Boards, Bling, Road Trips

 New Board! This comic is excellent. I tripped out when I saw Bacon had the comics as their graphics. Bacon boards are excellent, they hold up till the grip falls off. I have two old nasty ones that are technically still rideable, I just couldn't keep riding them, they got sweat-dripped and puddle soaked and the miscellany.



The top actually looks really nice too. If I were the type who put fresh boards on my wall I'd get a few more. I've been trying to figure out if I can stain old decks the same color as some furniture, while still being able to see the old graphics, damage and stickers. I'd want some badass lounge chairs and an ancient looking chest, with matching decks on the wall.


Also, not that this is a side-note, I got engaged.




Three day weekend at Lake Delton this weekend! I'm joining in on the fiancee's family reunion, and they're renting a cabin less than a mile away from the park! They won't understand, but I'm going to sneak out for at least a few sessions. It's awesome when you get to ride a park several days in a row, you get such a better feel for the place.

Anyway, going to try to post more, but I need to take more pictures. Think I'm going to do a friends/acquaintances post, and link to the Chicago people I've found as I lurk through the internets. There's a lot of us out there, and we should all link each other up!

Don't put wax through the laundry.

I got super lucky on this one because I used a ziplock bag. Check your pockets!









Still melty.

Farmington Hills - Riley Skatepark

HEY! I just realized I have pictures of Riley skatepark over in Michigan. I was trying to stitch them together, but I must have been dancing a jig while I took the pictures, and it just won't work. So here they are in leftish to rightish order. I believe this is a Grindline or Dreamland with local contractors doing the non-transition work.




Deep end. I never slashed the pool coping so I can't say if it was nice or not. I was lazy and out of shape last fall. 10' I believe.


Ah my first cradle. So fun, spit me out a few times, but I have no complaints. The concrete is a little rough in there, but to get that high you need to be moving fast and a few bumps are the least of your worries. There's a video here. And that kid made me damn nervous I thought that kook was gonna fall.


To the right. The coping has a pretty big diameter.


TACO!


The smaller flow section. The hips are perfect. The short section is really short, and one side of the spine is way too small. There's pool coping on that extension, which has a really steep transition.

What you can't see is at the bottom left lip of the last picture, it's a quarter to bank extension. The quarter has bowl corners so you could carve up on to the bank, and onto the quarters on the top mid-deck. The bowl is on the other side of the upper deck to the left of the picture.

The park also has a really neat jersey barrier that is very long and curves. Some traditional street stuff, which is well separated, no boards flying into the bowl. You can also climb up on top of that cradle if you so dare. Excellent park, not without its flaws.  Worth the 4ish hour drive from Chicago. Go get some.

Comic-con Chicago

Went to the Chicago comic-con a few weeks ago. I'm not a comic fan, and I don't usually go to these types of things, but I definitely had a good time. We went to an afterparty with some of the cast from BSG. There were lots of costumed individuals, and it was pretty interesting listening to what the actors had to say.

Batman and Robin.

Brent Spiner - Data from Star Trek, he was genuinely hilarious.

Colonel Tigh gods damnit!

The BSG panel. Apparently we were supposed to have special passes to be up this close, but we just walked in and sat down unknowingly. WIN!

Batman. Not sure who the robot is.

Baddies from the ninja turtles. There were lots of people in costume. First thing I saw when I walked in was the perviest looking guys taking lots of pictures of catwoman....

William Shattner. He is a kook. Either he looooves to talk about himself or had the most brilliant strategy for not taking questions from the audience. He talked about his upcoming shows for 20 minutes, then went on a 20 minute description of the winter olympics, and took 1 question about being the priceline negotiator.

These were ABSOLUTELY EPIC iron man costumes. I'd be surprised if the movie studio didn't send them for publicity. They made realistic stomping sounds and everything. Totally pro.

Colonel Tigh cut me in line at the bar. I was fine with it.

Jess is officially a fangirl.

I just stepped in because I didn't want Jess taking a picture with the pretty boy alone.

Another pic of Tigh because he's awesome. He spent like 20 minutes with an autistic kid and made his day.

No judging! Sci-fi is awesome!

Retro-post: San Jose

Went to San Jose back in March. Didn't get to skate as many places as I would have liked, but Lake Cunningham and Santa Cruz were wonderful. I so want to move there. AND IT'S NEVER HUMID! It was 70 degrees all week, in Chicago it was snowing.

Wish I spent more time riding this one, tight transitions and stairs like a pool.


It was super hard to get speed at that cradle, not sure if it was bigger than Riley in Michigan.



The pipe, and a really big hip!


The huge vert wall.

Should have taken more pictures, LC is ~60,000 sq. feet. I'm not sure if that includes the big flatground area for spectators. It's still huge, kid in a candy factory.

 I guess I didn't take any pictures of the Santa Cruz park, only a few videos. That pool is definitely my favorite of everything I've ridden.

I have more old pics I'll post later, and I'm going to Roselle today, I'll make another stitch, because those are fun, but Roselle isn't interesting at all.

West Dundee Concrete Mini!

