I've mentioned this in other threads but with summer fast approaching, I thought I'd start a separate thread for my North American trip. Time for a quick recap. Like thousands of other British BMXers bitd, reading the American BMX magazines was a monthly highlight. I often dreamed of riding and racing in the US, the home of BMX. Fast forward to 2019-ish when I started to realistically think about actually putting those dreams into practice. COVID then put that idea on hold but last year's trip back to and race in the UK re-ignited the fire. With a trip to Canada already scheduled for Summer 2024, I first thought of taking a bike to race over there. Then it dawned on me that if I'm to race in Canada, I may as well fulfil that boyhood dream to race in the States as well. So that's what's happening. I've booked my flights and will be arriving in Denver, Colorado on 22nd August!! I have a week based there then fly up to British Columbia, Canada on the 29th. Both places have a number of tracks within a couple of hours of where I'm staying, so I should be able to ride at a few of them and hopefully get to race at least once in each country!!
On the bike front, I have various options. Option A is to take one of my existing race bikes over - probably the Crupi that I used to race here in Japan. However, that's going to add to the already expensive flight cost and tbh, is not that interesting a choice! A much more exciting option is to buy a bike in the States!! That gives me the chance to ride and bring back something cool and would at least save me one set of oversize baggage charges, which I would bite the bullet and pay on the way back, since it would cost me about the same to ship a complete bike over anyway. That's the justification for choosing Option B! For the past few months, I've therefore been looking (and am still looking) at various bikes and have a few irons in the fire. More on that as and when. For the time being, however, I'm super excited at the prospect of racing across the pond, even though I'll be flying over a different pond than I dreamed about all those years ago!
