2009 recap part 1

Since it’s so early in the year and there’s only been a slide jam I’m going to try and recap last year in a concise way and maybe throw in some full length tails from the most memorable trips. So many events happened last year it’s hard to remember them all. There was at least one race a month sometimes more for the entire year except December. As well as the local east coast events I traveled to Golden, Colorado for the Buffalo Bill Downhill, which was the only major event I got to since there were no large, international events in the east this year. I also had the pleasure of traveling to Montreal and racing in one of Fast Freddy’s races and skating some of the legendary terrain up north. It was a very ragtag and seat of your pants year of traveling where I learned the true meaning of “dollar menu” and how to spend as little money as possible to pay for gas.

It started with Sultans of Speed II in West Conshohocken, PA in January. I think the race was on the third but I went up a day early to skate in Reading with people such as Chris Oh No, AJ Powell, Mason Holden, current women’s downhill skateboarding champ Dasha Kornienko and Ramon Konigshausen from Switzerland. It was a snowy but fun day as we got kicked out of multiple parking garages and skated some fun hairpin filled roads in the snow. The next day was the race and it came down to the final of Ramon, Alex Newton, Fifi and myself. I was the only one not wearing leathers and ended up in third after Ramon and Alex had a better jump off the start. After the race we went across to Conshohoken to skate a few hairpins and a garage only to get into some misfortune with a very angry woman, named Helen Ignas, who called the police and would try and cause future damage to our skate scene.

In February was a President’s Day race in Rock Creek Park, in the heart of Washington DC. The guys who got me into downhilling years before were the ones hosting the event. The day before the race Pat Schep and Keith Rebhorn, along with their girlfriends of the time came and stayed at my dorm so we could go south, meet up with North Carolina skater Kyle Northrop and skate a legendary VA road called Mountain Lake. The road was covered in gravel but we had a hell of a fun time anyway and got to watch Keith’s fat ass kill his first set of wheels on an FSM prototype. The race was fun but kind of bunk with a round robin style mixed with elimination that was rather confusing. We had a lot of fun taking six or seven man runs down a closed road and really getting to mix it up. The final was Kyle and King Barua from the very top, which is an extra block in length, through an intersection with 16th street where you have to time the light and make it through a gate that is just wide enough for one person comfortably.

March brought the Major Stokem race, which I again traveled a day ahead of time to skate gnar in New York with Pat and Keith. I first traveled south to play drums at a basketball game then ten hours north to Hoboken to drop in on the biggest party of the year at Pat and Keith’s. We slept a few hours then skated some gnarly hairpins and a cinder coated service road as well as a little highway bomb. The original race hill got busted ahead of time by the evil Helen from Conshohoken who started patrolling the online forums and alerted the police in Jersey. We had an interesting run in with four cop cars when we tried to check out the race hill anyway the night before the event. The race was cool though since it was snowing while we raced down the hill right to the Hudson to get a big eye full of Manhatten. The race was alright but I just kicked out front every heat and stayed there. The final heat was closest though with Keith right on my ass into the left 90 at the bottom but he slid out and had a really gnarly bail. There was a slide jam after the race and that was super fun too. To get home I had to drive through a snow storm and drop off CJ Hicks in Maryland to find 6” of snow there but when I got over the Blue Ridge there was nothing in the Valley and had to go to class the next day. It was rough.

April had the first truly gnar race of the year for the east coast, the Pennsyltucky Derby. The race was hosted by some guys I met in passing at the Sultans of Speed race and I was really skeptical going into it but really excited because none of them had really gone all out on their own hill before. I got in the night before the race because I had a concert at school so I drove through the night to get there and find the man, Adam Dabonka himself, chilling with Rayzor Ray on the back patio. The first thing I hear is there’s beer in the fridge so I hung out a chilled for a few hours waiting on Keith to get out of the hospital because he ran into a Van, broke his pelvis and got a concussion earlier in the day. The race was so good. The hill is a gnarly 55+mph drag race after a left 90 you have to rail. The final was just a two man heat between me and Fifi. I beat him off the line but he passed me right before the finish to take the win. Afterwards Ray took out a hundred dollar bill and waved it around saying it went to whoever could post the fastest speed on the GPS. I set the first speed and then Fifi beat it by one mile per hour so I had to go back up and try and beat it. Pat was going to bump draft me but couldn’t get close enough but I still managed to put out the highest recorded speed. Pat definitely went faster than me that run because of how much he gained on me in my draft but I had the gps. I gave the money back to Ray to cover gas for the van he rented and then we had a cook out at Deans. It was exactly the kind of vibe that makes these events so awesome.

In May I traveled to Colorado for Justin Dubois’ Buffalo Bill Downhill on the legendary Lookout Mountain. I finished my last final on Friday before the event and flew out that evening and met a very nice stripper on the plane who had her son with her sitting next to me. The conversations with her were definitely a little sketchier than you should talk about in a confined public area like a plane but it was damn funny. My first flight was delayed and I had to run across the Charlotte airport to make my connecting flight and because of this my bag was no where to be found in Denver. I borrowed leathers and a board from Calvin Staub, who I was staying with. The Staub’s were the best hosts ever. I woke up to coffee and bagels while Mrs. Staub was putting together lunches for all the racers and course workers (the brownies were awesome!). The first day was practice and it was a ton of fun skating with all these people from across the continent. I was having a hard time riding the boards I was borrowing but it was so much fun regardless. My bags arrived that night at the Staubs so I had my gear for race day but it made little difference since the road was soaked and covered in fog. I was eliminated in my first heat after highsiding and doing a somersault on the last hairpin before the finish. (So many things happened on this trip that it’s unfair to write so little about this event but there is still so much more of the year to get through so I think I’ll post the full story at a later time)