Tony Bou

This is 2007 World Champion (and current World Championship leader) Tony Bou (pronounced Bo) of Spain in section 6. Just for a bit of perspective, the white dot in the lower left corner is the helmet of a guy standing in the creek. And yes, that rock is totally undercut.....

World Round

Skatetruck hit the road this week-end with those notorious Septer boys for the U.S. round of the World Trials Championship. I'm sure we set some sort of record for saying "Holy Shit!" because these guys are nothing short of amazing. It's so far removed from the trials that we ride that it's almost another sport.

The obstacles are so big that you can't explain it to someone that hasn't seen it, they just think you're exaggerating when you say a guy went up a rock vertically the size of a two-story house, from a standing stop, no less. It's an awsome aggressive ballet.

Here we see Albert Cabestany of Spain in section 15, getting vertical......

Cuba #2

Where the heck is everybody?

The woods in Cuba hold up the bikes while we walked section 5.....

Cuba #1

My buddy George the K, not letting his TLR200 get the best of him, no, matter what this picture may tell you. Even though the little Honda did not want to, George managed to coax it up the several two-foot steps that you can see, and the three-and-a-half foot step you can't see just off of stage right.....Now, not to say that it was very pretty, No. And, it wasn't pretty when I did it either.

But in George's defense, let me say that this was a motorbike that he had never ridden in anger, and he was riding it in sections that were challenging as hell, to say the least.

photo by the GURU

Fruit of the Vine

I fucking absolutely hate VHS recorder/tape machines, always have. Just think about how many you've owned.....

I found some files in a file cabinet last week-end, and in those files was a receipt for the first VHS tape player I ever purchased for $579.00 from the late '70's. Can you imagine, $579.00?

A couple weeks ago I won an auction for a fairly rare skate video called "Fruit of the Vine". It's a skate documentary that was shot on Super 8mm film by Nichols / Charnowski, and it chronicled the lengths that skateboarders would go to skate an abandoned swimming pool.

I got my video from off of eBay and was primed for a viewing, had beer and popcorn at the ready. Now, I knew that my VHS recorder had been a bit recalcitrant the last couple of times I had tried to use it. So thankfully I had a bit of forethought, and decided to try and make it play a demo tape before sticking my rare new find in the intake slot. Well, lo and behold, it ate the junk demo tape. I then took the cover off and pulled all the pulleys and arms back and retreived my demo tape for future use. Or, should I say future abuse.....

I had another, older VHS machine downstairs, so I dug it out and did all the hook-ups, hunted down the remote. Again, it ate my demo tape, which was probably the reason it was stashed downstairs. Well.

I then proceeded to take almighty great pleasure by taking both machines out back and beating them both into a million freaking pieces with each other. Made every dog in the neighborhood bark like bat-shit. There were gears and plastic and metal crap spread over the parking lot of the Old Dick P.O. Hell, I had to wear my safety glasses. It was pure primal therapy. I swept it all up, and I'm sure the trash guys wondered what the hell was in that one bag.

I still haven't viewed "Fruit of the Vine" yet though.....I guess I'm gonna' have to buy me a new VHS player, but at least it won't be $579.00. But, I'll bet it won't last any damn longer than the last one.....sheesh.