Race Practice

Part of my trip to Chile is to race the Valparaiso Cerro Abajo urban dh race. I haven't raced dh in about 5 years, and I'm the only guy on a 120mm travel slopestyle bike (everyone else is on full dh) but it will still be super fun. I don't know the stats exactly, but the course is about 2-3 minutes long, I think it is probably about 1000-1500 feet vertical drop, and goes down hundreds of steps along with jumps, drops, and wooden berms and stuff that are all kinda sketchy!!! Add to that the thousands of spectators all over the place stray dogs on course, and you have a recipe for a heck of a good time. Today we rode practice and sessioned all of the course in sections, and it was fun and very entertaining at the same time. Along with the invited pros that were testing everything including myself, Cedric Gracia, Steve Smith, etc. there were a bunch of sport class riders poaching practice and fully sketching it up, it was great!! Anyway the race is tomorrow, so I'll keep you guys updated on how it goes! Sorry for the lack of course photos, I forgot to bring my camera to practice! Plus I hate riding with stuff in my pockets. Well wish me luck, my main goal is not to wreck, and after that I just wanna have fun!! We'll see how I do! Oh yeah we also went to some bar last night and this bad ass local metal band was playing, I attached their photo below, they were super good!

Chile update #1

Here's my first update of the trip to Chile. I say that cause I'm gonna be down here for a while so I figured instead of one huge update a month from now I would do several smaller ones along the way. So I left tuesday morning after shoveling a bunch of snow off my driveway and truck, flew all day and all night, and now it's 75 degrees and sunny and it's mid summer so it doesn't get dark till about 9:30 at night, it's awesome. As soon as I got in I met up with norcal dh racer Mikey Haderer at the airport and then we were picked up in a lifted cargo van with a hardwood floor, couches in the back, and home stereo speakers. It's about an hour from the airport in Santiago to Valparaiso where the urban DH race is that I'm racing in this weekend. Along the way it starts out looking like socal, then changes to vineyards and farms, then you pop over the mountains and drop down to the ocean, it's beautiful. So since I got in we just built up our bikes and checked out the city and the racecourse. There's stray dogs everywhere, grafitti everywhere, and the racecourse goes straight down the crazy steep and curvy streets and steps, should be pretty nuts. Well we're gonna head to the beach now and then go to an old prison that has been abandoned and now has dirt jumps built in the prison yard, should be sweet!

Brent Thomson RIP

Haro Bicycles wishes to express our deepest condolences to the family of Bootleg Canyon's famed trail master, Brent Thomson. Thomson suffered a heart attack in January and underwent bypass surgery shortly afterwards. Apparantly he suffered some complications and passed away yesterday.


Thanks for all you did for Bootleg Canyon and for the sport of mountain biking, Brent. You will be missed my many people! Enjoy the sweet singletrack in the sky...

San Antonio TX to Pensacola FL via Haro...for a job!

Would you ride your bike from San Antonio, Texas to Pensacola, Florida for a job? We know a guy who made the 700-mile journey to do just that aboard his Haro Del Sol comfort bike.

Michael, a bike department manager at the Sun and Ski Sports store in San Antonio, told me about a homeless man who saved and saved so he could buy a Haro Del Sol comfort bike to ride from Texas to Florida to take a job.

A local church sent 51-year old John "Waldo" Pyle on his way with a pre-paid debit card and cell phone with a camera so he could document his journey across the South. He blogged about his trip on the church's website on several occasions, mentioning the kindess of people he met along the way who helped him with food, money, shelter, and companionship. One day he rode 73 miles aboard his Haro! That's a long time to be in the saddle of any bike, so that's a true testament to just how comfortable our comfort bikes are!

Waldo achieved his goal...he rode into Pensacola, FL on January 18th where he is working as a cook and studying to become a case manager.

(Note: If anyone is searching for the Del Sol bikes like Waldo rode on our website, they have been replaced with our Heartland series. Basically the same bike as the Del Sol comfort bikes, but made with significant improvements!)

Ray's Odd Couple

Here's the videos from the Ray's MTB contest. Let me know what you think!

Me and Steve Woodward



Phil Sundbaum and Dennis Enarson

Seven Springs

Back in August of last year I went on a super fun trip to Seven Springs, PA to shoot a magazine article which will be out next month in Decline, along with video with Don Hampton and some promo videos for the resort. It was a super fun trip, we saw Ted Nugent play live, we played paintball in utv's, we rode alpine slides, shot shotguns, oh yeah and we rode bikes a bunch too! Anyway here's some photos from that trip along with a video that just got put up from the trip. If you're wondering why I don't have any tricks in the video it's cause I dislocated my middle finger (picture of swelling below) on the first day and basically couldn't jump much after that. I still shredded trail all weekend though, and you can pick me out in most of the shots with the white bike and bright colored jerseys (orange, blue, green, etc.). Enjoy!!

Ray's Odd Couple contest

Just got back from Ray's MTB park in Cleveland Ohio, this place is awesome! Me, Phil, Dennis Enarson, and Steve Woodward flew out here for the Odd Couple contest. The idea of the contest is that a mtb guy will team up with a BMX pro and a filmer and each team would film a 3 minute video all inside at Rays. We each had two days to do this and then a day to edit the videos, and then they were played on the big screen at the park and the judging would be by crowd applause. My teammate was the newest addition to the Haro BMX team Steve Woodward, and he kills it. We both had a bunch of unique stuff in our videos that no one else did, so that was cool. We had a really good time filming and riding together, and I hope we can do some more joint trips soon. Phil and Dennis also rode really well, those guys are both amazing riders. While neither of our teams made top three, we still came away from the contest with great videos that will be up on the site in the next couple days. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we flew into Cleveland in the middle of a blizzard, there was a couple of feet of snow on the ground already, and t was cold and nasty the whole time... luckily we were riding indoors. The other photos are to give you an idea of how sweet Ray's park is, and then a photo afterwards with the money that our teams got for the contest, Ray always pays out in 1 dollar bills!!!