Chile Show
I know it has been a little bit since my last blog and even a little while since the very show I am writing about. However I'm doing it anyway. Team FMX East rider Javier "Astroboy" Villegas has been telling me about Chile since he spoke enough english to do so. The plan has been to get me a show over there so I could see his native country. Finally the opportunity came up and I jumped at the chance. Javier always jokes with me that we americans think they live in trees and have monkeys as pets in Chile. So I was very excited to have Javier pick me up on his bicycle taxi with his monkey on a leash or something. Unfortunitly none of that is true. Javier picked me up in a four door pickup...... Lame!! And I didnt even see one monkey..
After my initial shock wore off we went to check out the set up. Of course when we got there the landing was about 9ft tall and 40ft long. For some reason thats what most course builders think is an appropriate landing for freestyle. I understand very very little spanish so I just stood there until Javier asked me what I thought. After the landing issue was resolved we rode some practice, the landing was pretty smooth. If you landed three quarters of the way down the landing. Other wise you landed hard enough to bounce and then G out into the bottom of the landing. However we had a good crew of riders and had fun riding anyway. The riders there were Javier "Astroboy" Villegas, Marco "Chino" Gonzalez, Renzo Pierattini and your truly Clint Esposito. I had met Chino before and actually brought him some FMX East graphics to the show but I had never met Renzo. They are both friends of Javiers from Chile and really cool guys I might ad. As the weekend went on both Javier and I got more and more comfortable. Each for different reasons, this was the first time I had ever ridden Chino's ramp and this was only the second time Javier had ridden since breaking his scapula. You couldnt tell though as he was doing just about all his tricks right off the bat.
So other than the innitial set back of realizing that there arn't even monkeys in Chile I had a really good tome. I actually ended up staying in Chile an extra two days because Javier and I were having way to much fun laughing at pretty much everything. So our next plan it to get me down there with a camera man next time to do some filming. I will let you know if that happens.
Clint Esposito
Clint Esposito
