An embarrassment of riches – Summer Solstice Roadtrip 2008

This was my fourth year going on this trip. This year the group was in full disarray. Hailey, Lake Cunningham and Washington State were all possibilities being discussed. In the end, small groups went their separate ways. We started for San Jose but ended up touring southern Oregon and the Oregon coast. Too many choices!

My first year a bunch of us went down to Klamath Falls for an extended weekend to skate the park and the Rivers Inn pool. We also had a good turnout for year two skating and camping in Idaho. Shawn Fendick used to be cruise director but with job changes, a growing family and no one willing to fill his shoes the trip has been more improvised the last two years. Year three for me was three carloads of us touring several Washington skateparks.

This year, two of our crew have new offspring. Several of us had talked about a trip but no destination had been decided. A week before solstice, a few of us decided to take four days and head for Hailey again. Meanwhile, Troy Sliter had a plan to head for the San Francisco bay area and the new Lake Cunningham skatepark in San Jose. While our Seattle brothers were planning a one day/16 park run. We decided to switch to the California option but our vacation schedules were staggered. What a farce!

So Rich Burton, Reinert and MC planned to leave Portland Friday morning and head for Grants Pass to skate Matt Kline’s new backyard bowl, stay the night there and rendezvous with Sliter and Fendick in Sacramento to skate the Granite skatepark on Saturday.

Blog posts were made, skateboard forum friends notified, maps printed out, bags packed. We hit the road at 9:30 Friday morning.

We stopped in Roseburg for a piss and took a few runs and photos at the skatepark there. The park could use a couple of additions to improve flow but was more fun than I remembered. Christian and Stefan showed us how it was done.

We made it to Matt’s place around 3 p.m. You know how one of your friends keeps threatening to build a backyard bowl but it never seems to materialize? Well Matt said he was going to do it and he did it. His bowl is a beautiful left-hand kidney with a 5.5 shallow and 9.5 deep and Tedder’s coping. We visited for a bit and then rode the bowl in 90° heat, collapsing in the shade between runs. Matt ripped like a bowl owner should as we tried to figure out the lines. The bowl is spacious, reminiscent of the Duvall, WA kidney and is about as big as Matt’s house. He also has the yard around the bowl nicely landscaped. A really pleasant spot for a killer session. Matt had to work in the late afternoon so we decided to check out the skatepark at Jacksonville, Oregon.

Jacksonville is a cool little park that combines the rough with the smooth. the recent addition includes an oververt pocket reminiscent of West Linn and a six or seven-foot wide channel gap (which Shawn had no trouble crossing, but which took me several tries) and a wide loveseat offer some interesting lines. Bring a broom – the hillside sheds little wedge shaped gravel that will ruin your day real quick. Also, don’t forget the little pump nipple while you are speeding across the floor with the next wall in your sights. Rich was out for the duration after getting bounced and hyperextending his bad knee.

I had a couple of phone messages waiting for me when we got back. Dan Hughes didn’t understand why we ditched the Hailey idea for the 113° heat of San Jose. Crap! We were worn out from sessioning for a couple of hours in the 90° heat of Grants Pass. Oh and did you hear the one about the highway closures due to wildfires?

We made the decision to stay in Oregon. The California trip could wait. Fendick and Sliter were committed to visiting family in California but we talked them into stopping for a while to check out the bowl. Larry, Matt, MC, Shawn F, Shawn R, Steev, and Tyler sessioned the bowl for a couple of hours until it was time for Sliter and Fendick to hit the road for the bay area. We planned to meet Tyler, Larry and Steev at the Grants Pass skatepark after lunch.

Grants Pass skatepark is nine or ten years old. There are some bad kinks and the steel coping in the smaller parts of the park is beat up. But a big square bowl and a couple of big punky quarterpipes were challenging and fun. Rich has some great shots of Tyler and Larry shredding their home park.

We decided to go to Ashland – 30 minutes to the south – and then work our way back.

Ashland skatepark is another older park with some beat up coping, formed in place concrete in this case. All of the walls in this park are small to medium. There’s a spine and a couple of super tight transition quarter-pipes. Fun but small. There was some funny graffiti.

