Excited!!

Create a practice

In life, you need to have courage to belive in mirracles. Been creative helps you out when you are hunting mirracles.

For wake-up your creativity, I set up a competion. To take part you need to send me idea of BMX practice. It can be what ever. It can be planned to carry out where ever, BMX track, home.. Practice can improve what ever makes you better in racing. Also practice don't have to be new, it can be your favorite practice. There is not right or wrond answer in this competition. I decide who wins :)

You can post your idea here in my blog, or by email to me outi_leinonen@hotmail.com.

Prize for winning is Maris Stromberg's last season jersey with his autograph. Competition ends 8th of April. Anyone can be winner, no limitation by where you live.

It's a rainy day

First I got say that weather has been really nice for the time I have been here. Today all races and practices were cancelled because of raining. Here, in California, tracks are made from dirt which is kind of mud. It's hard when it's dry, but once it's raining you can't use track at all.

I tryed to make the water come off the track. I already see myself working my ass out off getting those foot prints flat once dirt is dryen. Can't really say did I make track better or worse!

Something good in everything. Rainy day kept me inside so I found a really nice internet page. You have probably looked that up times ago, but I just got started: http://oldsite.uci.ch/BmxTrackBuilding/start_content.html

Face plant

Face plant: That's the shortest way to describe practices I had today.

In nordic counries, there is usually one BMX club running one track. So if you sign-up as member for that club. It means you can join practices for whole summer.. foreamble 3 times/week, 1,5h practice, 3months, for 80 dollars. Here in California, and probably in every where in America, you can't find BMX clubs like that. If you are looking for coaching that means you need to join clinics. Which are from 10 dollars, to 35 dollars, depending of coach and duration.

Clinic today ended up to face plant. So photos about dirty clothes would be unneccessary. I was able to practice again at evening, so anything serious didn't happen!

Strider Cup

Today was wonderful day. My manual-day :) I learned to ride last straight the way that it didn't feel stupid anymore. And it's a lot after 2 months having feeling of being stupid. I have made some progress, I'm able to see that just by looking my riding speed from Suunto's wedsite, but I can also feel much more confortable on bike. Just wonderful!


When you buy your membership from USABMX, you get magazine once a month. In that magazine I saw article: Strider Cup! That's awesome. They have own cup for 3-5 years old with Strider bikes.

Strider bike is balance bike, or so called walking bike. Child can learn balance what he or she (as you can see again, it would be much easier if you could have only one word describe both genders) needs for bicycle. That kid can have first feeling of getting feet of the ground.

It is just incredible to see when first time kid walks the Strider bike. Then she/he stand on the bike and walk with bike from there. Sit down on and tottering kick some speed. Walk up little hump and slide down strider track without having any problems. Eyes are glowing. Again. I want to go again!

There should be strider track beside every bmx track!

Bday Party

My birthday started with birthday wishes from my god daugher; she told that Outi is not nice, but she is pretty. Hole afternoon I baked cakes in trailer. Here in Amerca, you don't really have same staff in grocery stores. Biggest problem I had with oven, first I didn't even know how to get it on. Then when there is real fire coming to bottom of cake, it kind of burns it :)

Quickly I tryed to fix track, until 4p.m. Came my first guesses. Manon Valentino from France and Vilma Rimšaitė from Lithuania. We were able to practice just 3 of us for a moment. Soon track was full of people. End of the day I had little race and finally cakes! And for whole time there was played the music I had decided. Yey.

Birthdays are nice! Anyway the best thing was that is felt like my riding had got better.

2 cakes, and half of each had to throw away

Here I'm fixing my bike

Old School BMX

Old School BMXes has always been close to my heart. Same thing with old school skateboarding. Those skateboarding tricks what are shown these days looks more like huge ravelling. Old school is always shown out with a style :)


The Bicycle Source had old school swap. I promised to myself that I'm not buying anything, but just in case I took some contact information if I happen to have room in my luggage when I'm heading Finland. Again, lets give pictures tell rest of the story.

Huge grin in the end

Beside on hard practicing I have been able to fit some "off the track" schedule.

First: I visited a local school. School was suprisingly nice. I haven't seen better. There was so called open class system. So the 1st and 2nd grade, 3-4th grade and 5-6 grade had all own classes. Kind of in smaller groups but there wasn't walls to separate the groups. And I can tell you; that worked out well!

At grades 3-4 and 5-6, groups were made by advantage of students. Forexamble I visited class during math lesson. Students were learning different things in different groups. Also groups were ranked again every week.

Only minus I give for lunch. Meal was chocolatemilk, apple-mash, sunflower-seeds, sausage, orange, pancakes and syrup. That's not really food you are supposed to eat..

Paper plates. OMG!

Same night I head to try baseball and watch some old cars:

Finally I got myself on SURFING! Look at the smile on my face

4130 Ride Video

Up-hill

I added up-hill sprints to my practice schedule. That really gets your thighs on fire. In the beginning it only putted my heart beating fast, but after few hills it started to burn. It's funny how you can push yourself forward, don't matter how bad it feels. I recommend this to everyone!

I sent some questions to Usa immigration unit. I was asking how should I deal with visa if I would like to stay here longer. I told them that I can prove my subsistence. I don't need work visa, but visa for longer time. They recommended to keep on using visa waiver program. If I decide to apply visa and don't get it. I can't use visa waiver program anymore. So it looks like I'm going to plan my life 3months at the time. That is kind of ok. That way, also my travel insurance stays on.


Many times I have been thinking how does it go when people speaks about life being up-hill or down-hill. Which one is better. Going up-hill is hard, but going up usually means something good. And going down-hill is easy cruising, but on the otherhand.. I don't know. Tell me how is it?

Some random pictures from my journey :)

(Video is loading to youtube, so tomorrow you gonna see it)

4130 Subway Series

BMX culture of California cut the mustard! Saturday night, after racing in Palm Springs, I head to Hollywood. There was BMX ride. I can't really tell you how does it feel to to be part of nearly 200 riders cruising from Hollywood to LA downtown. All traffic stopped for us (maybe I should say because of us). Huge amount of strangers became same intense group with me. Ride was around 15miles long and the averige speed was 13miles/h (and I burned 900kcal without even noticing that I was doing sports).

Before I went to starting spot, I was adviced to get lights for bike. Policemen like to catch riders from group and kind of stop the ride. It looked like that they have found some co-operation with cops. Only one kid had to stop because he didn't have helmet. Even sometimes policemen stopped the traffic for us so we were able to continue.

Awesome! I hope I could join the ride every month! 

(Ride is on second Saturday of month. More information from website 4130subwayseries.com)

 Video coming soon!