more results

Here are the results of the rest of the Florida Bowl Riders
Pro:
1. Benji Galloway
2. Morgan Burgess
3. Jimmy the Greek
4. Donovan Rice
5. Mason Huggins
6. Nolan Munroe
7. Michael O.

Masters:
1.Buck Smith
I forgot the rest but Paul Ohara from Pioneers placed 5th.
It was a good weekend for Rye locals!
Next week I'll be in California getting ready for the Pro Tec Pool Party, so I'll post some more skate adventures then!
Amelia

results

Hey!

The contest yesterday was loads of fun. The warm up session before the actual contest was even more exciting because it included skaters like Benji Galloway, Mason Huggins, Buck Smith, Sergi Ventura and a ton of other amazing pros. It was really hard to get a run in but eventually everyone just dropped in on one another and simple runs turned into big games of chicken. I loved trying to dodge everyone in between tricks.

Anyway back to the contest. Julie Kinstrand basically just destroyed every inch of coping at the park with some great lines and stylish fs layback grinds and took 1st place. I landed most of the tricks I hoped to land like tailslides and airs in the deep end, air walks to fakie, staple guns, and a bunch of grinds all over the place and ended up in 2nd. Third place went to Marlee Miller who I met two years ago at a contest in North Carolia and she has progressed a lot since. She was throwing a bunch of clean lip tricks and even doing alley-oop early grabs over the hip. Rye local Zack Rose competed in a very intense open AM division. He skated really well and threw smooth stylish airs all over the bowl. I was surprised that he didn't make it to finals, but he definitley had some tough competition.

This morning I went and skated at Oveido skate park made by Team Paine, the same company that made the Cocoa Beach park. It was an amazing park with great flow and a super fun pool with tight transitions and even a death box. Here are some pictures.

Ok I'm going to go watch the pro finals. Cross your fingers for Nolan Munroe!

Amelia

So yesterday I decided to go skate Orlando skate park. (see pictures) It was a really fun park that you could just cruise allllll day in.

After that I finally got to skate at Cocoa Beach skate park! I can honestly say that this park is my favorite out of all of the concrete parks I've ever skated (and I've skated a good amount of concrete parks). I had a really fun session with fellow north east rippers Nolan Munroe, Zack Rose and Paul from Pioneers. A couple of cool Washington guys, Mike and Sky were there too. This park has amazing flow and perfect transitions in the small section and really steep transitions in the pool coping-ed deep end. Everyone was throwing down some heavy tricks, Nolan was going upside-down in the cradle, Zack was boosting huge airs, I was doing crail slides in the deep bowl, and local Z-flex ripper Kieth was launching at least 7ft out. If you ever get the chance to skate this park, you should definitley go skate it, you won't regret it.

Ok I can't sit still any longer I'm going to go skate.

Amelia

Florida!

Hey! The 2008 World Cup skateboarding series is about to start!

I'm in Florida for the Florida Bowl Riders contest and I can't tell you how good it is to finally see the ground again instead of being surrounded by 5ft snow banks! I've never been to Florida before so I'm pretty excited to be here. The contest is this weekend at the Cocoa Beach skatepark. I went over to the park this morning for the early bird special, but the park doesn't open till 4PM! Now I don't know about you guys, but for me the urge to skate definitley takes over way earlier than that.

I mean look at this park!

Ok well I have to go skate something somewhere before I lose my mind, I'll keep you guys updated!

Amelia

So.Cal week

hey!

The day after the trifecta Bean and I flew out to Los Angeles, California for a college/skate trip. We met up with Brooke, my college counselor, who was an enjoyable addition to our crew. Unfortunately, my persistent dizziness kept me from skating for most of the trip. Therefore, our trip consisted mainly of visits to extravagant Southern California colleges. (I'm about to go into my senior year, so I'm starting my college search and am intent on attending a So. Cal school) Anyway, I won't bore you with college details, I'll just talk about the skateboarding. Bean managed to hike out to Baldy Pipeline, a legendary drainage pipe near Claremont ( I was at an interview at the time) However, he wasn't equipped with a ladder so he didn't get to skate it. We also skated Washington Street a few times, which is a really cool skater-built park near San Diego. We also skated the Montclair skatepark for a few minutes, which has two medium-sized bowls conjoined by a spine as well as a flow course.

My favorite skate-related thing on this trip was our tour of the ABC board supply factory, where Scarecrow Skateboards (my deck sponsor) are made. John-John, our tour guide and fellow bowl lover, showed us step-by-step how a skateboard is made. ABC makes boards and stickers for many many different companies, including Alien Workshop and Volcom. Then we got to hang out and skate with Jim Gray, the owner. He told us many interesting stories about skateboarding's history. We then did a quick session at the Volcom skatepark in Costa Mesa, which is a cool little park. Tomorrow we are going to hit Channel Street, Daewon Song's stomping grounds, early in the morning before we have to fly out back to Jersey. Since the trip is over, I guess this concludes this blog. Well it's been a fun trip and I highly recommend all of you to take a skate trip to either Oregon or Southern California, because both of these areas are crawling with amazing parks just waiting for you to skate them!

Thanks for reading!

Amelia

The rest of the trifecta

Pier Park, Portland, Oregon ^

Battle Ground, Washington ->

Hello again!

