On Thursday 30th October, The Shadow Conspiracy was supposed to descend on Unit 23. What actually happened was that The Shadow Conspiracy, the UGP team PLUS half of the Seventies crew showed up - woo-hoo! The riding, as expected, was amazing. We've sent the slides off for developing, so there'll be loads more pics up next week, but for now, here's the report, as well as a few words from, like, pros - dude! Yo!

I turned up at about 7pm and the riding was just getting started. It's weird meeting people that you've read loads about, because you almost feel like you know them and nod and smile etc and they must be like 'Who the ****'s that?'

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As usual, much time was spent fretting about whether my flash would work properly. I then went on a photo binge.

Like I said earlier, the riding was amazing, but there were definitely a few stand-outs:

Baz Keep was going HUGE. I'm sure he must have 360'd the spine about six feet out, and if you've ridden that spine, you'll appreciate that this is no mean feat. He also tailwhipped to manual up onto the deck.

I didn't see Ryan Sher much, but whenever I turned my head his way, he was riding great. Big tables, turndowns, brakeless nose-pick tailwhips and so on. Being sponsored by a porn mag obviously hasn't diluted his bike handling skills.

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Jim Cielencki (the man whose surname always requires a trip to the Kink site for a correct spelling reference) totally blew me away. You always read how people like him and Taj try and go for a line that no one else has seen. Well, true to form, Jim found one in Dumbarton and was trying to do a backside boneless (!!!) on a metal pillar that's set about four feet back from the lip of the ramp. He tried it forever and came pretty close, but never pulled it. Still, seeing him even trying it was one of the highlights of the night for me.