Ok, 19th of May me and my traveling buddy head off to Europe for a few months of summer following what ever MTB races we could find.

2 days into our trip we meet up with the rest of our group that we will travel and live with for the rest of the summer. So all up the NZ crew are myself (Craig Pattle), Tom Holland, Nathan Rankin, Mike Skinner and Cameron Cole. We all meet in Morzine, France up in the amazing French Alps. This would be our home for the next few months - amazing winter time skiing and awesome summer time trails, this place is kool.

So after a few days getting our bikes all set up and a bit of training, we head off for a 13 hour drive to our first race in Willingen Germany. This is a small town in the middle of nowhere with a big ski jump and no mountains??? (yes we came here to race down hill??) So this would be our first race, which is the 3rd round of the world cup series.

Practise days were all good and I had help from the MS Factory Intense race team setting up and keeping my bike running perfect.It was a lil’ cold and wet on practice days and I was running my bright green Smith Fuel goggles with one or two tear offs to keep my vision clear as if it were dry!

Come race day, wake up to our hotel been broken into and my bike had been stolen, so as you could imagine I was not happy, after everything being perfect the day before to have this happen felt like some one had slapped me across the face with a big wet fish!

I managed to borrow a bike from one of the guys in the team so I could race but missed practice - so my first race run was on a new bike different to mine, which didn’t feel the same. 20 seconds to go before race run i was changing my green Smith goggles set for the dry to my blue Fuels set up for the wet as it started raining. Vision was good tear offs getting pulled every now and then until I crashed not making finals, so bad weekend had.

So as I had no bike as I was waiting for a new one to turn up I had a few weeks to chill out in Morzine and managed to try my Smith Fuels in a different way and went go-carting a couple times - good times. After 4 weeks of waiting and playing around I have a new 07 bike thanks to Intense Cycles all perfect set up, so back into the training - perfect fine sunny days so I have my White Fuel goggles out with a black mirror lens which looks so bad arse… I’m back on the hill tearing it up! My heaven = riding in the sun down hilling all day wrapped in Smiths looking after my eyes.

A few races were to be canceled so some riding was done then home to NZ for the World MTB champs in my hometown Rotorua - kool. I could only make the 4x team for NZ as I didn't have a very good season racing DH, but Intense have sent me a new 4x bike and my friends at flaimedandmaimed.com give it a sick NZ custom paint job very kool.

Worlds 4x - bad qualifying run puts me in a bad first moto and I get 3rd and miss out making the next round. As it was winter back home I raced once again with my green Smith Fuel goggles to keep my eyes watering from the cold wind, but now it’s holiday time and I’m just chilling and just received my new Smith Super Method glassed which are white and gold. They look so kool so I’m chilling out wearing them on my head, my vision is ace on and off my bike with Smith eye wear!...

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