My face

…Is healing. The bruising is really coming out nicely. I have never been so colourful.

Emily and I went to the Vans thingy at Slam on Wednesday and then on to the Document Plus1 shindig at the Macbeth. We may have had one or two beers in the photo above.

Charge sent me these gloves which I’ve been road testing. They’re super nice but its getting so damn cold, I think I’m gonna need something thicker for winter.

I’ve also been trying out these DIY powergrips that Ted made. It feels really nice to have such a large platform, plus I’m not scraping and squishing my clips the whole time when I’m trying stuff on the underside of the pedals. The only problem is getting the sizing right. These are made out of a judo belt and either my feet are shrinking or its stretching…

John Cardiel was in town and came over to the Fixed Gear London place. He was pretty taken with Ted’s titanium Charge Plug. Andy got a snap of him on it which is on the Fixed Gear London blog.

Tom LaMarche is really good

Got this fucking cool picture from Tom LaMarche of him going big at FDR, doing a tyregrab and wearing a Hell Yeah shirt. Nice!

He looks good in it : )

He also told me that there’s talk of putting together a third Bootleg Sessions which would be brilliant!

Tokyo Fixed Gear will be showing Bootleg Sessions V2 tomorrow evening in their popup shop, so get down there and have a look if you haven’t seen it. Or if you have.

Team Awesome rock!

I wrote some stuff about the weekend’s shennanigans here on my Charge blog. It was really good fun apart from I hurt a lot now. I fell on my face and got a black eye and my neck is really hurting. It feels like I was headbanging all night! It turns out it was a bad night for accidents – I keep hearing about friends of mine who hurt themselves too. Oh dear.

I think maybe some of the problems started when Team Megatron, pictured below, entered the team beer sprints. The first person had to neck a beer then sprint round someone standing at the end of the park and back. Second person then chugged their first beer, did the same and tagged the third person who cracked open theirs. Then you had to do the whole thing again. We got second and drank some more beer to celebrate….

I think Ian had to walk home. For some reason I was still standing at 7am the next morning. But only just.  Superdrunkted made an apprearance and passed out for several hours. Hahaha!

Shaun White Redbull Party

I went to the Shaun White video game launch last night. Like all pikeys we set about drinking as much as we could as fast as we could as soon as we got there, thinking that the drinks would run out. And they never did!

Kat stuck us in cabs with our bicycles to make sure we got home in one piece but Mel fell out of the cab onto her face! Holy shit! Her face is mash up!

The party was really good fun though. I danced a lot. So did these guys:

Will didnt. He doesnt do dancing.

I won these!

Last time I was dancing was at the Document/Slam party and I woke up with a black eye. I still dont know how I got it. My appearance is unscathed today but I feel ROUGH. Thank you Redbull and thank you Vodka.

Axegrinder

I’m been listening to Axegrinder loads and they fucking rock. Its pretty amazing how much they sound like Amebix sometimes but then I like Amebix so I’m not complaining. Look how much time they must have spent crimping their hair!!!

Check out Rise Of The Sepent Men, or Grind The Enemy and don’t get put off by the American band of the same name…

The big question in my head is whether I’ll be really disappointed when I see Amebix on tour next year or not.  I mean, I would not EVER want to see the Crue these days as it would be really offputting and I prefer to keep this nice idea of what they are/were. Sometimes its better to dream.

http://www.myspace.com/riseoftheserpentmen

HTFU Alleycat

Did my first alleycat on Friday. More about this on my Charge blog here. It was the most fun I’ve had in ages. Well, its not like I haven’t been having fun in general, but it was brilliant!

Not so brilliant was my friend Kat getting mugged at knifepoint on Bethnal Green Road last night. We’d been riding at the Brick Lane Courts then she headed home when we went off for a beer. Poor little thing had a knife held to her at the cashpoint. She must have been fucking terrified. I really hope it doesn’t mess with her head too much and she won’t feel unsafe the whole time now.

Kat said that the police found the guy who did it and arrested him last night. Now she just has to hope he pleads guilty so that she doesn’t have to face the fucker in court. Poor Kat.

Roving Reporter For Cooler Magazine

Seeing as I am always skint, it was very nice to be able to earn a few extra quid as a Cooler Magazine’s roving reporter. They sent me down to the Ski and Snowboard Show to interview a few people and present a piece on the event. I’ve never done this kind of thing before so there’s a few embarrased giggles, a lot of ‘so..’ and ‘erm’.

I interviewed my good friend, snowboarder Jenny Jones, who is an amazingly talented and stylish rider. At one point last year she was ranked number two in the world and it looked like she was going to take the TTR slopestyle title. Unfortunately, her knee is always playing up and often mucks up her plans.

I also interviewed the lovely Carmela from perfume company, Les Ettes. Les Ettes have a really good team of riders who they support including the aforementioned Jenny Jones. In addition to the perfumes, Les Ettes have some new top secret products coming out next year. All will be revealed at ISPO. I hope I get to go.

Its annoying; I can’t get the video to embed  but its on the Mpora site and the Cooler site here

Hell Yeah Projects

My labels just turned up. Which is nice, only it means that I have to sew them all on….

The underside of the label reads:Hell Yeah Projects, Wash When Dirty, Stay Away From The Brown Acid.

Last night we made toffee apples for Bonfire night. Some people actually ate theirs but I pretended to and then threw mine over the garden fence. I have most of the toffee all over my shoes; they look like crap now.

Filming with Alex Rankin

Went out filming with Alex Rankin yesterday for a Charge podcast. I had a really good day despite having the hangover from HELL.

We did a few tricks up on the roof in Spitalfields, rode a BMX track up near Hackney City Farm and then went to London Fields to skid in the leaves. I managed to skid all the way over and ended up on the floor still strapped in and with my hands still on the bars.

Greg Falski took some photos of us. There’s one of me below and some more here. I learnt bar spins on Saturday and I think I managed to get one on film so I’m pretty pleased about that!

Slayer on Halloween at Hammersmith

I went to see Slayer on Friday night and we all dressed up. Well actually, some of us just put some makeup on.

Slayer were AMAZING! I heard they played the whole on Reign In Blood the night before but when I saw them it was a mixed set and it was GREAT!!!!! Sanna and I positioned ourselves right down the front and got covered in other peoples sweat and our arses pinched.

Jeff Hanneman kicks Kerry Kings ass every time with his solos. Kerry King just plays as many notes as he can, as fast as he can, wherease Hanneman’s solos have lot more to them. They’re way better thought out, more interesting, more musical. Don’t get me wrong, Kerry King is an amazing player and all, its just that he is more interested in proving that every time he plays a solo rather than constructing something that fits better with the song.

Anyway, everyone’s outfits were really good:

Steve Crobar went as one of the Cobra Kai’s from Karate Kid. Specifically one from the Halloween party scene.