FUNBOY

— 25/August/10

Despite previous optomism the daily playtime dose has been broken. asides this i think there may yet be a chance for the trails to be running before winter kicks in for the long haul. however with the here and now matt models the lastest in funboy fashion, later he's going home to watch EVEN STEVENS re-runs.

posted by will

YEAH DAILY

— 23/August/10

Daily updates ahoy! We've been graced with rain so spades are all out this week. Matt's got two little clips on the VIMEO highly worth watching, there's even a backflip... another entry tommorow? hell yeah.

posted by will

SNAKE EYES

— 22/August/10

I've been holding these pictures for ages now, but i hit an updating brick wall. we checked out herefords new park and its probably one of the best of the three parks i have ever ridden.. despite this there's a pretty fantastic dust problem there that causes the park to be incredibly slippy, and as a natural result of this my face was introduced to the concrete a fair handfull of times.

All that nonsense aside we found a dead snake in the woods the other day, it smelt better than i do right now.

posted by will

SOMETHING JUST BROKE

— 21/August/10

My friends what you look at above is all that remains of our dear friend Botley Bowl. The birds won’t sing today...

posted by matt

A OKAY

— 16/August/10

Been doing some digging again and recycling photos is fine.

posted by matt

DEATH JAM '10

— 22/June/10

The jam went down pretty smoothly on saturday, apologies for this delay but ive had some packed days since then. it wasn't quite as off n' poppin as last year but it was still a fun day. Thanks to everyone that came down and that girl that set herself on fire (see image 3).

Towndrow managed to put together a little edit which you can see down below..

posted by will

— 19/June/10

Just been down to check the bowl is still there and its fortunately a big tick on that one, the weathers also alright, they've cut the grass and i watched ferris bueller do his thing last night so everythings coming up roses.

see you later dandelions.

posted by will

— 16/June/10

Well basically the bastard day has come. its going down like this, the council have suddenly sprung it apon us that the bowl is to be filled in pretty soon at any point really they're not sharing the details which puts us in an awkward position, hence the late notice.

I dont think it wont be filled in before the jam this saturday but please check on here before you leave and i'll post if its still there or otherwise buried.

Hopefully gunna be like the same affair as the summer jam LAST YEAR and it'd be rad to see the same turn out to say goodbye to a much loved friend. So throw on some shorts grab a disposable barbeque and some drinks, quite your job and your girlfriend and come on down.

See you saturday hooopefully.

posted by will

— 24/May/10

Yesterday i forgot to put deoderant on. this was a mistake.

On that note we had three people at the bowl at the same time. this was crazy. its got too hot to drive so most updates will probably now be from as far as i can cycle, currently that is about 10 feet as my knee is pretty obese after a air gone wrong. knee suicide. ive now written the word knee too much and it looks weird and wrong. if i couldn't read english i would get a nosebleed trying to pronounce it.

This would have been a much fatter update but matt and pete had to go home to wash each others hair. This would have also been a more relevant update but apparantly you breathe dominantly through either nostril every 90 minutes on account of your brain cycling between hemispheres, breathing through the left meaning youre more creative at said point and breathing through the right youre more logical. well my nose is forecasting an absolute starvation of logic currently so i guess that ties.

MATT VS CHANNEL GAP

Tally ho!

posted by will

balls...

— 16/05/10

Have you ever meandered through the countryside dressed for a more polite occasion? I have. It's fantastic.

I'm afraid that once again we have not come-up with the bmx goods. Sorry. I could make an excuse, but I'm afraid I can't be bothered. I now realise that it is exactly this sort of attitude (coupled with localised rain) which prevents us from coming up with aforementioned goods.

One day soon, perhaps.

posted by pete

HANGOVER

— 2/May/10

Holla, today i open with a question: have you seen pete in a moustache? i have, and im hoping sure are hell that someone has a photo. Anyhoo yesterday i managed to sneak in a quick ride with josh. the bowl was feeling particularly rough but i pulled a peanut out the bag in the end. I think we've decided to do the summer jam about June/July time rather than May like last year. There's been big words in favour of the bowl being fixed, and hopefully just in time for the jam, we'll try and hold off on it untill at least then.

