Buffalo Bill Downhill part 2

I woke up at six to a cat in my face checking me out. I’m pretty allergic to cats; my airways constrict and it’s really hard to breathe so it was not the best thing to wake up to. After forcing the cat off of me I laid around for a little before deciding to get up and see if there was any activity in the house. I walked in my typical lack of sleep zombie fashion to the kitchen to find Mark and his wife sitting at the kitchen table with an unreasonable amount of paper bags set up. After hearing good morning the next thing said was “do you like coffee? Help yourself to the coffee and there’s bagels over there.” Coffee is one of the worst drugs I’ve gotten myself into but man is it good. The bags were going to be the lunches of all of the skaters at the event. Apparently the week before the race they still needed someone to set up food for the riders and luckily Mark’s wife is a caterer and he volunteered her time. So I sat and drank a few cups of coffee and examined the surroundings. The neighborhood was nestled in between some large foothills and was just below a rather large rocky mesa. Across the valley was Lookout Mountain and you could see the bottom of the road we were going to be racing and the towers that marked the top of the mountain.

We threw our gear in the car and got under way around eight or nine. It was a slow morning even after we got up to the top of the hill. I set up Calvin’s old board with my wheels and duct taped his old suit back together in the places it needed most. I had only seen the road in Youtube videos and was excited to really scope it out so when they asked for volunteers to sweep hay off the road I was immediately ready to ride down and really see what I was up against. The hill looked dreamy with a good mix of everything a race course needs: straight-aways, sweepers and the bottom section of right hairpin, left hairpin, right hairpin, left hairpin to the finish line. It took about an hour with Mark, a local guy and me sweeping the course. As we got finished the fabled Loco Express was spotted slowly making it’s way up the hill.

The Loco is an old bus that was rebuilt and repainted that was on the adventure of a lifetime. It started in Vancouver with seven people and made it’s way down the west coast to L.A. where it picked up a few more travelers. It then made it’s way to Ditch Slap in Albuquerque, New Mexico and from there up to Colorado for this race. After this weekend it was completing the loop back to British Columbia for three more races in the following week. I can’t imagine the adventure that they went through. Mine couldn’t possibly compare to theirs. There is little more that I want than having the ability to drop everything for a few weeks and go on an adventure, traveling place to place, seeing beautiful scenery and skating some of the most incredible roads and spots in the world. Doing all that with some of the best skaters and people in the world just puts it over the top. It would be hard to keep going, skating and partying hard everyday but the experience gained is something that I think out weighs any fault in the plan. It would be comparable to touring with some of the best jazz/improv musicians in the world and making new ground breaking music every day except doing it in only incredibly beautiful places.

We found a ride back to the top of the hill from one of the organizers and finally had a riders meeting after being on the hill for an hour or two. We only had the road until three and it was late morning. My first run of the day was mellow but felt great as I tried to get acquainted to this odd board set up. After two more runs on Calvin’s board I couldn’t control it well enough in the first hairpin and switched to one of Jason’s extra boards. Since I actually owned the same board that I borrowed it was easier to get a feel for it. They only problem after that was the fact that this hill ate wheels and the wheels I had brought for racing wear incredibly quickly. It was awesome doing 30mph standing slides to stop after the finish line on some buttery worn in wheels but was hard to keep speed in corners because of scrubbing out in all the hairpins. I put on fresh wheels before what was going to be the second to last run to see how huge a difference it would make and how to conserve wheels for racing. I took my last run with Calvin and had the most intense run of the day where I pushed out in front and in the big straight he gave me a huge bump. He passed me going into the first hairpin that determines the rest of the course and through a huge predrift nearly hitting the hay, while I did a small foot break and then predrifted. I passed him back immediately but he caught back up going into the final turn and we went in side by side forcing me to have to rail the inside line or take both of us out and he ended up with his hand basically under my board trying to hold his own line. I had no place to put a hand down and had to surf the corner and somehow we made it. It was one of those moments that when you make it out you just yell and laugh maniacally because you shouldn’t have made it.

