Road Trip update # 3 (Orlando)

Jamie Chalmers is probably one of my favorite riders now.  Very smooth and he goes very high.

We left ATL and drove X amount of hours and ended up at these 2 young fellas house by the names of Mike. These kids are pretty rad, we show up late, real late. they have 5 hot-n-ready pizzas and pop sitting on the table waiting for us, and tell us we cant be loud outside the house, but we can in the house. Hell yeah. And ofcourse we did because we were all stuck in the bus for too long anyways. No one woke up, and no fires were set, after laughing for a while over Chuck Norris' jokes, we finally got some well needed rest.

Next morning and about 20 people in line for the shower later.....

We get a game plan going to go ride some trails to satisfy the knobby tires, and later go ride mesh with intentions for some street. Luckily we got to take the Mike's with us cause we had no idea what was going on.... or atleast I didn't but we ended up at some fellas house by the name of Aaron (arin? erin? sorry) and they looked pretty darn sick. They are called the Castleberry trails and you may have seen them on the cover of Ride mag this month. A few of the injured guys were bummed they couldnt ride, and the knobby tires were phyched to finally get some warm weather and nice dirt to shred. A bunch of guys were already there, but for some reason the homie that owned the trails wasent even there, his dad was, but he was out and about with something and never got to show up for our session. Jamie and Allan won the highlights of the trails, atleast out of our group, Shanton was shredding pretty well. The pictures should most of the highlights. I suck and didnt get the locals names, but they were pretty smooth too, actually I think the guy shredden the most was Ricky Bates, just some overall steady flowness. Good stuff. At some point, Jamie bailed on a 360 on the last jump and forgot that Kris K was taking pictures from under in the jump and the bike totally broke Kris' camera and attacked Kris aswell, luckily Kris wasen't hurt too bad, but the camera was bashed and the picture didnt even turn out, so double negative. Lil bit later some ladies showed up, riders shredded for 5 more minutes, and we started to round down and get outta there. "Not badd Not badd" haha defitnally good so far.

Rickey Bates is one of the locals and rider the trails like he ownes them.  crazy thing is he kills the parks too.

Allen Schmalz with a pretty big whip.  First go and clean as heck!

Allen just goofing off. Seems like anywhere we go Allen never has trouble adapting. One footer tire grab on one of his first runs through.

Shanton is 100% BAD ASS!  Everything he rides he kills. Turndown better than me.

Another local (I suck and missed his name) at the trails could kill it and have a good time.  This guy can go higher at the park (mesh) than anybody else.

The Vult Sunglass / broken body crew.  Two of the 3 people in this photo came on the trip just to chill out.

This is Debbie. Her and the trail ladies are damn cool.

3 Amigos??

We drove for an hour .. which gets me to the point, why must ALL places in florida be said to be only "5 minutes away" when in all reality its like 1 1/2 hours long. Thats some CRAP. Anyways... We ate food, and started up our session idea at Mesh skatepark, ran by The Chad Degroot we've all heard about. Place is awesome. Unique stuff with awesome locals and lots of flow. Lots of stuff went down through the night, including Vinnie crashing as HARD AS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE. Seriously, dude fell from 12ft to his knees,face and shoulder. I could of swoar he was dead but to my disbeleif he sat off to the side for a few minutes, and eventually was alrite, Scary as hell, tought as nails. Some way to start off a session huh? Regardless some good stuff went down and the knobby tires were on fire, those guys looked like they were having a good time, Dane Wild was shade'n off with some broad he met so the real session didnt start yet.. The hurt crew (Carmickle and Squirrel) dissappeard with a few of my friends from Michigan that came down to party with us, but we have no idea what that turned into.

Session got back underway around 9-9:30ish. Everyone was doen there thing, Steve Byrnes was throwing down some good moves, like 3whips over the spine straight into wallride to whips on the quarter to wall after. Dane was doing some smooth skyrocketing 270s over the hips, and some rejected lookbacks. I mean really, MY lookbacks make Danes lookbacks look bad, and thats pretty bad. No offense dane, but someone had to say it. haha just razzen ya sXe! Kris k was flyen all over the place doing some tummytuck rolls on the spine and all sorts of razzle dazzle stunt'ery. Baylis was in demand with his street spine tech skills while at some point ive never seen a person bust their ass so hard in my life, hitch-n-post straight to the crack. Hope your butt feels better Baylis. Shanton was doing some huggee airs on the vert quarter in the up and down boxes, those things looked real fun, and at some point Shanton was trying to do a transfer accross the whole park, he ended up getting it after about 15 trys of mach10 madness, yay for Shanton right? One of 2 Mikes did a pretty rad tailwhip air on the wedge wedge wall on the street side, brakeless (and sockless I think) too.
Danger Debbie (Angie) did a wallride on the wedge wedge wall over the quarter and it was pretty intense. Totally a 10 in my book, what makes it worse is that I had a camera in hand, 5ft from the wall, and some homie was talken to me and I missed the shot, ill be lucky to track down the other homie with the video camera that could of got the clip. Damnit i suck. SORRY ANGIE! Atleast we know she did it. Paul Wall was having a good time and ended up pulling some snazzy toe pick on some shotgun coping, took a few trys but it went well for him. Grizzely Bear Joey was shredding for a lil while, but at some point a lot of the crew rode the street side of Mesh, and i filmed Shanton some more.   If i forgot anyone else that shreded with us ... get over it cause I forgot in all this nonsense.  After we rode for a bit extra after session and i ripped the biggest hole in my shoe/bruised my foot we got our stuff together and started getting ready to head to Ft.  Lauderdale  and meet up with Mike Spinner.  Everyone says its about a 3 hour drive, but in all reality everyone said it was gonna be 6 hours (and it was).  We hit up the Mikes house (thanks again fella's) waited 2 hours on people taking showers, finally hit the road and started aiming for Spinners place.

Danger Debbie (Angie) getting the wedge wall ride done on her second try.

Justin Bayliss is always quiet on the bus when we are getting loose but then comes out and kills the parks. 270 trucker.

Dane decided to ride his bike some after pulling some shade mission to score a "bottle of sand!"

Joey Greenwald can tailwhip better than any other fat kid.

One of the "Mikes" that let us stay with them.  Super nice kid and pretty good on the bike too.

Mike # 2 is who's house we stayed at.  can you imagin letting 20 bike riders you never met stay at your house with you and your mom?? Mike aint scared.

Negative Mike has been riding more on this trip due to the fact that i learned how to take some photos somewhat. Everybody was stoked when he pulled this Canadian nosepick on the wedge wall.

Danger Debbie has to put up with alot of shit on the bus but she proves she can hang with the guys...even at the park. Pedal feeble.  Wait till you she what she has planned for one of our other stops.

Chad Degroot chillin in the drivers seat of the Albe's bus.  Maybe next time he'll come along. Big thanks to him for letting us ride after hours.

To anyone that cares (my moms in general)
I blew out my knee at metro and didnt ride at all this week, came on this trip with good intentions but didnt want to get hurt, instead I was in 85 degree weather wearing a sweatshirt and cacoon'd up in a blanket the entire time.  I was miserable, so bad that i actually called my mom to get a plane ticket home but hung in there for today and got all sorts of medicines and finally got one that worked, finally I got better and all is well, I hopes to get shit done without any problems. Crazy stuff planned for the rest of this week, Thanks to anyone that cared!

--Sparks

P.S. Sorry we are a day behind on the updates.  SOOOO much has gone down in the past 24hours.  check back for the next update which should include:

• BMX, cops, scantly clad ladies, beaches and beer.

--Flip