Wideopen’s wild man Joel Anderson signed up for Melon Optics … and before he knew it he was on a flight to Bali to shred jungle trails.
Words by Joel Anderson / photos by Eric Palmer
I recently signed up to ride Melon optics – I’d bought their goggles in the past and to get onto their roster was rad. What I didn’t expect was an invite to fly to Melon’s HQ in Bali (8,000 miles from home!) to shoot a video just a week after I sealed the deal!
Having never been out of Europe, going to Bali was quite a big deal for me. First of all I flew to Qatar and at seven and a half hours it was the longest flight I’d ever been on by a long shot. I had to wait around for an hour then shoot off to Bali on another nine hour flight.
I arrived exhausted, was handed a rental moped and hit the streets to check out the area. I wasn’t going to turn that down – we bombed around, seeing sites and stopped in at the beach.
The idea of the trip was to meet up with some other Melon riders (Ben Deakin and Nick Pescetto) and shoot a video and some photos. I met up with the boys and we got on the road to a Volcano in the middle of the island. After two and a half hours in the van we arrived a rough track with a convoy of taxis and vans and ready for the sweatiest push of our lives up the hill. It was proper one step forward, three steps back stuff!
We shoved, dragged, carried and pushed our bikes up the volcano until eventually we got to the top and dropped in. We hit the slopes with long carving turns and white knuckle hill bombs until night fell. When darkness fell we moved the cars, pointed the lights up and carried on!
Later in the week we hit up Bali Bike Park – the week’s main attraction. All the trails are deep in the jungle and we bumped up the hill in a struggling 1litre van wondering if we were going to make it!
When we eventually reached the park the view was amazing – the mountain looks out over a crystal clear lake surrounded by rice paddies. It’s definitely a bit of a change from the view at home.
The bike park was crazy – the riding was amazing and took a bit of getting used to. The trails are deep in the jungle and surrounded by the freshest green leaves – they started out really damp and slippy but dried up in the heat and just got faster and more fun.
Fellow Melon rider Nick Pescetto has his own jump track at the park which we set to work on – it’s full of steep wooden lips and small mud landings which were perfect for no handers, nac nacs and flips!
The trip finished with a spin down to the beach, chased by photographer Eric in the taxi snapping away. We toasted a great trip with a cocount on the sand watching the surf.
Bali was an amazing trip and I’d love to go back some day. Once you’re there it’s super cheap, the people were super friendly and the trails were really fun. Get it on your bucket list!
Thanks to Melon for an amazing trip, you can check out their site here.
Joel Anderson rides for Wideopenmag with support from Banshee bikes, Loose Riders, Deity, 661, Stans No Tubes and – of course – Melon.