Idaho Road Trip

Idaho Road Trip 2006 – By Kilwag

Every year Shawn organizes a road trip for an extended weekend to skate some place we don’t usually make it out to. It’s a good thing he does because otherwise we’d never get all the logistics together. Shawn lives in his own private hell, Ask him about his commute. He usually ends up taking almost a whole week off. This year he traded private hell for private Idaho. (Hey-oh!) My drive time and work schedule dictated that I only take 3 days off, so I hopped on a plane to Boise after cutting out early from work on Thursday afternoon. One way tickets from Portland to Boise can be bought for as little as $50 if you time it right. A short hour later (versus seven plus hours to drive) I arrived in Boise Idaho. The first thing I did was look for tourist crap. I asked the girl behind the counter if she thought how accurately the “Spuds” magnet portrayed her great state. The only answer I got was a derisive snort.

Buhl

Buhl was a short drive down the highway, and home to a relatively new park built by Dreamland. I think it would have taken less than two hours had I not gotten lost near Driggs Idaho where there are roadside dinosaurs and an awesome biker bar named “Angels and Outlaws” (or vice versa. I should have gotten a picture.) I assume it was a biker bar. Who knows. Maybe it was packed with “Fear This!” clowns. I got a call from Shawn and company and it turns out they had already left Buhl after spending the day there, and were heading towards Hailey. Since they were going to have to head through Twin Falls I told them they should check out the small, generic, but fun park there and I would catch up with them.

Buhl has a weird but friendly scene centered around it’s small skatepark. There is literally a skate shop built in a guy’s back yard that backs up against the skatepark. I started to walk over to check it out and about eight little kids started hollering “It’s closed!” No matter, Jason from J’s Sk8 Shop walked out his back door and graciously opened it up for me. I repaid him by not buying anything, but at least I didn’t try to sell him anything. He even joined me with his wife for a bit of a session. There was a handful of little kids on really beat up boards. Although most of them were not too skilled, they all seemed to be able to roll in in the shallow and a few of them could drop in from the deep end. J’s was also home to Biscuit, the official dog mascot of the park. Biscuit was recently returned from being dognapped from the park. it seems a “friend” of the shop owner’s kid took it home with him. After keeping him for a couple of weeks the parent’s felt guilty when they saw the missing pet signs. Well… guilty enough to call Biscuit’s owners and tell them he was safe but would not be returned. Apparently they don’t have caller ID in Idaho, cause it took several more weeks until the dog was returned by neighbors at a little league game. The motto: Don’t steal stuff from people in a small town if you live there. I guess I should probably say, don’t steal stuff anywhere, regardless of where you live.

The Buhl park is small and almost like two different parks attached at the hip. The shallow is most of the square footage, and it funnels via a really tight and short snake run to the cradle area which is huge by comparison and just sort of shows up out of nowhere. Directly opposite the cradle is an equally large quarter pipe. The compact nature of the shallow and steep roll-ins make it almost too fast for it’s size, especially when you get to the snake run. I was kind of burnt out from working, flying, and driving so I didn’t spend much time there. My colleagues assured me that once you got used to it the shallow was a lot of fun. As usual, the kids seemed mostly interested in fly outs. When I took my camera out they began to pester me to take pictures of tricks they mostly couldn’t do, with the exception of some of the youngest ones who seemed to be the best there. Also of note is the skateboard shaped benches complete with trucks and skate stoppers on them to keep them from, well you know, being skated on. I said farewell to Buhl and left for Hailey. I couldn’t believe that the crew had blown off skating in Twin Falls. They said they were tired. Boo hoo! They practically had to go out of their way to avoid the park on their way through Twin Falls. I mean spitting distance from their route, seriously. I had been there a few years before so I made haste to meet up in Hailey.

Ketchum, Via Hailey, and Mark the practical joker.

