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

Hey There!
Yesterday was a fun day filled with a lot of skateboarding. We started the day off with an early morning session at Battleground skatepark. We've come to find that no matter how early we arrive, the bowl is always filled with little kids just cruisin' across the flat bottom. We ran into Morgan Burgess from Ohio who was doing flawless 540s in the deep end.
Afterwards we headed to Pier Park, and a bunch of Trifecta competitors started showing up. First, 11 year old Cason from Florida showed up with Buck Smith, a Florida legend. They were skating really well, and Buck Smith was actually doing roll-ins into that beast of a bowl. Cason managed to backside ollie over the doorway in the fullpipe, but on his second attempt the board shot out from under him and he ended up sprawled on the flat bottom and went into a fit of seizures. A bunch of people hopped into the bowl and sat by him as we waited for the ambulance to arrive. It was a horrible thing to witness and I refused to skate that park after they took him out of the bowl. Then, my friend Gaby from New Jersey drove in from the airport with Leah from Florida. As we were about to leave, we spotted Omar Hassan with his girlfriend, Nicole Zuck.
We still had a few hours before dark so we decided to head back to Battleground. After skating it for awhile, the Bacon skateboards team arrived and proceeded to completely destroy the bowl. Also, Creature's Steve Reeves rolled in and did a bunch of his signature no-comply tailslide reverts, which is the coolest trick ever (I wish I could do them!).
We started the next day with an 8 AM session at Pier park (theres no better way to wake up than to a giant, energy-devouring full pipe) Afterwards we headed to Lincoln City, which is about two hours from where we're staying in Portland. When we got there we saw Steve O., the head Trifecta judge, and Steve Stedham, the legendary Powell pro. During the fun-filled session many more people showed up including Gaby, style king Nolan Munroe from New Hampshire, Stacey, Leah, Omar Hassan, Nicole Zuck, and 9 year-old Alize Montez and a bunch of great skateboarders that I didn't know. We stayed there for awhile and then it started getting really packed and became a snake session so we headed out and now we're going to eat Thai food!
Tomorrow is the first of the three trifecta competitions at Lincoln City! I'm super excited! Wish me luck!
Amelia

Hello again!
After my last post it finally stopped raining so Bean and I went over to skate Pier Park again. This park is insane, I can't wait to see what guys like Rune Glifberg and Omar Hassan are going to throw down in that fullpipe during Saturday's competition. We skated there for a few hours and then a couple of other Trifecta competitors started showing up. First my friend Stacey from Florida came and shortly after Steve Alba and his crew rolled up. Before he started destroying the place, Salba carefully inspected the bowl and did an intense stretching routine. He brought along a photographer and a couple of amazing skateboarders. These guys were flying all over this extremely difficult bowl with ease. After a couple of warm up runs Salba attempted to carve over the roll-in to the fullpipe, with hopes of being the second person to ever accomplish that. This was really amazing to watch, seeing as you have to be pretty high on the over-vert part of the fullpipe to be able to completely clear the doorway. He tried to do this both frontside and backside, but we left before he was able to do it. However, we did learn a lot by just watching Salba take a few runs.
Next we went back to Battleground skatepark, which was a LOT of fun. As soon as we pulled up we saw Glen Charnoski and his friend completely dominating the place. Glen had a really positive attitude and was a lot of fun to skate with. Unfortunately the left a few minutes after we got there, and I was left to session with lots of little kids who like to snake everyone. I still had a blast though because that park is just really amazing.
Well I'm waking up at 6AM again to skate some more so I'm off to bed!
Goodnight!
Amelia

welcome to oregon!

Hey!

First off, I highly recommend that all of you to take a skate trip to Oregon, the parks here are amazing and they are EVERYWHERE! Bean and I flew in from Jersey pretty early on Sunday, and got to skating right away. I have a few days to warm up and get used to the parks before the Oregon Trifecta, a World Cup contest consisting of three amazing concrete parks which takes place this upcoming Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The first park we went to, Pier Park in Portland, was pretty intense. It's brand new and has a really crazy bowl complete with a fullpipe, pool coping, 11.5ft deep and and a 9.5 ft shallow end. (Great way to warm up after a long flight huh?) The park also had a small beginner bowl, a medium sized bowl, and a small street course. I took a couple of runs in the monstrous cave bowl, but I was extremely exhausted so I just carved around a little bit.
Right after that we went to check out Battleground skatepark which is in Washington (but still part of the Oregon Trifecta) It's a pretty fun park that starts off with a 3 or so ft. shallow section and has a really crazy capsule, lots of hips and builds up to a 11 or so ft. deep end. As soon as we got there we saw Pat Ngoho and Julie Kindstrand rippin' the bowl. I skated with them a little bit but I was still really tired from the travels. The following day we started the day off at Battleground, we hoped to beat the crowd by going early in the morning, but we ended up having to weave our way through many young scooterers and rollerbladers.
After that we decided to head over to Lincoln City, which has been a part of the Oregon Trifecta every year. It's a bit of a drive, but it's definitely worth it. This park is probably my favorite of the three and has a shallow snake run-like section with a spine transfer into a medium section and some sharp hips leading into the slightly over-vert deep end. It also has a vert wall with about 4ft. of vert on it. After an hour or so, Liz Brandenburg showed up so I skated witrh her a little bit and she invited us to a cookout at her backyard bowl in Newberg Oregon. (The Trifecta included the Newberg park last year, which is an incredible park.)
Right now we're in Battleground, waiting for the rain to stop so that we can get to some skating! Once I fully figure out how to use this blog thing, I'll try and post some photos so that you guys can see these great parks.
See ya!
Amelia