Andy

For those who weren't there, we showed those Kickstart vids in the Trials Central tent at Hawkstone. One of them featured a young rider by the name of John Lampkin. John just happened to be in the Trials Central tent that night. A tad embarrased would probably be an understatement!

I wouldn't say "asking to die", but "accident waiting to happen" springs to mind. I don't have satellite or cable and can't get either so don't know much about the guy. It wasn't till I saw all the tribute vids appearing on the Net I realised how popular he was.

Welcome aboard. We don't have many rules here, but one that I am strict on is no SMS-type text talk. Keep to English and you'll be fine -oh and stay away from the one who calls himself Ishy

That was the Galant. The Scoob is treated differently - or was until I let HL, Cam, and your eldest visit a bakers and spread their pastry flakes all over it!

Security 1, who first questioned me about my sausage, was a woman. However, don't tell Jake - he'd only get jealous

Somebody PLEASE take me up on the offer of a lift before I get landed with Perce's sprogs!

Petitions won't do any good. What MIGHT do some good is working with the complainant to rectify things. Perhaps the planting of hedging to muffle noise. That is cheap and environmentally friendly and it's far better to work WITH local residents rather than against them. As far as bashing the ACU goes, I've had word that the open Trials forum has been cancelled due to lack of interest. If there's that much complacency in the sport then I see no reason to allow the bashing to continue in these forums.

More tales from the travels of Andy. This time moderately amusing. I had no flight hassles. It was Jake's turn this trip When I

Thought you and the noisy one were time-keeping? Either way, last time I checked you could get five in my car. Kinell's not playing this year so Andrea won't be there which leaves a vacant seat!

I'll be going round and have had 4 years experience at it! You're welcome to tag along with me if you want. I'll have space in the car.

Okay - any more interest now I've announced on the front page that Dougie will ride the Scott this year?

This has been posted before. Be warned, the soundtrack contains a LOT of swearing...

I'd agree totally. Raga has been very lucky this season and, although it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that he'll get his number two (pun intended!), I don't realistically think he'll get number three. Fuji is well back on form and Cabestany had a cracking result in Cahors, followed by an outright win this weekend (he offered no explanation for this recent upswing in his performance at Sunday's press conference). Doug was very unlucky on Sunday. I didn't see his second lap perfomance as we're in the press room working by then, but from everyone I talked to who DID see it, it was storming and proved he can still be up there with the best. I was winding him up a bit at the weekend about podium places and he just said "Hey - I'll be back". Not in a cocky Arnie sort of way, but in a quiet, confident kind of way. I would never write him off. As for the others? Bou has had a couple of wins this season, but seemed to peak early in the season and hasn't made his mark recently. He does have youth on his side and this year will have been a great experience for him to grow and develop on. I like his style of riding and expect him to do better next year with the experience under his belt. Fajardo - much was made of him, but after his injury last year he seems to have struggled to make the move into the "upper echelon". Two podium finishes this year and third place both times. Great rider, but can't seem to execute when it matters. My 2 cents worth!

There are a number of people who helped me with the initial development of the site - in fact some who persuaded me to go for it with a new site in the first place. It's where ideas for the future of the site are bounced around. Generally, it's me saying - "hey, what about......" and them going "that's a dumb idea, Andy"

Check the Events Calendar on the front page. They're listed there

I was hardly in the paddock, but did see the new bikes on show. However, after promising this big launch in Andorra and then releasing a bleeding mailshot, my attitude is "Sod 'em". The whole point of a launch is to drum up interest, particularly form the press who will then proliferate the news. To spill the beans the week before defeats the purpose. There's nothing I could show you that you haven't already seen other than two bikes parked on a bit of bark.

Had a beer with him and family last night en route up. They're not staying in the same town as us because they couldn't get a decent hotel. I think they're coming up tonight.

Bloody 5am check-in tomorrow - Thanks Heather! As much camera gear as possible packed into my laptop bag and the rest well wrapped up in clothes in my suitcase. Fingers crossed. See you on the dark side

So much for the big launch in Andorra I've struggled to try and work with Sherco for years and got nowhere. I'm supposedly on their mailing list yet never received this. I give up with them.

Beer. Spray. Monitor.

Front page of Trials Central.

Cute, but been there. Doesn't deal very well with the combination of "A" version of Linux with "B" version of Apache with "C" version of PHP and "D" version of MySQL and multiple applications sitting on top. Trials Central, for all its appearances, is a highly complex site with a lot of code accessing a lot of databases. For security reasons I should upgrade to MySQL 4, but the forums don't yet support MySQL 4. I should change options in the PHP configuration, but several components don't support those changes. I should change Apache settings, but some of the applications don't support those changes. If it was as easy as paying ten bucks for a month and finding all the answers I'd have paid ten times that months ago!

At your age it's more likely to be a Box Brownie

You wanna see the attacks TC get - and sometimes successful My background is 18 years UNIX with a lot of Linux, but this security stuff is too much for me. If anyone knows a Linux security expert, pleas e have them get in touch.