighting for who would be going to drive the rented car next time? Sergej pulled an Icepick to barspin on a bar of a fence, which wasn’t too bad. Tobias made back-to-back icepicks on handrails of a mini ramp, followed by back-to-back Fufanus on the handrails as well. And now guess who got to drive the rented car?

The last day of our trip, we found the coolest transition spot, which was not built as a skatepark. The spot was underneath a bridge and had unbelievable transitions. There were no flats at all. That allowed us to ride the spot almost like a fullpipe, without getting into oververt while riding. Mark really wanted to ride this spot, but he soon realized, that the spot wasn’t that easy to handle! But it looked completely different when our local Arthur tried it. He rode up the walls a couple of meters, and it seemed as if it was the easiest thing for him to do.

For the last spot of our trip we chose the Carhartt Skatepark in Weil am Rhein: A lot of skate oriented street stuff and the legendary mini ramp made the last session become a great pleasure for everybody!

I defeated my trip home with a long way round and some exertions. It was a long way home, where I got the chance to think about the past days. The Visit My Town Trip gave me everything I needed at that time — Pain, satisfaction, friendship, lots of beer and a great time on my bike! Thanks to all you, who took part of this experience and especially to Carhartt, who made it all happen!

PS: When I arrived in Montpellier, huge fireworks took place, and I was very happy about such a hearty welcome. Unfortunately, these fire works weren’t arranged especially for me, actually they were made because the holiday of the french revolution…

I wished this just could be an endless summer!

Go Ride.