Thirsty?

Many thanks goes out to Pabst for helping keep our Friday afternoons a little more sane or insane???

I HEART MIKE BENDA!

Who doesn’t love Mike Benda? HIS HEART IS PURE GOLD!

He has been a huge part of the local and international longboard scene since the beginning. “Serial 5″ has probably shown you how to do a trick or two… his fast, all or nothing style makes Mike a fun rider to watch and skate with.

He is always helping grow the scene by driving groms all over the city and showing them how to ride properly. He has even been known to pay for entry fees and loan equipment just to allow other people to share the passion of longboarding. He gives a lot and really expects nothing in return.

If you’ve spent time hanging out with Mike you know he is ultimately a kid at heart just looking for the next session. So when you see him in a suit(not leathers) it can be a bit shocking – it goes to show that there is a lot more to Mike than meets the eye. He may be standing next to you with a smile on his face but really he is thinking of how to best catch you off guard to sneak a quick jab.

Next time you see Mike make sure you give him a hug.

Thanks to Brianne, Nick and Shawn for making the custom t shirts and to Paul for taking the photos.

TELL US A STORY ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE EXPERIENCE HANGING OUT WITH MIKE BENDA!

Simply Steezie

Simply Steezie! from Rayne Longboards on Vimeo.

There is hope yet that BIG BROTHER does have a heart…

FROM MIKE BENDA’S PAGE:

So I posted up about three months ago in part about that skateboarding ticket I had mailed to me. I sent in my dispute the next day and the “two to four week process” took three months, inclusive of continual hounding from my end. The hounding and follow up, however, DID pay off as I received verbal confirmation today (after yet another call into them) that they’ve voided my ticket. Thanks for letting me know eh? Anyways, it’s a small victory but a victory nonetheless. Stick it back at them!!

Sultan of the Shawnigan Shredder

Just Another Weekend Down Under

On Saturday, February the 21st ASRA President Haggy Strom and myself got up before dawn to embark on a reconnoissance mission to the victorian alps to scope out and skate some of the best mountain roads this country has to offer. After months of talking about what roads were possible to skate we finally decided its time to go down and actually check it all out. We flew down to Albury, hired a car and began the drive down towards Mt Beauty and Falls Creek. Our first stop was a small gas station in Dederang, where we stopped for some munchies and to inquire about the mountain roads down towards Mt Beauty and Falls creek. The attendant told us the roads there were very long and windy with beautiful scenery, and when we told him we were there to skate down them on our longboards he was completely blown away, but at the same time interested, and told us we were in for the ride of our lives. This definitely put smiles on our faces and got us very excited.

Our next stop was just outside of Mt Beauty at a road called Tawonga Gap Road, which is the link road between Mt Beauty and Bright. I had been told about this road by Pete Conolly who road it when he was down here for Newton’s Playground last March, and just like he had described, it was steep, fast and very technical. It seemed like it took forever to drive up, but that just added to the excitement. Haggy, being fairly new to the whole downhill thing, seemed a bit nervous about skating down this road, so i told him if he didn’t skate it i would have to kick him in the nuts, it just cant get much better than this where we are from. He wasn’t going to back down. We parked the car at the look-out looking over the town of Mt Beauty and started to gear up, while a few people drove by and slowed down giving us weird looks saying ‘your going down on your skateboard….?’. It was pretty cool to see the interest they had, as they must have never seen anything like this before.

One of the hairpins Tawonga Gap Rd has to offer. The road itself was a little bit rough for the first few hundred meters, but then dove into a very tight right hand hairpin covered in smooth hot mix and then opened up to about 2k’s of sweeping turns. After a while you start judging the corners by the recommended speed limits on the road signs, and then the 2nd gnarly hairpin comes out at you. It was pretty wide but fairly steep. On Haggy’s first run he was greeted by 2 semi-trailers coming round the corner, it looked kind of sketchy from my point of view but Haggy had enough control over his speed to slow down enough and take the corner like a pro, giving the truck drivers a wave as he did so.

The next section was a lot faster, with more straight lines and looser corners that came into an incredibly steep right hand switch back that drops about 12m with some sharp banking on the inside that slingshot you around it and exiting at some pretty high speeds. From then on it was holding the tuck with some slight bends and then the final hairpin, a very loose and wide right hander (with a big ‘Reduce Speed Now’ sign before it) that shot you down the final straight.

After a couple of runs, hi-fives and burning legs we decided it was time to continue on and explore the road leading down to Falls Creek. From Mt Beauty to falls creek there is 36k’s of winding road, up and down the whole way. Every bit of downhill road either going towards or away from Falls Creek was very skate-able. There was not one bit of straight road the whole way, and the surface was pretty smooth and consistent. We counted at least 10 downhill runs on the way to falls creek, each of which were very fast and technical. But the main event was the final section of road leading up to Falls Creek from the creek just past the town of Bogong. The road is around 16k’s and constant winding downhill, full of sweeping corners and big loose hairpins with a few 90 degree stingers here and there. When i rode it from top to bottom it took nearly 15 minutes to do the whole run.

Haggy and i decided to play on the top section of this road, which is about 7 or 8k’s long leading down to switchback creek, a massive 270 degree switchback corner that has a small up-hill run out (you can ride over it and keep going) that we were finishing our runs on. The Road starts up at the town of Falls Creek and runs along side it to start with before shooting you into 4 or 5k’s of constant left/right corners with a few long left handers thrown in the mix. The road goes on past the gates of Falls Creek and out into a lush forest with dense vegetation either side. It gets a fairly bit faster and the corners get a lot tighter, with 3 gnarly 90 degree right handers that are banked on the inside and a few left/right sweepers before coming down into switchback creek. The road was amazing, there was basically no traffic at all and the feeling of freedom you got while flying through the corners of this winding paradise was awesome. We did as many runs as our legs could handle, before calling it a day.

