This
year Red Bull once again put together a cool
fun event. Rick, the Suit Guy, ended up pretty
much doing all of the event this year with a
few cool volunteers. Though he magically inherited
that role, he did a really good job. This year
there were some Jamaica Fest regulars, and as
usual, an handful of new dudes from all over.
Francois
Portmann was there again, and this time went
down a little early to do some location scouting
and prep/lifestyle shots. I arrived Thursday
afternoon and met Olivier G. in Montego Bay.
He is one of Francois friends. Olivier is from
France, but is living in Santa Cruz riding
and working for…….Santa Cruz. He is a
super cool dude that is a really good rider.
He’s tough as nails too. He literally got
a big rusty nail stuck DEEP into his knee. But,
like a good soldier, he still smiled a bunch
and kept riding…awesome. Olivier used to
race the World Cup DH circuit and was team mates
with Nicolas Vullioz and Karim Amour back in
the day.
After
a big tour of Mo Bay with Ian of Red Bull,
we drove off to Negril. Did the normal thing.
Built
our bikes, and rode off to Rusty’s. This
year I stayed at a hotel called Destiny. It was
nice.
After arrival hung at Rusty’s for a little, and went out to eat and have
a few Jamaican drinks
Of
course we spent every breakfast, except one,
at Just Natural. That place is awesome and
Theresa is the best. She’s so cool that after the
race, I found myself riding home alone and I
stopped to hang with her, her sister and her
sisters new baby. They made me two MONSTER FROZEN
RUM FRUIT DRINKS to celebrate my win. They surely
hit the spot.
The
weather was great. This year we had rain a
couple times, or in Jamaica they call it “Liquid
Sunshine”. It was great. It cooled off
the day, made the air crisp and if you just kept
riding and doing your thing, you’d dry
up in no time.
Race
day was good. The day before the race we built a berm
and a Triple and it was fun to session. You could rip
it to pieces but it was soft so you usually had to
pull the feather rip, although you could shred it to
smithereens too, and take it for all it was worth.
We
got a few cool streetside smoothy shots and some
dope tree root tree shots……this tree
was really cool. Francois sees a world that few
see it in. That’s what’s cool about
his shots….it allows everyone to see what
few see.
Results.
1.
Lars Tribus (USA)
2. Zerial Hayes (JAM)
3. Olivier G (FR)
Now get this, Francois
stayed a few extra days. He did a trip to Ochee,
and came back to kick it at Rusty’s.
On his last night, three hooded men, one with a gun,
and two with Machettes broke in to Rusty’s. They
robbed a few of the people, and assaulted a couple
as well. Then the hooded marauders left with their
take. The dogs kept barking though. They didn’t
stop barking. Francois woke up to the barking (but
missed the first part), went to the bathroom, and when
he came out he opened the door to a gun in his face.
By now, Rusty new what was up, and he was one flight
up the stairs looking down….the staircase resembles
an M.C. Escher drawing. Anyway, one flight up was Rusty,
with his cross bow in hand. Since guns are illegal,
rusty had a crossbow for protection the household.
Thankfully, in his home 17 years, he has never had
a need for any such tool. So from above, Rusty shoots
an arrow directly into the top of the head of the man
with a gun to Francois’ face. The 3 men then
fleed the house. The arrow was lodged in the top of
the third mans head and was clicking the stairs above
him as he ran down the stairs…crazy stuff.
All came home safe…and
are happy to be back. (P.S. I don’t know what
happened to the guy…..they found the arrow
w/o the tip on it the edge of the property????) |
