Welcome to the Playground

A year ago when we moved into our new building, part of the plan was that we had 3 acres of land next to the shop to build our playground. And not your typical playground, no merry go rounds or swings in this park, but a full on BMXers dreamscape. A full Supercross BMX track, a pump track, a Dirt jump pack that would make the Dew Tour's set look like a few speed bumps. You know a real place to play and train, and of course test new products.

Well after a year of dirt falling through and tractor issues, the time has finally come. So far we have had over 120 loads of Clay dropped off and have more coming next week.

So with Dirt in hand, we sat down to decide what we wanted the Supercross Track to be, luckily, Johan from the UCI sent us the plans for the massive 28.5 ft tall start hill, and Bubba, Kenth, Dani, Jeremy and Austin all started discussing the ideas for the track, Take this obsticle from London, take this part from Chula, this part from Frejus, the end result is a 6 straight, 4 turn monster! Now you are probably going, 6 straights? 4 Turns? What the heck, well the second straight and the 3rd straight are dual straights, and it is not a Men/Womens straights, it is the Gnarly Straight and the Super Gnarly straight and there are 2 second turns, 1 for the Gnarly straight that the Super narly straight jumps over into it's second turn. So the course itself is a typical 4 straight 3 turn track, but with options. At at an estimated 1400 ft it is going to be the perfect size for training.

So with the plan in mind, Austin took everyones comments and notes and put it to paper, then he used a cad program to lay it all out. Once that was done we hired ourselves up a tractor operator, Danny Purdue, who has helped us with our Apple Valley BMX track and has also built Motocross tracks for the Alessi's, so Danny knows his way around a dirt pile or two. So with that, Jeremy and I set out to the lot and started marking off the ground with contractors paint, 42ft double here, 38 ft triple step here, 28ft doubles here, 28ft Bonzai jump, a 35ft berm jump, yeah it is going to have a few fun obsticles. And of course as the building was going, we modified a few things, like the addition of the berm jump, that wasn't in the original plans, but it just seems to fit the flow of the track, and the Bonzai that drops you 4ft underground out of the first turn, yeah that wasn't in the original plans either, but just seemed to fit the flow of it all.

So far we have the first 3 straights in, and the last three go in tomorrow on New Years Day, then the grooming begins and we will be riding soon. Here are a few shots of the build process from yesterday.

So how are you spending your New Years??

Update - 1-2-2012 When we ended this article last time, we had just completed the first day of construction, the below pictures are how we spent New Years Day, we now have 5 straights and 3 turns in and only 1 more turn and the last straight to finish roughing in. Problem is we were running low on dirt and time, so we have more clay being dropped off this week and we will get the rest of the track finished.

Enjoy the pictures.

More Updates coming later in the week, back to building bikes and parts so we have something to test on the track!