Florida Road Trip 2006 – By Kilwag: Posted 4-24-06
Is it still a road trip if you fly there? I went to Florida to visit the mother-in-law again. I had all kinds of plans for side trips and hooking up with contacts and checking out the spots, but fortune, toddlers and and mother-in-laws all conspired against me. I barely had time to skate at all.
Sarasota
It was my second trip to the Sarasota Park, which seems to be holding up well. Different crowd hanging out this time, which could be expected since it had been at least a year. Florida is the Land That Time Forgot… at least as far as rollerblades are concerned. Kids are still rollerblading in abundance. Even weirder still, there’s a uniquely Floridian species of kid who proudly enjoys both skating AND rollerblading. Creationists have beaten Darwin here, because those kids refuse to evolve! I felt like a Puritan explorer trying to talk the native women into covering their exposed breasts. They have no shame. It’s not like Sarasota is the Galapagos Islands of skateparks. The kids were the same on the other coast of Florida too.
In general, the kids at the Florida parks I went to still had no concept of park etiquette, snaking at will and generally being completely unaware of their surroundings. On one night I saw two incidents where a little kid had to be carried out the bottom due collisions where at least one party was paying not attention. If you’re older it’s almost like you are invisible to them. It’s as if you are a park fixtures like a garbage can or light post – those things never move, and neither do you, right? Ironically, that doesn’t stop them from regularly calling out “My turn” and expecting everyone to stay out of the park while they are in it. As a result, there are a lot of crusty old skatepunks mumbling under their breath, grateful for the abundance of terrain, but wishing the kids had go through the same barrier to entry that they did.
Cocoa Beach
After hitting the Sarasota park one evening I tried to talk some locals into road tripping to the other coast to check out Cocoa Beach’s park. I had one taker who looked and acted a little bit like a punk rock David Lee Roth (I mean that as a compliment!) He bailed when it came time to leave the next day. I figured he probably thought twice about getting into a car with some weird old dude from across the country, but I did get invted to the BBQ that evening. I drove the three and a half hours to the park in Cocoa Beach, which is near Cape Canaveral. The town seemed a little run down and the skate park was way off the beaten path in one of those sport complex locations. Of course the skatepark was fenced off, supervised, and pay-to-play with restricted hours, while the baseball fields in the same complex were completely free and open. The charge was nominal, but it still makes no sense. Towns need to treat their skateparks like they do their tennis and basketball courts. It works in Oregon, with the exception of the clueless twerps running Klamath Falls.
I met a couple older guys at the park. One guy was giving himself hucking around a massive Sector 9 deck that had no business in a bowl, but he was making it work anyway. This was beyond the simple extended wheelbase, and into a whole different discipline. Of course I forgot his name (Mike?) and didn’t get any really good shots of him, but you can still get an idea of how hard it was to manipulate it. I also met a guy named Roland (The Great!) who was single handedly ripping in the deep end. There were some good little kids too who were a bit too snotty for their own good. Kind of annoying actually, like this kid Dillon or Dylan who was one of those little brats that get in your way, mouths off and acts like they own the place, except he was particularly good. Some of the older locals were vibing him in a good-natured way for not going even bigger.
Cocoa Beach’s park is another Team Pain affair. You may recall that they sent us some construction pictures, and it looked pretty amazing. In actuality it is a lot smaller than it appears in those pictures. Like every team Pain park I’ve encountered, it’s a good smooth park with even transitions. The snake run-like entry into the deep end is a little tight and the line into the cradle is difficult to maintain speed into, but that doesn’t keep the locals from figuring it out. I was grousing about the practice of extending the deep ends above the ground instead of digging them deeper and including a waterfall when a local explained to my dumb ass that it was necessary to keep the parks from flooding due to the high water tables. Flat sandy earth at sea level… DUH! The big bowl actually has a a small waterfall into it, and it’s big enough to ride facing walls without getting dizzy. The pockets facing it are pretty tight though. Because my mother-in-law had thrown away the pair of knee pads that I left there to use when I visit, I found myself frequenting the shallow part of the park more often than I normally would, and wound up really enjoying it. I even took some pics of a couple of kids in the street area, you know, for the kids. The Cocoa Beach park has a little bit of something for everyone, and once the kids clear out around dinner time it can really be fun.
I took a bunch of less than spectacular panoramic shots. There. I said it. Well that’s it for Florida this year, unless someone contributes something. See you in a year, or possibly this winter. Somebody hook a brother up with some underground spots next time!
Kilwag
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