Celebrations

Super busy down on Glagow Green today!  The BMX flatlands finals were on as were the first day of the trials competition.  An earlier start for me, and I headed past the Dorky French Vegan Bakery and had to try a pistacho supreme roll, which was like a croissant in the shape of a cinnamon bun filled with a pistachio creme filling.  Pretty good.  Hopefully persuaded the guy behind the counter to come and check out some of the action on Glasgow Green!

Today I was staffing the 'easy access' area for the flatlands.  That bascially meant stopping anyone without an accesibility need from sitting there.  It was pretty chill for the most part of the shift, and I had help from volunteer M who had been transferred from the BMX Centre.  I got lots of good blips of the trials and the warm ups, and handed out lots of copies of DIG BMX magazine.

Things got seriously less quiet as we neared the start of the flatlands finals.  I thought I was goning to have a great view of the women's finals, but ended up with my back to the stage desperatley trying to keep people out of the accesible area.  Including a couple of people who snuck in behind me to stand up and looked miffed when I told them that unfortunatley being short wasn't an accesibility issue.  From what I heard the women's competition seemed pretty fun!

The men's finals started just after my shift ended so I plonked myself down before the big screen to watch before heading home.  The riders all saved what looked like their best tricks until last, and my money was on Kio Hayakawa taking the championship...but that honour went to one of his team mates instead (so my blip contains the former world champion and the current world champion!). They actually filmed the finals on the BBC and I'd recommend checking them out on iplayer.

The Japanese flatlands team have definitley gained a new fan in me this week - they've been truly incredible and I've loved watching their team spirit from the sidelines.  Blip is them celebrating their female team-mates run in the finals, they were so encouraging and so joyous.  And my interaction of the day came from one of their coaches when I was handing out DIG magazine and he asked me for five.  I took him back to my stash and gave him a big bundle and he was very grateful and polite.   My initial blip was going to be of an epic trials move, but I thought this summed up the day better.  Will hopefully get some more epic trials pics over the next few days.

Other interaction highlight of the day was chatting with the Finnish Trials team coach about their successes and hopes for the coming event.  He was pleased with his team placing fifth with only 3 riders and a Finn took the stop spot on the Juniors semi finals today!  Definitley ones to watch. 

A wee bit of sadness too as some volunteers had their last shift today, it's only been a few days but there is a bit of an instant team feeling and it's sad to see them go.

Still no spotting of Danny Mac, and I also realised today that we may get a glimpse of Martin Ashton  (another trials legend) at some point during the week - we can hope!  I did blip Sir Chris Hoy's head today as he was being chaperoned into the flatlands venue.