Elser Family Blog

BMX video.

It’s been mostly BMX stuff lately.

Melinda was interviewed during that Redline seminar.. and ended up on TeeVee…

High 5 4 Kids: Melinda Elser – WFXG FOX54 Augusta.

I took some video of Rockwell last night during practice… They are getting better every day.

And then Rockwell too some (vertical) video of 50yo me in the same section of track..
🙂

BMX “Redline Flight” school.

Last night Melinda and Rockwell attended the “Redline Flightschool” BMX clinic. It was taught by Jason Carnes, the USA BMX champion from 2002 to 2007. This guy is in his 40s now and is still built like a rock, and still races professionally. He talked about the gate, the rhythem section, and jumping. Here he is giving Rockwell and Melinda some pointers on the gate.

Here Jason is, teaching how to work the gate.

And here is a group photo, of the kids after 3 hours of “flight school”! (Melinda is not in there.. The ever vigilant student she is, she asked to go home bofore this photo was taken, so she could get ready for school. Gotta’ appreciate THAT.

And, realizing how imporortant the gate is, I built a practice gate for the kids (..and myself..lol) to practice on.

Busy weekend.. Zombies, Color, MP3, and BMX.

The last 24 hours has been pretty Amazing. It’s going to be hard to beat this run of events. We did a Zombie walk last night with Makeup (Rockwell was feeling sick and did not want to go), we did the color run this morning, We did a “Improve Everywhere” MP3 Experiment this afternoon at 6pm, and then we went to the BMX track and competed there till quarter to nine. Great timing of events.. It was Awesome!

Zombies! We actually found a place down town that would put zombie makeup on for cheap! I should have had more done for what they where charging.. students learning makeup techniques i guess.

Watch out!

Melinda cant help being pretty, even as a zombie! lol.

The group! There where some really good costumes!

The pre-walk meeting.

At the end, the zombie leader thanked his minions.

Then, this morning, we did the Color Run!
This is quite fun.. Especially for 9am in the morning! Melinda about to enter Pink!

In the Pink gauntlet!

Melinda and Dad at the end.. This was after the color throws.

Clearly the best picture of the day!! Isn’t this an awesome picture of Melinda??

Check out this video of one of the “color throws” at the end.. they give you packets of tempra to toss in the air. fun!

And here are all of us later in the evening after the MP3 Experiment.. the kids had a BLAST doing this.. it was so much fun!

Nice picture of Melinda and I, right before hitting “play”!

Good looking kids, right after hitting play.

Rockwell. Need I say more.

We ended the night with some BMX. Melinda and Hannah’s race. This is the race where Hannah, Melinda’s friend, took a pretty nasty spill. Scraped up her hand, her elbow, her side and her knee.. but she STILL finished!! No one can say these girls are not tough!!

One of Rockwell’s heats. This was the very first race he used clips on his pedals. In the final heat he took a pretty nasty crash.. I think melinda was wondering it came in three’s at this point!! Everyone was OK in the end.
🙂

3D printer class, Horses and more.

Rockwell and Melinda have been Racing the fall BMX series.. they are doing great!

Our friend Charles taught a 3D printer class last weekend.. Melinda, Rockwell, AND Hannah, from Switzerland, attended! Hannah skyped in.

We had 6 different 3D printers to work with during this class.. pretty interesting!!

Proof!

Melinda has been attending some horse riding lessons. He thought she was riding western the whole time in St Croix, but it turns out her teacher there taught her a few English things along the way. Teacher: “Melinda! you are posting! There is no posting in western riding..!”

Another nice picture.

I just found this one on my computer… I don’t even know how it got there.. but its a awful good one! Somewhere in the VI.

Melinda has been helping me help some friends with a Haunted house. (Plantation Blood) She has painted and even buried a mattress! Here she is with a new fiend.. I mean friend.

Melinda taking after her older sister.. This is how I would find Hannah almost every day I would pick her up from school..her nose in a book.

