I LOVE BFC.COM

I remember when we were filming last year and we were riding a flat rail at ivyleafe, i was just sat there thinking “man the level of railriding in mountainboarding sucks” feeling somewhat forlorn I counted on my hand the number of people i had seen do a frontside boardslide and i thought someone really needs to turn it up on the rails and make some magic happen. All of a sudden the new guy we were riding with, Nicky Geerse, just drops in and bang, there he goes with the smoothest 270 on to the rail to frontside boardslide then 270 out. At the time we all went mental, this was something i didn’t think i’d see for a long time, it was like some crazy tony hawks combo, a combo that wouldn’t be out of place at an international snowboarding competition. But there it was, on a mountainboard in the glorious sunshine of north devon.

With that trick i think Nicky started something, it was like a call to the rest of the mountainboarding world to man up and get creative on some rails. But where? when? and why?

In 2007 a young couple named Roger and Kim decided to set up a centre near brighton, they got hold of “ye olde mountainboard centre guide” then proceded to ignore it, tear it up and turn it into a jib feature which could be bonked, slid or simply aired over with a nice grab like a method, and with that Knockhill MBC was born. Braking the mould of your average centre in a million different ways, gone is the massive learner slope, gone is a long boarder cross track and you wont find any lift back up to the top, but trust me this is not a bad thing at all.

After a bit of planning we decided to host the BFC’s premier of the brand spanking new DVD “Like This” at Knockhill on the 10th of May and we thought why not have a mega fun jam session during the day with lots of prizes and a relaxed atmosphere whilst we’re at it?

Convieniently this turned out to be a great idea as Knockhill MBC is heaven for anyone who wants to jib, grind, grab and get creative. The hill takes about 30 seconds to walk up and is rammed full of features everyone from world freestyle champions to kids on their second hour of boarding can enjoy.

Over on the farside of the hill is the Bee-X a small boardercross track with a berm, 2 rollers with 2 giant plastic bees embeded in them, another berm and a step up in it. Short fast and most importantly fun! Next you have a spine with a log as coping, a spine with a trough as coping, then a tyre jib and a big wallride which can be hit from both sides, this would form Zone 1 for the jam. Zone 2 consisted of a flat down rail, a rainbow rail, the bee gap, a kicker to manual box with landing which later saw a slide box on top of it and finally another rainbow rail. Zone 3 was the most “conventional” zone of them all with a 10 foot tabletop with a box or rail to hit after and then to the side a 7ft quarter pipe with a channel gap to a smaller 4ft quarter which also found itself with a box extension on top of it. To sum it up in two words: Good Times!

The week before the event turned out to be the hottest week of all time in the history of the world ever and this resulted in a very sunburnt Roger, Kim, Craig, Dan and I who worked to make sure everything was going to run smoothly for the event: the cream teas and jam prepared, the grass golf green short and the portaloos in position. On friday night people started to turn up and around the campfire there was a buzz of excitement as to what crazy jibtastic antics we would see during the jam session…

One thing was for sure, we were going to have a lot of fun.

 Part 2 coming very soon!