Went all the way out to West Dundee to skate a concrete mini. Not too much to say about the park, there's not really a flow to it because it's mostly street obstacles. The mini was perfect though, save for the wax that kids have put on it. One side hangs in the air with no deck, and I was able to hang a feeble all the way over it which I was pretty happy about. Finally was able to land disasters, which is why I went in hunt of a mini ramp, trying to push switch through traffic at Wilson was not paying off. Here I was able to do a bunch of switch rocks, then move to disasters. Not really worth the drive, but if you're already going out to Schaumburg or Roselle its only another 15 minutes. Forgot the camera so I have crappy phone pics.



Built by Spohn Ranch I believe, craftmanship was all good, no complaints, but it's not as if it was a complicated thing to pour. The soil under the hanging side of the ramp has already compacted leaving an extra space between the ramp and the soil. I expect it to get worse over time, hopefully the crete is strong enough and wont crack.



The street course pitches downhill, which is a blessing and burden. Less pushing unless you really want to hit it the other way. There were also lights on one side which made the park pretty rideable after dark.



I don't really give a shit about this part.



The little bank was actually pretty fun, I didn't expect to ride it when I got there, but gave it a shot and liked it.


Nice little park if you're already out there, not worth much of a drive, but much better than a skatelite mini, and much better than drop-on-top prefab concrete. There's a mall nearby if your lady is tired of watching you skate.

Lake Delton!

So I finally made the trip up to Lake Delton, a skatepark by Dreamland. It's right next to the Wisconsin Dells, and there's even a state park with camping about a half mile away. I will definitely need to make a return trip to this one. The concrete was uber smooth, and every inch of the park was made skateable. When the builders poured up to the edges of the park, they didn't just leave it flat, or build a wall, they put in transitions or banks.



This is the sweet sweet bowl, (after several attempts at stitching photos.) It's a little hard to see but there is a love seat sticking out of the wall on the right, which I was able to carve over. The love seat was fun, but it actually breaks up the flow of the bowl. The coping is the way pool coping should be, which makes me really how strange Wilson's coping actually is.



That guy's arm is actually like that, I swear. Behind him is a psuedo-brick quarter with a really steep transition. The entire park was skateable. I'm definitely going to have to head back!

Slightly bigger versions can be seen here.

Sushi by the beach!

So Jessica and I have been exploring the Andersonville/Uptown area, there are tons of amazing restaurants, and the beaches are much nicer than the over populated douchey beaches to the south. We had sushi by the beach.



Yum! I believe it was called Sushi Marina. We also tried Sushi Luxe, which had much larger pieces of fish in their sushi, but I think we preferred the Marina.






We walked over to that beach after.

Weekend.

This weekend was sad. The city of Whiting Indiana is closing their skatepark. It's rumored that it is because BP wants to expand their parking lot, and the city has a grant to renovate the lakefront area. Either way, there was no notice to us until it was far too late. This weekend was the grind and grill, a yearly event, my first (and last) time.



The "entrance." Although I rarely see people enter this way, you'll see why.




The smaller bowl, the shell shaped wall on the right curves beyond vertical.




This is the reason no one really comes through that door, it's part of the bowl. Sadly I never made the carve over it, it's hard to find a line over it backside and I was not comfortable doing it frontside, even though I'm probably capable of doing it.




The big bowl. The far coping is 12' tall I believe. The more parks I see the more I realize how photographs make them seem smaller. I'm a pretty tall guy if you've met me, that pool is twice as deep.




Shallow end of the big bowl, and some classy shoes.




Better shot of the entrance.




Several bands played. Including The Party Downers.

I realize now I should have shot some people actually skating, but I was more concerned about riding Whiting for the last time. Whiting is the only place above 10' within 4 hours of Chicago that I know of, and riding something big is a super effective way to get better at skating, just carving to the coping feels like an accomplishment to me, and when I go back to a 6' ramp it will feel tiny. Every time I ride it I feel humbled. Another nail in the coffin, I should move west and ride the good stuff all the time. Sad.


Oooo ooo! [UPDATE] More pictures at theboardmen
and Don't Explode including a few of yours truly.




On Sunday my intention was to go on a suburb mini ramp search. I like the mini's cuz I can try some more technical tricks, and they're good to ride on a day after riding big ramps, because my legs are worn out. However, Chicago traffic blows, and it took me half an hour to make it from UIC up to Milwaukee Ave., so I gave up, got some groceries, and made myself a nice lunch.

Retro-post.

A while ago we went to Springfield. There's a skatepark there, but it was wet, and I had a full belly from IHOP. We didn't stay very long.




I'll pretend I wrote this.




It's amazing that Springfield has more interesting graffiti than Chicago. Or they don't have the budget to paint over it.




Pretty sure that was a make.




Grindey grindey!




As I said puddles. Fail. There was also a dead rat I didn't notice, but thankfully did not run over. JOY!

Jess' Birthday

We had a little shindig for my lady. We grilled some burgers, Filipino bbq, and drank lots of tasty tasty beer.

She got some fancy plates.

I think the Blackhawks won or something.

Yesha can do witchcraft with her phone.

We hung out on the roof.

And engaged in philosophy.




Until I was forced to stop.

The cake was not a lie!




Some people posed for pictures.




Others did not.




The Lowell crew.




Straight outta the Paign.




Jess makes the boys take tequila shots.



And we left the mess for the morning.