Old Guys Who Skate

Ryan and I hit Bonsor skate park this morning… aahhhh now that’s better.  After not riding for a while, and then dealing with the crumbling decrepitude of New West, it sure feels good to ride a nice park. 

Interestingly, the park has been cleaned of all graffiti – well… almost all.  Some douchebag graffiti’d one of the steep walls of the park with “Trip”.  Now, I’m not against graffiti – especially if it’s done with a modicum of style and/or grace.  I do have to admit, though, that skating an essentially graffiti-free park today was cool.  However, the one thing I have in favor of graffit artists is that they generally produce some pretty cool art.  However, the douchebag that tagged the bowl with this “Trip” paint, was truly untalented.  It’s not that he did a poor job with the spraycan, rather, he painted it on with a freaking roller.  I just looked stupid.  Oh well – you can’t account for taste in some people…

Still, the ride today was EPIC!  Both Ryan and I were killin the flow.  I started to get to the point where my big problem was carying too much speed and trying not to pop out of the park.  It felt awesome!  I can’t wait to go back again and push the envelope.  Hmmm… I wonder what I’m doing tomorrow morning?! 

I’d post video – but I want to edit what I have and also take some new footy.  More to come.  

(ps – no, that’s not a current picture of Ryan about to hit the flow – but you can tell he’s about to tear it up!)

OK – so I haven’t taken the board out for a while to do anything more than ride my patio (and no matter how hard I’m tryin, I don’t seem to be having much success in getting my wife to buy into letting me build a half pipe in the yard…). 

So, I find myself having to go out to New Westminster for some familial obligations and I think to myself: “hmmm… isn’t there a skate park there??  I’d best bring the gear.”  Which is precisely what I did.

Now the funny thing is – I used to live about 2 blocks away from this park.  In fact, I even remember while I was living there, thinking that I should head down there and check it out.  But alas, it wasn’t until yesterday that I actually did.  And what I saw was a sorry state…

At first blush, the park looks like it’s going to be all flow – which is cool for me, because that’s currently my fave.  And then I drop in, only to be spat out like a bad dish at a two-bit restaurant.  Try as I might, the “flow” in this park comes from riding from one side to the other… I couldn’t find a decent line. 

Then – salvation – a group of locals shows up.  Two guys and a girl.  Much to my surprise, the girl (didn’t get any of their names), was awesome!  Getting air, carving the park, the whole 9 yards.  We started talking and then – low and behold – she skates the line.  At that point the park really opened up for me, but still, it was a bit of a pale comparison to Bonsor.  Well… at least in my humble opinion (maybe I’ll change my mind later), and here’s why. 

I found the park iteself in generally poor condition (BOO to New Westminster parks and rec for not taking better care of this!).  Chunks of cement were missing, and you could hear the concrete crackle and break as you rode it.  Now admitedly, I’m not the lightest guy in the world, but hey, I don’t think I have the power to crack concrete on my board – at least not yet.  I also found the shape of the park to be a little strange.  It wasn’t deep enough to really get a good flow all the way around, and it was too long and too narrow to make use of the deeper areas.  The spine in the middle was “interesting” and would gladly kick you up if you didn’t respect it.  The graffiti was there in large amounts – which is fine – but it made for a slick ride since paint seems to lack the grip of pure cement.  There was also coping around most of the edges of the park – which is fine, but I couldn’t figure out why you’d put coping on a bowl that lacked anything resembling a steep wall.  Hmmm maybe I’m missing something there…

Now for the positive – outside of the “flow” area, there’s a bowl.  The bowl is pretty much a larger version of the bathtub at China Creek.  Larger – as in bigger and deeper with a little kink on one of the sides.  It was fun to ride around in and do some turns.  The excessive paint made it a little sketchy at times – although, I could also have been sketchy due to my lack of recent skating (fair enough).  There was also coping around almost the whole bowl, so I decided to try a drop in – figuring it would be easier not having to drop in on a vertical.  Well… let’s just say, I’m not 100% ready for it yet.  I didn’t kill myself – but I didn’t succeed either.  And my desire to walk away from the park unscarred and unbloodied, meant that I didn’t really put my heart into it.

