Albe's Road Trip Update #4

After leaving Dennys we headed out to a small park in the city just north of Daytona.  I think it was called Orman Beach but I could be wrong.  We pulled into the parking lot and saw the park was kinda crowded but still quite shreadable.  Once all 2534345 of us piled out of the bus and got the bikes out it seemed as if the other fellows riding the park were vibeing us but after riding for about 5 mins they all seemed quite cool.  Some cool stuff went down at the park during the stop. Marcum was doing x-up 360's over the volcano like it was nothing on his bike with no cranks. Allen was flowing around jumping the hips higher than the law should allow. The local Ric fellow flowed the place fast and smooth and did really cool nosedive 360's over the volcano. The local James fellow was doing real nice indown things. Sparks did a 1/4 tailwhip to head plant and somehow came out unscathed. Dane Wild came damn close to doing a manual to backwards rail. The rest of the crew flowed the park and had a good time but the trick of the hour was fired out by Vinny.  There is a big steep wedgelike thing that is about 6 to 7 feet tall, with a 3 foot gap maybe and then a 4 1/2' rail on the back of it.  Vinny called out that he was going to fufanu it but before he got a run at it the cops rolled up.  The kid standing next to me tells me that bikes aren't allowed at that park at that time.  This was news to me so I tell Vinny that he gets one shot before we get the boot.  Vinny calmly fires it out first try right in front of the cop.  Everybody was stoked but the cop and he not so nicely tells us to leave.  We were done with that place anyway so we did just that.

this is the first no footed cancan photo of Flip ever taken.

Ric from Daytona with a 360 tire grab

James from Daytona

Vinny doing a fufanu for the police

At this point Ric and James had to take off so they hooked us up with 3 other fellows to take us to the trails and to ride some street stuff.  I'm not sure but I think their names were Nat, Nate, and Nips....crazy huh??  These guys drove the coolest Chevy Astro Van ever.  It had no interior, windows, and in fact it didn't even have a side door.  It was like a compressed version of the A-Team van. Me being an Astro Van lover ask more about their beast and I learned all sorts of cool stuff.  Turns out that the van was the first ever Astro van in Florida back in late 1984.  Interesting huh??  I know it really isn't but I thought it was cool. 

Once we reached the trails a few of the crew helped work on the jumps for a few as I sat down in the woods on a nice lawn chair and worked on yesterdays updates.  The trails were kinda back in some woods right off a big lake so it was a cool place to sit back and watch as many of the local kids and our crew flowed the jumps. The atmosphere was quite good as there were a bunch of cool people riding and a ton of people chilling out watching the show.  The trails weren't super big but you could tell it took some skill to ride them.  Ron Thomas rode the trails too just to prove he ain't no Dave Mirra and Allen came out of nowhere and tailwhipped the second set that was a downhill hipish type thing on his first try like it was no thing at all.  After we were done getting our trail session on we went to eat at CiCi's (all you can eat pizza for $4) and a big game of c-low started in the parking lot.  This time Jace was the big winner of an $80 pot!!!

Allen Smalls seems to be able to ride anything

Nipp's had a bushy beard and knows where every pool in Florida is...it's his job...really.

Now Nat and the crew were going to take us to ride a pool in Daytona that was behind an abandon motel.  Turns out there are quite a few abandon motels in that area as the hurricanes messed the place up a few months back.  Once we arrived we were bummed to fine 6" of water in the bottom.  Sooner or later we'll find a pool to ride. We then checked out the beach since a few of the crew had never seen the Ocean before. Allen was quite excited as well as Kenny. Nat then took us to a petty cool bank to wall right on on the beach.  The bank to wall was pretty good but the cool part was there was that on one side of us was the ocean and the other side was a really cool looking sunset.  Negative saw this as a good time to get the camera out again and we proceeded to do pretty much everthing possible on that bank to wall.  Just as we were getting ready to leave Ron stuck a perfect wallride to tailwhip. I never thought there would be a day where I rode a park, street and trails with Ron all in one day as he seems like the full on park type rider but boy I guess I was wrong.

Bayliss did this truck driver to fakie on a bank about 1,100 miles from TRP.

Evan whipped bank

Flip did this wallride to tweaker just for his wife Pam & Smudge.

Nat got to the top of the wall a few times and just missed pedalpicking it by a mere inch or so.

We then rode back the the bus and found a few kids hanging out by it.  One of the kids was trying to sell us lighters.  We thought it was kind of odd when he dumped his bag on the ground and like 25 bic style lighters fell out.  Rusty somehow talked the kid into doing Napoleon Dynamite stunts on his $40 Walmart mountain bike and a few moments later the kids forks we so bent the wheel was hitting the frame making the bike unridable. Rusty once again turned into Rusty Magyver and fixed the kids bike by smashing it into a wall a few times. We gave the kid some stickers and we were on our way south towards West Palm Beach.

The plan was to drive down to that area and go out to some club.  We timed it out all perfect and were on our way.

If you ever lost a lighter this kid probably has it.

Sprits were high as we arrived in the area with plenty of time to get a room, clean up, and go out.  Then the problems started.  We went to about 4345324 hotels and they were all booked or all WAY too much money.  After about 2 hours of driving all over everybody was in a shoddy mood.  I was sick of driving so Dane Wild took the wheel as everybody started to bitch that the night was ruined.  Dane and Ron took control and found us some good rooms. Dane and Ron are now my best friends! 

As we reached our rooms everybody was on edge and grumpy and for the first time on the trip were weren't having and fun or excitement...boy did that change fast.  As were we walking to our rooms we passed a girl probably in her early 20's and a fellow probably in his 40's.  The the girl was obviously on some sort of substance that she shouldn't have been and the guy was one of the freakiest people I've ever seen in my life.  As they walked by us they both gave us odd looks.  Once they turned the corner we all started laughing hysterically but what happened next wasn't funny AT ALL and was probably one of the craziest things I've ever seen.  It was so crazy that not even Rusty wanted anything to do with it and that's saying a lot.  The details are not fit to print and even if they were I don't think I would post them anyway.  If you know one of us personally and what to know the full story ask us about it in person....if we think you can handle it we might tell you.

It's now about 5am and we're going to sleep.  Tomorrow we plan to visit Bully Bikes, ride some park down this way and maybe check out Miami Beach.....

till next time.

--Flip