As promised the other two photos are from our prototype testing of our move into the off-piste ski market. when the trails aren't running what else are you going to do?

posted by will

shameless self promotion...

— 23/04/10

Bonsoir! Pete here. Exciting.

Firstly, I would like to apologise for general lack of riding on my behalf. Currently my life is taken over by maths. I even dream in numbers. Similar the matrix, but substantially less gnarly and not as green.

As the title suggests, the name of the game today is shameless self promotion. As some of you may be aware, a few weekends ago I went to a recording studio with my band (ABOVE US THE WAVES) Have a listen. I can only describe the weekend as bitchin'. It is late at night and my eloquence is failing me. Hopefully the above pictures can tell you some of the story...

Peace & Pimm's

posted by pete

TONY YAYO

— 21/April/10

The lax riding of recent times has come down to two things. Spades and exams. I wont bore you with the details as its the same old story but we took a break and some ventured to the big playtime chalet. despite this magnificent weather we've missed the opportunity to smooth out the run-in and first set otherwise you'd be faced with some photos from some shin-death test runs. So instead we had to get our shits and giggles by other means so climbed a load of tree's and found a spooky hole. The whole thing was entirely reminiscent of stand by me. Next time im bringing you a playtime exclusive; a skiing report.

posted by will

ITS NEARLY PLAYTIME

— 18/April/10

posted by will

— 29/March/10

So here's a little gem for you! sent in very generously by a chap called Alex Leech riding botley bowl way back in 1991 when it was opened. im still amazed at the colour the bowl was back then.

Ive been pretty solid down the woods at the moment as alongside the longer days this weather has been quite a blessing for getting new sets built. speaking of digging i never noticed until now but aidan's got back on the blogging wagon and theres some dear words and pictures of cothill and his radio. so WATCH THAT SPOT sonny jim.

One other thing i forgot to put up last time was THIS VIDEO. hopefully you've already seen it but if you haven't you're getting my own personal thumbs up to go lay your drizzled eyes upon this wonder from the land of the cafe.

— 22/March/10

In all fairness the weather's been pretty sweet to us recently, i took the weekends dashing of rain as an opportunity to get some ground work done in the woods. Yes, its a void filler digging update so im going to have to pull some wit out of the bag.

A new line of t-shirts is currently in the conception stages, without a shadow of a doubt they should be out sometime this year. Despite the bowls wrinkly face i think we are going to go ahead with the mandatory summer jam, although thats usually in may so we have a few months yet.

Ive come to the part now were i link a video up, so heres my CLIP OF THE WEEK and just incase you were expecting bmx, its not, however it ticks all the boxes of rad. ta ra.

— 17/March/10

Apologies, this is pretty overdue, but i went out and rode with josh the other weekend, ive been stacked with work so sadly this took the lesser priority. anyway it was a supercool day which could probably be best summed up by this one and a half minute GLORIOUS SCENE. i think id be kelly and josh would be a chocolate filled gene wilder.

Earlier this very day i found a chewit on the floor which caused me to have a pretty long moral dilemma over whether or not to dine apon it. in the end i declined but i had to weigh up some pretty serious factors to come to my conclusion. i believe this to be my story of the day.

— 06/March/10

At long last we've finally managed to get out and ride alongside some rather dashing weather. summer definately felt that little bit closer this week, i cant really describe just how nice it was to get out in the sun and ride so hopefully the pictures up top will suffice.
Despite the bowls current state we managed to overcome and threw a few lines down, it seems to ride alot better than the last time myself and matt gave it a go in its current state, you just have to think of it more as a really good street spot than a super slick bowl. The lack of coping on one side is probably the worst part but you can just cover that up with some cardboard.

Talking of the bowl i came across THIS from the bowl back in its hayday, its so clean it looks like its made out of wood.