All told, I think I’d give it another shot.  Let’s face it, it’s a different flavor, and I did have fun.  Besides, maybe I can use it as a testing ground to learn the drop in…

Yeah – so as you know, Ryan and I have been riding the Bonsor Flow Park.  So far it’s been an awesome experience.  The learning curve has been pretty steep – and the worst part seems to be mental.  What I mean is – we have the game to ride it, but there’s something that tweaks in the brain when you’re horizontal on a wall and staring down into a concrete trough.  Granted, we’re only talking about 6 feet at the high point – but 6 feet is still a pretty good fall.  And as Andrew said one day:  “At this age, I really don’t have a lot of pain left in me”. 

Well – it turns out – neither do I.  But apparently I have enough pain left in me to do this to my elbows.  Funnily enough, after the smaller looking injury, I broke down and bought elbow pads – the larger one happend WHILE WEARING them!  Although I think it was more of a burn from the long sleeved T-Shirt I was wearing at the time…

Anyway – just in case you thought I was making it throgh this process unscathed… 

So now that it’s been a couple of times riding the Flow Park section at Bonsor, I thought it was time to take smoe video.  So here’s one of me finally getting a good ride in! 

There’s something that’s super-cool about riding this park.  Now – of obvious note, I’m wearing more pads than RoboCop, and I’m only making heelside turns… but there’s more on the way.  The funny thing is, now that I’m kinda used to the heelside turns, the frontside turns are hard as hell… aint that always the way…

And since I’m in a video-tastic mood – here’s a similar clip of Ryan.  Only notice he’s starting to do some front-side turns as well.  Ryan’s been kickin ass at Bonsor.  I keep trying to go faster so I can keep the flow, but Ryan’s got the pump down – seems like he can go forever!  Check it:

And yeah – I know the vid’s are kinda amateur – I just haven’t had time to edit them and put music in the background.  I just wanted to load these bad boys up for today.

OK – So I know I said my next post was going to be about my wheels and stuff – that’ll have to come tomorrow (or some time next week).  Why? 

Well – HERE’S why:

This is the flow park at Bonsor Park in Burnaby.  It is AWESOME!

The dude who helped me buy my board at Pacific Border (damn – I have to get his name! – English guy… anyway), recommended that we try this section of the park.  … Yeah - I said “section”.  Bonsor has three sections to it: the flow section up that I have up above, a HUGE bowl with full pipe section, and then a big street section. 

Ryan and I went and hit the flow section today and had a blast.  We started off just trying to ride across from one side to the other.  The smallest “drop in” is about 3 feet and the largest is about 6 feet.  None of it is terribly steep with the exception of one 3 foot side wall (where I happened to drop in first… doh!).  Anyway, while we were ‘getting our feet wet’ so to speak, we were joined by two other people.  One was a younger dude who’s name I totally forget, and the other was a cool guy (also in his mid-to-late 30s) named Andrew. 

Andrew was awesome.  He was riding a pretty sweet deck (forgot to get the name), but he could make that thing GO!  He took the time to show us some cool lines, and how we could pump the park and keep on riding around.  To say the least, he took our riding to the next level – actually probably a few levels above that even!  He even took some video of us, and said he’d try to get us a copy.  If we can connect the dots, I’ll post it here.

By the end of the session, Ryan and I had learned enough from Andrew to complete at least one circuit of the flow park.  Now it’s all down to working on our technique and pumping it a little harder to keep going. 

HUGE thanks to Andrew!!  We’re heading back Monday for sure (rain notwithstanding)!

Oh, and in case you’re interested, I found a great site about Bonsor Skate Park here.  Thanks to northwestskater.com for the pics!