I always wondered how they built the X Games mega ramp, and this is not what I expected. California Skate Parks is the builder, and their PR firm is trying to drum up some press, offering interviews, tours and such. Do any of you guys have any (reasonable) questions? Maybe we could make it a group effort. (FYI I’ve got a killer Brian Brannon interview coming up!)

This is what it looks like under the temporary concrete superpark setup at the X-Games. Thanks to the anonymous tipster, you know who you are…

Just got this image of the completed X Games superpark course made from concrete poured over a wood frame from an anonymous source. Thanks! Down the road there is another media event called the Converse Costal Carnage. Looks like they’ve got another crazy temporary bowl setup.

Ho, ho, ho… Stop it, my sides are splitting and I’m about to pee my pants… OK then. Emily Stefano is a mechanical engineering student at Clarkson University, and she’s working on a thesis called, wait for it… MegaRamp Thesis. To what end? Emily needs money to travel to a Megaramp site and attach a bunch of gadgets to some skaters to gather data and determine how to make it better. Not so ridiculous considering the original construction of the megaramp was designed on the “let’s wing it” principal. She’s already conducted interviews with some mega ramp riders and apparently talked to some suits at the X-Games who want her to sign a non-disclosure agreement before it goes any further. Emily’s is hoping for some extra traffic to her site to help generate some buzz. The blog is kind of vague if you want details on the actual thesis, so I’ve asked her to distill everything after the jump. What’s the official term anyway, MegaRamp or Mega Ramp?

Parents in Arizona are suing the Gilbert school system over injuries sustained when he fell off a wave board that was being used as part of a physical education class at his junior high school. Plimpton and Denton allege Mark will have permanent physical and emotional disabilities, disfigurement, humiliation and impairment due to the incident. No word whether other students asked to ride the device will participate in the humiliation part of the lawsuit.

Travis Pastrana has a show coming out on MTV. This looks like it might have been filmed for that. Yes, a mega ramp jump on a Big Wheel, with a back flip thrown in for good measure. Nutty. Watch the jump and a bonus vintage TV commercial for Big Wheels after the jump. Trike and Annoy! – Thanks to Sarib Khalsa for the tip.

So Rich of E.P.M. and myself managed a couple press passes out of the A.S.T. crew. As it turns out, video was not allowed, that only slowed me down a couple of times. They threatened to kick me out. I shouted “Do you know who I am?” Apparently they had not heard of G.V.K.. Talk about living under a rock, or not really being involved in skateboarding. (the riding side). You may notice a difference in video quality. That is because I checked out a Get HI Def video camera from the E.P.M. library. Wow, what a difference. Watch out Mack Dawg productions. Well this video made me want a vert ramp so bad. How about you? P.S. I went to San Diego and skated the ramp at the Y.M.C.A that where 80 percent of these guys ride. Vert is dying and becoming incestuous. Lets build some f-king ramps and take it back bizzellitch.. – Poser off.

Remember when Wisconsin boy Zach Kral destroyed that pasty faced Dutch kid’s old world record? Well, some other kid beat him again, and I kind of lost interest in the whole thing. That is, until Zach broke it again last week (on his 14th birthday) at the 4 Seasons Skatepark in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I love the midwest (as long as I’m not there in the winter) and this was as good an excuse as any to re-use a good graphic. The new record, according to the folks at Guiness is 1,546 consecutive kickflips. Under their rules, no body part can touch the ground at all. Dang, I should have lumped this together with the other Guiness record post. Everyone seems to be slow in updating, even his father!

In Brazil, Danny Way broke his back on the Megaramp. He will recover, of course, because all Megaramp competitors are actually time traveling cyborgs built by Skynet. Watch the video after the jump. It’s not in English, but really, it’s more entertaining this way. Speaking of entertainment. Rob Thomson now holds the world record for Longest Journey by Skateboard, clocking in at 12,159km, or about 7,500 miles. It’s confusing though, because the “journey” took place in different non-adjacent locales and had periods of weeks in between legs. Sounds more like a record for the biggest lapse of judgement by Guinness officials. Maybe they cut him some slack due to the unsual circumstances reported by One India: The strangest food he tried was horse-penis salami in Kyrgyzstan, which he said tasted “like the smell of a sweaty, old, dirty horse. Uh yeah. Go figure. You can read all about it in his forthcoming book about the experience.

“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.  It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” -Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849 On August 29th, Derek Anderson (Mark Conahan’s age) committed a breach of peace when he scaled a 300-foot crane located in the beer garden of the Doghouse Public House.  This act of civil disobedience was an aim to shed some light on a particular subject: the Dudhope Skatepark, pictured above courtesy of Google Maps user ihatetechnology,  in Westport, Dundee, UK.