Made it to Italy!

We are in Italy for the King of Dirt comp at Riva Del Garda as part of a 4 day bike festival, right by the Garda Lake - stunningly beautiful.
Unfortunately it has been raining the whole week before we got here and the jumps they built for the comp are too wet so the comp is postponed to Saturday.
Kelly is gonna ride the jumps tomorrow and I have booked in for a women's 4 hour Freeride Tour in the Italian Alps as part of the festival - looking forward to getting out on the bike again after about 4 weeks off -yikes!
OK Gotta go eat some Pizza, Pasta and Gelato, will update after the weekend and post some pics.

T-Mobile Extreme Playgrounds - Germany

Kelly hit the ground running when he got to Europe, first stop Amsterdam to check out the canals, dykes, smart shops and the infamous red light district.

Next mission was to Duisburg in Germany to catch up with our mate Phil Sundbaum at T-Mobile Extreme Playgrounds Dirt Session. The train ride was pretty fun, there's not much room for luggage so we had our legs jammed up on top of it all for a couple of hours till we got there. We've noticed that people over here aren't shy and like to stare at anything out of the norm, so we've had our share of stares. But whatever, you learn to stare back pretty quickly.

Then we got to navigate the streets of Duisburg and find our hostel and then head out on the mission to the venue for the comp. This was an interesting operation, took about half an hour to figure out which train to take, which price class it was, where to get off etc, but my shabby german got us through and some locals helped us out.

We spoke english to the security guard at the venue and said we were looking for the jumps so he let us in assuming Kelly was one of the bike riders. haha.

We found Uncle Phil and watched some of the practise.

The next day we felt like locals, catching the train to the venue and even helped out some germans who were looking for the way to get there. We waited in a line for a while to get our VIP passes which Phil had hooked up for us, YEAH! Cheers bro.

The venue was awesome, in an old industrial iron mill which had closed in the 80's, the jumps were in a massive indoor building with a huge stage at one end. There were 14 riders in BMX and MTB, with two heats and a final 4. It was a sick comp, live onto MTV and we were stoked to be there to watch the action. In between heats there were live bands on the main stage. The best part was that NOFX played after the finals and it was epic. We rocked up to the front and got a good spot to watch the punkrockers take the piss out of Ze Germans and be general munters. A wicked welcome to Europe!

NOFX on the main stage:

Check the highlight vids on Freecaster.tv:

http://freecaster.tv/bmx/1007686/t-mobile-extreme-playgrounds-highlights-bmx

http://freecaster.tv/mtb/1007559/t-mobile-extreme-playgrounds-highlights-mountain-bike

California week 2 and Woodward

We visited Mike at Atomlab to set up Kelly's pimpin' new ride..












After the fun first week in California, I headed to Europe and Kelly stayed on for a week to ride ride ride. He met up with Rick Nolte again and his mate Jeromy Combs and then hit up Woodward West where he has always wanted to ride.









Kelly got hooked up a special entry to ride and he was the only one there the first day and then Cory Nastasio turned up so they rode the rest of the time. The set up is usually only for little punks who go there for a whole week on a camp and their parents pay heaps for them to ride there so Kelly was stoked when he found out he could have the place to himself.

Check out Kelly on Steez of the week on Jeromy's blog Liquid Dirt.. stoked.. http://www.liquid-dirt.com/2009/04/steez-of-week_18.html

Watch out Europe.. here comes Kelly!

Kelly arrives in Amsterdam in 6 hours.. he's up for a full-on weekend for his first time in Europe.
First it's time to celebrate his birthday checking out the sights in Amsterdam tomorrow.
For the weekend we're heading accross the border to Duisburg in Germany for the T-Mobile Extreme Playgrounds Dirt Session. Kelly isn't riding but we are gonna check it out, catch up with our mate Phil Sundbaum and punk-rock it out at NOFX and cause some general ruckus to welcome Kelly.
Will post some pics next week.

Kelly in DECLINE!

So when we were at SDG I was flickin through the latest DECLINE Magazine and checkin out the Red Bull Rampage article and Kelly has a shot of him in it which is awesome!

These pics on the left are the contents page from the previous decline showing all the riders from the Rampage. Go Kelly! And Unit Represent!

Here is Kelly in the Rampage article.. the quote on his pic says 'Kelly McGarry has some big Kiwi's. New Zealand has now been represented at Rampage'.

California Uber Alles

Kelly is lovin Cali..

We hung out at Pacific Beach on the weekend with Rick Nolte who is awesome.. and manuals the sea wall down at the beach every day (photo left).

Yesterday was spent cruising around and visiting some of Kelly's sponsors to check out their digs. Thankfully we hired a GPS with our car because otherwise we wouldn't have got very far.

First stop was TURNER bikes where we caught up with Dave and the crew.

Here is Dave and Kelly checkin out frames and sizes for Kelly's new DHR rig at Turner HQ.

We then visited ODI Grips who make all their products on-site as well as lots of other products. We got the mean tour from Colby. Checkin out the grip molds:

We then headed to Huntington Beach to visit Tyler at SDG seats who also hooked Kelly up. When we were there I was checkin out the latest issue of Decline Mag and spotted a pic of Kelly in the Rampage write up which was cool!! Kelly and Tyler at SDG:

We then realised we were stuck at Huntington Beach because our next stop was on the other side of LA which meant if we left then it would take 3x as long due to the traffic on the freeway.. so there was only one option.. go hang out on the beach.. woooh! Kelly hired out a surfboard and hit the waves. We also checked out the famous sheep hills jumps which Kelly used to drool over when he watched all the pros ride it in vids when he was a youngster.

Spot a kelly on the beach.. and Kelly at sheep hills.

Choice times in USA. Sha for Kelly McGarry.

Sha in the house

Hey peeps,
Sha here, I have decided to add myself as an author for Kelly's blog.. might as well because
1. I type MUCH faster than Kelly
2. I like to update you on whatZup
3. Kelly is too busy riding his bike to write about himself on a blog haha
So yeh keep an eye out for some more write ups on here..
We are in California right now, off to Europe soon and then back to Canada.
I will post some blogs of the summer just been in NZ too as soon as I can.
Ok we are at Pacific Beach San Diego and going for a ride (boys on the HTs me on an old skool Schwinn Cruiser) so catch ya soon yo!
Awesome, Sha.

For Kelly McGarry