We had to get off the road on time so the city granting the permits wouldn’t get angry and pull the plug on racing the following day. Everyone was quickly relocated to a picnic area around the corner from the top of the racecourse. The partying started there as we tried to figure out how to get to the racers campground. The beer and weed were gotten out as quick as we got into the parking lot and it was a continuation of the get together of old and new friends. Heats were being drawn at the campground so I was pretty set on getting there but Mark wasn’t going and Calvin was getting a ride from someone else so I needed to find a way to travel the hour from the race site to the camp site. I got in one of the big passenger vans that was rented as a shuttle with two guys from California who ride for Comet and Graham who runs Rayne Longboards.

We followed Justin Dubois, who I had met the year before; first at a race in New York then at the Maryhill Festival of Speed in Washington State. We stopped to get some beers and find somewhere to stop and grab food to cook at the campsite. For whatever reason we got three 30 packs of beer and an airplane size bottle of Jaeger and after picking up some sausages and buns (as well as pocketed condiments) we started the drinking and the drive to the campground. The campground was a little less than an hour away and right before the continental divide on top of a mountain.

Justin had Rizzo riding with him and almost every mountain pass we went through Rizzo got out and shredded down the mountain without ever seeing the hill and only in a helmet and gloves. He kept messing with the cars going in the other direction by carving into the other lane and back before they got up to him. It was really something else to watch someone so comfortable on a skateboard ripping down a mountain at 45 or 50 just jamming. On the last pass before the turn for the campground he happened to do this to an off duty cop who pulled us over and called for back up. There were three cars total. While waiting we hurried to hide the open beer and empty cans. The cops seemed incredibly agitated because when Justin tried to get out to tell us what was going on they yelled at him to get back in his truck and were threatening him. The whole time we were sitting in the van and making jokes because all the cops had mustaches and aviators, which made them look just like caricatures out of Super Troopers. It became less of a joke when we realized that our driver had been drinking and had his wallet stolen a few days earlier meaning no driver’s license on him. Neither of which ended up being a problem but we were definitely waiting for a long time for nothing to happen at the bottom of the hill that goes to the campsite.

The road up to the campground was super gnarly. It was crazy steep with really big Montreal style cracks running perpendicular across it with a hand full of tight turns. From there you turn onto a hilly dirt/gravel road to the actual camping area, which Rizzo kept ripping on a 36” pool deck with soft wheels. We got there before most people and started cooking our cheese-impregnated sausages over the fire. There was a slackline set up and someone’s mini dirt bike getting played on. It was pretty cold out and it was supposed to snow as we waited for the Loco Express to make it’s appearance. Once more people showed up we were going to pick heats in the most Pagan way, as Justin would have said. He had this carnival game type wheel with everyones names as well as different tasks to fill in the empty spots like shot gun a beer and do 40 pushups.

The sun went all the way down and the fire got bigger as more people showed up to the campsite. It was cool hanging out and drinking beers with everyone. Downhill skaters are the best people in the world. It’s such an inclusive group of people and everyone is always eager to share stories, beers or smokes. If the world was made of only downhill skaters there would be no war, although not much would probably get done but we’d all be happy. I had a lot of fun hanging out and talking with Krimes and James Kelly. The other good thing about this sport is that even the guys who are the idols of it are accessible and cool. There’s no bullshit in downhill skateboarding. It started snowing, we were in the Rockies after all, and the cold was pretty rough since I only had a hoodie with me, which made the decision to go back to Calvin’s house rather than stay at the campsite with none of my camping gear. We had to pile 7 people into a five-person sedan for the hour-long ride. Kevin decided to come with us when he found out there was an extra guest bed. When we got back we stayed up watching the news to try and catch the story about the race and talked skating. I’ve never met anyone so passionate about skateboarding before. Kevin lives skating and thinks more thoroughly about the mechanics and logistics of riding down mountain roads than I probably even know. Eventually we went to bed, hoping that the snow wouldn’t soak the course and that racing would go smoothly.