I ran the Quacks and stacks 5k last weekend.. I came in 3rd out of about a dozen people.. But in the 50 and over class!.. I’m 49 for another two weeks!! I don’t know how that happened.. but someone got cheated out of 3rd place! If I was in the 31 to 49 class, I would have come in 10th place out of about 20 people.. still not that bad for an old man.

Activities.. lots of biking.

Melinda wanted to go to Charleston to go surfing.. but she looked at the surf forecast, and everything was less than 2 feet.. No surfing going on in that. So then she wanted to go biking in Charleston, but we had to go to the soup kitchen Sunday. So we would have little time to bike. I talked her into going to 5 points in Columbia near USC campus. We rode around there, then we rode through USC’s campus to the Capitol. I had not been through the campus.. pretty nice!
Here are the couple of pics we got. Here is Melinda in front of the Capitol building.

And here we are in the back of the building at the Strom Thurmond Statue.

For those of you not framiliar with Good Ol’ Strom, He was our senator for a LONG time.. He actually ran for president in the 60’s and created the “Dixiecrat” party.. a pro segregation/Anti Civil rights party.
Here is the little plaque on the side of the monument… Hmm.. Some things seem to have been changed.. was that “Bessie Mae” added later?? LOL.. why yes it was. Bessie was Strom’s half black Daughter by a house servant when he was young! Do with it what you will.. Bessie kept her mouth shut until after he died. and to his credit, Strom Mellowed out when he got older.

So, I had a couple observations. College kids don’t ride bikes any more. I was really disappointed to be honest. I thought 5 points would be crawling with them. Not even close. But it as crawling with college kids. I guess they walked or drove.

We also stopped at an antique store and wandered about.

Over all, I thought my idea of going to 5 points might have been a failure at first.. but then after riding through the campus, and going around the capitol, It turned out to be fun. I’m looking forward to going to Charlston for a bike ride.. Perhaps we could talk Aunt Christine into going also.

A couple weekends ago, we went to Rock Hill SC. to the grand opening of their super cross BMX track there. Rockewell even got to race on the track.. He did not do well, considering He did had a flat and did not get to practice before the race.. (Insert sad face here..) But the facilities are AWESOME.

There are only two supercross tracks in the US, Here in rock hill, and in California. This place is amazing.

Two more random Pictures.. Another cool homework poster by Melinda. She is taking advantage of the big ol’ printer.. 🙂 She hand colored and lettered it)

And a pic of Rockwell manning the (new) cotton candy machine at the church Rally Day. I think he was about to stick his finger in the floss to see if it was hot (it’s not too hot)…

Rockwell Helped the young makers work at fixing up a Haunted house tfor this fall. (actually, Melinda did too, and this is the same place Hannah helpd Charles do a photo shoot at before she left) But here is a parting shot with one of the actors.

BMX!

Melinda and lil’ Hannah are going to race the fall BMX series! We have been practicing and everything. This is going to be fun to watch.

Action shot! Hannah is ahead, but today at practice, Melinda beat Hannah’s best time, so she better watch out!

I’m not done yet.

I’m not done bragging, that is.

Rockwell just got his ABA (American Bicycle Assn) magazine in the mail.

Turns out Rockwell is ranked 30th in the state in points, and 3rd in his age bracket! In the whole state! Whats crazy is he only started racing this last summer, so he missed all the points that come with the spring series! Oh, and BTW, he did that using the tracks loaner bike.  Kathi said he is really missing his bike. One funny anecdote… Kath said that during the duathlon, the bike section of the race was a loop in a parking lot with speed bumps. While some of the kids where slowing down to go over them, Rockwell was jumping them at full speed. Funny. Sounds like Rockwell.

Also, he was promoted from the novice category to the intermediate category, so he will probably be racing against older kids when he gets back.

Anyway, here is Rockwells name in the magazine: (Click for larger picture)

Bragging rights

I just watched the BMX award ceremony again..Rockwell got 2520 points, you have to watch up to the teenagers intermediate class to find anyone else that got more points than he did!

Way to go Rockwell.

I also found out that they moved him up to intermediate class because of his point totals and amount of races he won. He will have more competition when he gets back this summer! He might not be winning just about every race this year…