Unfortunately, the second and third days of the Trifecta did not go as planned. Saturday's park was Pier Park. I arrived bright and early hoping that I would beat the crowd and have a chance to warm up. However, as I started skateboarding I realized that I wasn't feeling particularly well. I tried to skate a little bit but I felt really weak and light-headed, at the time I thought it was a result of the previous day's dehydration. I decided to skip the pier park contest and save my energy for battle ground, which I love. I stayed to watch some of the contest. I was in awe as I watched Salba do a frontside carve over the incredibly high doorway in the fullpipe. Shortly after he did it, many others managed to successfully carve over the doorway. I was also lucky to witness Glen Charnoski's flawless runs which included many inverts and flawlessly executed tricks. After the master's division, I caught a little bit of the Locals' contest in which Nolan Munroe's incredible style gained him a place in the pro finals. I also caught a glimpse of the battered judge, Jake Brown, to whom the Trifecta was dedicated to this year. I only watched a little bit of the pro division, but I stayed long enough to watch Sergi Ventura land an amazing Mctwist which was easily 6 feet over Pier's huge pool coping.

The results for the day were:

Ladies:

1st: Julie Kindstrand

2nd: Jessica Starkweather

3rd: Holly Lyons

Masters:

1st: Glen Charnoski

2nd: Steve Alba

3rd: Buck Smith

Pro:

1st: Rune Glifberg

2nd: Sergi Ventura

3rd: Benji Galloway

On the last day of the Trifecta I decided to once again wake up really early in order to get a good amount of warm-up time. I woke up feeling great but as I started skating I started to feel really horrible. After about 10 runs I was extremely dizzy and nauseous. I decided to lay down for awhile but I just felt worse and worse by the second, I could barely move. Eventually Bean and I came to the conclusion that I must have hit my head during Friday's contest and not have realized it. So instead of doing the contest, we drove down to the hospital. I got a CT scan of my head and the doctor checked me out. We found out that what we thought to be the side effects of dehydration were in fact those of a concussion. Luckily there was no bleeding in my brain or anything like that, but there was not much of a chance that I could skate without getting extraordinarily dizzy and lightheaded (it's pretty hard to skate under such conditions.) Unfortunately, I missed the entire last contest, but I'm sure it was amazing. I do know that it started to rain before the pros got to skate, but they ran the pro division elsewhere. Anyway, here are the results:

Ladies:

1st: Julie Kindstrand

2nd: Jodi McDonald

3rd: Gaby Ponce (congrats!)

Masters:

1. Buck Smith

2. Glen Charnoski

3. Pat Ngoho

Pro:

1st: Benji Galloway

2nd: Josh Sandoval

3rd: Morgan Burgess

Goodnight!

Amelia

The first day of the trifecta

Hey!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, the past few days have been very eventful.

The first contest of the Oregon Trifecta was in Lincoln City, my favorite of the three parks.

We arrived at about 9AM to warm up. Luckily, I figured out a couple more lines and tricks right before the contest started. Right around noon the park became a zoo and there were about 10 people skating the bowl simultaneously. The contest is jam format which consists of about 6 people skating the bowl at the same time for 10 minutes. The ladies division went first and I happened to be in the first of three heats. My heat was really really fun (except when I crashed into Gaby's stray board) I did really well and landed a good amount of tricks including frontside airs onto the vert extension, frontside rocks on a really quick vert wall, airs over the spine, and one-footed blunt stalls. I basically skated the entire 10 minutes (which is a really long time to be skating hard non-stop!) and when the heat was over I could barely catch my breath for at least 5 minutes. When all three heats ended, I was excited to find out that I placed 2nd and qualified for finals. Unfortunatley, I hate finals. Right before the finals heat I got a little stressed out and didn't skate as well as I wanted to. I ended up landing a bunch of tricks, however, they were linked by many many MANY slams. I crashed into Amee Jay Papallaro as well as Nicole Zuck. Somehow I made it to the end of the heat in one piece (or so I thought.) Right after finals I felt as though I could pass out at any moment, and thought that I was just dehydrated. (When the feelings of nausea, dizzyness and lightheadedness continued into the next two days, we figured out that I got a concussion during the finals heat, but I'll get into the details of that later.)

After the contest, I was given a bunch of decks from Jim Gray, the owner of Scarecrow Skateboards, who skated in the masters divisions of the contests. Also, I was picked up by War Horse wheels and bearings. Then I tried to rest up in the car for a few hours.

Later, I decided to emerge from the car in order to witness the destruction of Lincoln City skatepark by the skaters in the pro division. These guys skated amazingly and executed a countless amount of tricks on the vert wall including back crails, back disasters, front disasters, front smiths and inverts. The level of skateboarding, especially in the pro finals, was just mind-boggling.

Here are the results!

Ladies:

1st: Annie Sullivan (she broke her elbow at the very end!)

2nd: Jodi Mcdonald

3rd: Me! (I was very surprised by this, but still excited)

Masters:

1st: Glen Charnoski

2nd: Buck Smith

3rd: Pat Ngoho

Pro:

1st: Rune Glifberg

2nd: Benji Galloway

3rd: Mark Red Scott

I'll let you know about the next two contest days next time!

Amelia