Talent skatepark next, another older park, this one showing it’s age in a few places. A lot of flaking concrete in one small bowl. Shawn made use of a great transfer hip. There are also some good transition medium to large walls and a bunch of odd stuff spread over a large area. One double transition is similar to that at Tigard. There is a better than usual sculpture at the entrance entitled Heaven is a Halfpipe it commemorates a couple of local skaters. We got to see a mohawked kid getting a police talking-to when we got there. He turned out to be a roller-skater.

Medford skatepark is big. We rode the large cinder block pillar in the section of smaller transition for a while and then went to check out the big double bowl. Some roughness in the shallower bowl and a super steep waterfall to the deep seemed sketchy but it wasn’t that bad, another Tyler I’d met before with Matt was there killing it. A fun park.

Rich and Shawn reminded me of all the Oregon Rippers that have come out of the area. Rion Lindermann and Lance Leisher from Roseburg, Steve Reeves, and Johnny Turgesen from Medford and Mason Huggins from Ashland. There’s good terrain with enough flaws to build character. Probably a lesson to be learned there.

We left Matt’s Sunday morning for the Southern Oregon Coast. First stop Brookings. A few local punks, a bmx dude and a crew from the bay area were there. A cop came and hassled the BMX dude. No bikes. Even though no one was using the thing. Shawn did the gap after a few tries and made it a bunch of times. Rich has some cool sequences. It’s a fun park, the bowl in the middle is tight but the rest of the place is a big racetrack.

A stiff breeze had picked up by the time we got to Port Orford skatepark. A bunch of local kids were loitering. Port Orford is so fun, I’d like to spend a few days there sometime learning how to skate it. I’d love to build something like that up here. Maybe a tall corner extension wall instead of the half-sphere. Zac was ripping so hard. Insane inverted cradle rides grinding down the side. The wind was hard to take though.

We got to Reedsport skatepark just before dark. That park is crazy but we had some fun skating the big bowl. Watch out for some really slippery paint in the funnel. We stayed overnight at what should be called Not the Best Western – neither hot tub or wifi were working. We figured we’d ride Reedsport again in the morning but we were getting tired and decided to move on after breakfast.

Florence skatepark was deserted and we had to search for a broom to clean out sand and bark dust. We didn’t spend long enough there to really figure it out but we got the idea. It’s like skating inside a giant’s ear. A kid pointed out a lady sitting in her car waiting for bikes to show up at which point she would call the cops and I witness another lady screaming at a kid to get his skateboard out of the playground area or she would get park maintenance guys to kick him out of the park. Nobody screamed at the kids who were using the skatepark as a play structure while we cleaned up, although I was tempted. Some of the Florence citizenry definitely has a corncob up their butts. Sheesh.

We took a detour to check out Toledo skatepark where we found Rex and Robert from Albany were ripping in the little bowl. Very cool the way they incorporated the remains of the old building at this park although that flat section is almost too rough to roll. We had a fun little session there before leaving for Lincoln City.

Shawn hadn’t ridden the new Lincoln City Snake yet. The park is all spruced up for Wednesday’s official ribbon-cutting ceremony, starts at 6:00 p.m. if you can make it. Shawn just ran the snake full blast. I still feel the need to take it easy at the top. The locals were amazing to watch as usual.

What a great trip. Almost 1000 miles total in four days. I got to add 12 skate spots to my helmet: Matt’s bowl, ten parks I hadn’t ridden and I didn’t have Roseburg on there yet. Rich got some great pics. Shawn did the Brookings gap. We saw two police hassles in progress, two kids with spiky mohawks and only one girl on a skateboard the whole time. Thanks to everyone who was there for us to skate with and especially Matt for hosting us in Grant’s pass. We’ll definitely see you down there again before long. Thanks Rich for shoring up this story with photos that I missed.

Earth Patrol Media will be posting photos of the trip for some time. After hurting himself, Rich was able to concentrate on photography and shot several gigabytes of photos.

You can also check out Antigrav Remote for the phonecam shots I posted during the trip.