That’s Ketchum up above. It’s maybe 15 miles from Hailey. More on that later. We camped in Hailey. Somehow Shawn had gotten lost on his way to Hailey from Twin Falls. He called me to tell me he had somehow missed a turn. That’s pretty funny because if you look at a map, there are no turns between Twin Falls and Hailey. As I am getting closer to Hailey I get a garbled crackling phone call from Shawn to let me know where everyone is camped. He tells me how the place is out in Deliverance country and I’d better get a paper and pencil while he looked up his odometer readings so he could give me directions. He had to drive for miles to get cell phone coverage, so I can’t call if I get lost. Uh oh. I had visions of Lewis and Clark and compasses and topographical maps, ending with me sleeping in my car at the skatepark. It turns out he was just being over analytical. There was only one turn to make, and the road was clearly marked. Shawn had somehow made up another imaginary turn too.

I needed wheels. When we woke up I decided to drive to nearby Ketchum (15 miles or so) to the nearest skate shop. It turns out Obstacle, the local shop in Hailey, had shut down a month or so before. I don’t know about market research, but that seems like an odd time considering Summer is usually a busy season for skate shops. Last time I went to Hailey I got speed wobbles rolling in from the full pipe, so I brought a larger wheelbase deck, but I needed some wheels that were bigger than my current 54’s. I had my heart set on some Bones SPF’s in a 60mm. We had heard from some kids and other sources that the Ketchum park sucked. More on that later. I managed to talk everyone into skating Ketchum because I figured I wouldn’t be able to drag them away from Hailey if we went there first.

Sometimes kids are idiots – I know that’s hard for you to believe. Ketchum was a lot of fun. More on that later. We got to the skate shop, which was called the Board Bin. With name that great they had to have a good selection, right? I figured I had a good chance of finding SPF’s because Bones is a pretty mainstream skate brand and surely there was a demand for bigger wheels due to Hailey’s proximity. Man was I bummed. No SPF’s and no big wheels in general. In fact, the entire wheel stock looked like the Wall Mart toy aisles the day after x-mas. I was trying to reconcile myself with being uneasy with my setup for the entire weekend, and probably wussing out at Hailey. More on that later. I asked the shop guy for his secret stash. He said he just sold the last set to a guy and had just orderd some more a little while ago. Now I was pissed. We got to the Ketchum park and checked it out. It had a big wide bowl with pool coping that was pinched a little as it connected to a triangle bowl with steel coping. It looked like the round bowl had too much flat bottom but because of the size of the walls you could ride it like a half pipe or build up some serious speed carving shifting triangles in a giant spirograph® motion. Also, the love seat was immediately the center of attention. A lot of times a park builder will make you work hard to connect with a certain obstacle (not to be confused with a certain Obstacle) but in this case it was fairly accessable. Scratch that, it was near impossible, which is why in the accompanying photos, any and all actions over the love seat should be regarded as acts of god. But seriously folks, it was fun. I even managed to not wuss out completely and attack it frontside as well. Mark Conahan decided to man up a frontside air over the love seat and above coping to boot. By the way, “man up” is my new favorite phrase. That and “More on that later”.

So I’m rolling through the parking lot on my brand new, medium sized, inadequate wheels when suddenly Mark appears juggling some brand new Bones SPF’s at 62mm that he had just bought at Board Bin! What a dick! I mean what a joker, because he had somehow got to the shop before me and saw that there was only one set of SPF’s left and bought them so I would think they were out! Haw haw. Good one Mark. It’s funny because I also bought wheels I didn’t really want, but it’s good to support the local skate economy. Maybe I should get my gear together before I leave on a road trip. Now go to his blog and see what the acronym of the name spells.

So yeah, kids can be idiots. The Ketchum park is fun. The street area has a nice big banked wall extension with lower coping off to both sides. We enjoyed the hell out of this park, enough to go back a second time. For the most part, the park was kind of empty during the day, possibly because it was half a million degrees out there. Also of note is the renegade tranny on the Jersey barrier just outside the park. Is it still renegade if it is tolerated?

Next page: Hailey and Kuna