I dont have anything particularly clever to say, so instead go watch some bits from a pretty underrated programme that used to be on e4. TELEVISION AWKWARDNESS.

Sloane Peterson

— 23/February/10

Recently ive mostly been taking pictures of girls. Its a hard job but someone's got to do it. This has actually, apart from our current duel with some pretty awkward snow, been the main reason for the absense of any new riding content, especially when we're ones for grabbing a few hours of daylight to get out and ride this has certainly been pretty strange. Thats mostly over now so we're going to hopefully get the chance this week to get out and ride if the weather allows it.

If you're missing summer like i am, go over to the ever fantastic DEFGRIP and watch the united hawaii VIDEO.

— 21/February/10

Since there's been relatively little to no riding recently i thought i'd slap together a B-roll of all afew photo's from last year that didn't quite make the grade when they probably should have done. Just use the numbers to scroll through the images.

Well yesterday myself, pete and phil went down to the meeting about the bowl, although it was actually more of a all welcome voting session. Because of waffling nonesense about insurance claims it doesn't look all too hopeful for the bowl. Though they are planning to build a new park to replace it, this will most proabably be years before anything is done. Contrary to justin lee collins' persistent positive outlook, this is not good times. Karma was on my side though, last night Ferris bueller's day off was on tv and as always it made everything pretty much good again.

I guess the best situation if the council can't get the money to completely repair the bowl is to temporarily re-skim it so its rideable for at best another year or two, and in the meantime source funding for a new park, and im thinking a clover bowl.

You may Remeber..

— 19/February/10

Our old friend botley bowl suffered a pretty serious INJURY late last year. As it turns out the council have finally decided to do something about it and from what i know there's two ideas. Either its going to be filled in for good, or repaired. Personally i would rather see the latter happening. Like dating Helen Mirren its one of the few older parks there are left in the south, and in my opinion more fun than most of the newer concrete parks nearby.

Now to shoot sharp and straight to the point Mike's been right on the case and found out that there's a meeting tomorrow at 9.30am at the seacourt hall in botley about it all, so if you want to give this old hermit the support it needs then by all means come along, myself and pete are heading down with our ties and breifcases to employ a strategic presentation on the saving this national treasure. This is really late notice but we weren't sure on the details exactly untill now. Anyway my babbling is a pittence in contrast to the words of the oxford mail, so go read THIS or even more on the ball, THIS for more.

That was all pretty intense so to restore our dysfunctional order here's two things i value as interesting.
1. I just ate hands down the biggest chip i have ever seen.
2. I will make pete buy THIS TIE at some point in the near future.

— 17/February/10

The playtime has hit spring cleaning early this year. i've been fiddling around with changing the site for ages now and ive finally come to this. Unlike iTunes in which this would be called version 2.1.9.3.1 and changed every two weeks im going straight up for the whole numbers. i give to you V3.

So what does this mean to the common man? This layout should maximize fun all around, and i really mean widespread fun. The approach we took last year ended up with updates coming around on average 1.666 recurring a month, which if you're a lady or a boyfriend once a month is more than enough, but for the average bigplaytime fan it just doesn't cut the mustard.

We'll aim to pump variety down your throats so much that you have to start reading variety magazine and eating variety packs of cereal to keep up with us. You'll send money to the VARIETY to make it stop but it just wont.

Anyway, im working on something for sometime within the next week so in the meantime listen to south africa's very own N-DUBZ.

Rushed

— 1/December/09

sack 180
So here we are, december again. this time last year i was just embarking on redesigning the site into its previous incarnation. i cant say thats going to happen again just yet, maybe just a little tinkering..

Im really hoping that there wont be a huge drought of posts after this, it always seems like we do more riding in the winter anyway which is bizzare and slightly arousing.

this has probably been blogged and re-blogged just about everywhere by now alas i saw it only earlier and it made me HAPPY. right, im off to do something wild like cut my nails.

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