It's been a long time between drinks, here with my column in Forty8, but I'm slowly finding time again after a really busy southern hemisphere Spring season! My main focus has been riding the shows in Indonesia for the Powercross series. Last year myself, Clinton Moore and Josh Sheehan rode 5 weeks of shows, this year they bumped it up to 7 weeks and we even had a competition at the last round. Sheeny made his way back to ride 5 of the 7 shows in Indonesia with us too which was awesome. I've now made 5 seperate trips to Indonesia and Josh has done 6 or 7 now I think, so we know the language a little bit and a lot of good friends there.
The shows were mostly all rained out this year again, even though they brought the events forward a few months to get out of the typical Indonesian monsoonal season which is December/January, to having the Powercross in October/November this year. But unfortunately it has been a very wet 2010 and 4 out of the 7 shows were rained out.
The best part was once again doing the best trail rides I've ever done. Last year I had one of the single best rides of my life when we went trail riding in a town called Malang, and this year we actually stopped there again, so I made it my mission to do it again. After our show in Malang, we managed to go for a 5 hour trail ride on Monday. It was only supposed to be a 2 hour ride maximum as we had to get in the tour bus and drive 12 hours to the next city, but Indonesian time is 'Island time'. We just kept riding and riding deeper into the thick, humid jungle. There were some damn scary moments, with cliff-edges right beside the trails, doing some deep river crossings and the worst one, riding over Bamboo bridges! The bridges were just swaying with the wind, and then we were trying to ride MX bikes over them. It was crazy!
We then had a competition in Bali for the last round of 7. I had the job of organising the FMX side of the night, inviting in some friends from Australia, NZ and USA riders. We then had to get them bikes and make sure it all happened. There were problems, but in the end after I ran around all day in the hot sun, we got the competition to happen. But unfortunately for me, I was absolutely exhausted by the time it came to the competition. I managed to qualify in first place which was awesome, but then when it came to the final round, on my first jump I crashed a Double Nac and took a big dirt sample. I picked up some internal bleeding and had a one way trip to hospital. And that's not a place you want to go to hospital! Mould on the walls, holes in the walls... 25 other drunken scooter riders all moaning beside you with barely any skin left on their faces after they've crashed. It was really hectic. But I got home OK.
All the time I was in Indonesia I was making Video Diaries from my Helmet Camera from SportsCamera.com.au . If you head over to SteveSommerfeld.com you will be able to check them all out. Here's the last from Indonesia (there's a couple more on my site)...
A week later was the Australian FMX Championships in Narrogin (near Perth), and I was still extremely sore and could barely move from the crash in Bali. I decided to still go to the competition and if I felt ok, I would ride, if not I was going to be a judge. In the end I made the decision to ride and I somehow placed in 3rd! That was a really good end to the busy 8 weeks away from home and made it all worthwhile.
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