We were staying in a nice little apartment in the town of Falls Creek kindly lent to us by Braden, the man behind www.charliedontskate.com, and as we drove around to found the place we realized that the town itself was a longboarding heaven. The roads were steep as all hell and each corner was a 180 degree switch back. You could run from the top of the town to the bottom and would have the ride of your life, but only if your skills were high enough to be constantly sliding and speed checking each corner because the roads were so steep. We then sat down with a couple of the locals and fired up a barbecue with a couple of beers and told them about the downhill skating scene. They were pretty stoked on the whole thing and were getting really into it. They were kind enough to share some of the local knowledge and point out some other great hills around the Victorian Alps. After a few beers and some very drunken table tennis Haggy and I decided to call it a night and went up to pass out.

The next day we were greeted with clear blue skies and fresh mountain winds, then had some breakfast before going out to sample some of the hills in the town. Just outside where we were staying was the top of the run, and the first gnarly corner. We stayed here and sessioned it a little bit before making our way down the town sessioning all the corners we could find. Each of them were super fast and super tight. I donated a fair bit of Urethane to the roads of falls creek sessioning these corners as well as a little bit of skin when i hit a small crack doing a stand up slide down the steep sections.

After playing in the town, it was back out to the main road where we geared up in our leathers and skated the road going out of the town again. Haggy had a bit more knowledge of the road and was really ripping it up, he had the biggest smile on his face at the end of each run. After about two runs some of the locals showed up and came out to take some photos, so Haggy and i got to have a few runs together, which was really fun. One of the locals Pete (also known as PC) was shooting out the back of a car and got some really wicked shots, showing some great scenery and a bit of the town at the same time.

We then decided to end the session and grab some food before heading back to Albury to fly home. The thick shakes and cheese burgers we got from the cafe at the top of the town were superb, and really hit the spot. It was a real shame to drive away from that place as the energy up there was really positive. Everything seemed so laid back and the scenery and fresh mountain air was really good for the soul. It was a feeling of freedom. On the drive back towards Mt Beauty we discovered another good downhill run which we sort of overlooked on the way out. The road leading into MT Beauty itself looked amazing. The road was smooth as hell and was full of winding turns. Not as long as the falls creek run but the corners seemed really nice. It was a shame we didn’t have time to skate it but we will definitely spend some time on that hill next time we are there. This trip was definitely one of the most amazing skate trips i’ve been on. It was such an awesome experience to explore our beautiful country and find some of the best roads it has to offer, and not only that but get to skate them too! Big thanks goes to ASRA for supporting the trip and making it possible, and i will definitely have to go back there soon to explore all the roads there is on offer.

Jackson Shapiera

Major Stok’em Outlaw

If you are in the New Jersey area check out this race on March 1st.  DH Rodeo, Swap Meet, and Slide Comp. what more can you ask for?

Long Trek on Skate Decks

Day 17: Day long Decent

We woke up on the fish farm after having a great sleep with a star filled sky. For breakfast the patrons of the restaurant/farm served us the best French fries we have eaten in Peru. I felt better too. Fortunately the fish that I had watched die for my meal the night before did help. I was no longer ill and I already felt stronger. Then we were off to finish our hard earned downhill. We skated all day into 60 kph head winds. It was very frustrating to say the least. We should have been flying down the road doing 60-70 kph but we were reduced to a slow roll or even hours of pushing downhill. Some sections felt as if we were climbing. We spent lunch in Challahuanca were we ate fruit and got teased for being gringos and it was off again to fight the downhill climb. Adam Aaron and I kept our spirits up by racing each other (slowly) riding hills switch and using liberal amounts of speed mooching and bump drafting. At about 5:30 some deep dark clouds started to form overhead. We decided we should consider setting up camp. Just prior, we passed through a small town. There we purchased cookies and somehow managed to find some avocados. Just before heading off to setup camp. Adam asked a local if it would rain during the night. No he said, it wont rain tonight the clouds will pass… 4 kilometres away, as we scrambled desperately to set up our shelters in the hail, torrential down pour and 70 kph winds  we mocked “No… No lluvia esta noche”, it won’t rain tonight.

Day 18: 3 soles

By some miracle grace from god, or perhaps credit should go to the PTFE fabrics my bivy bag is fashioned from, I managed to wake up mostly dry. Only slightly damp due to my own sweat during the night. Even better I had lived many days within vivid dreams of being home with friends and family. We slowly rose from our shelters and began packing up our wet gear  so we could engage in battle with the very same winds that plagued our travel the day before. If not for this wind we would have made Albancay yesterday evening… After skating for a few hours we made it to the base of the climb into Albancay. The steep windy road was adorned with a horribly hot burning sun and the same damned wind. However I knew that at the top of the climb I would be able to rest for two nights. I charged the uphill hard with powerful pushes. My illness and lack of strength from the days prior had been completely eradicated. The misery of pushing masked by the feeling of power as I ploughed my way through gusts of wind and maintained a roll normally reserved for fast travel on flat terrain. After 45 minutes I had made my way to Albancay. Everyone seemed surprised to see me, not because I had skated up a huge steep slope, rather because I was white. “Gringo!” they gleefully cheered as I skated by. The whole gringo thing is starting to get old. Then a dog jumped out at me. Now when you tackle a hill in the manner I did you make a decisions… It’s like choosing to push hard, to attack the hill regardless as to what it throws at you. You completely ignore how bad you feel. Its an amazing feeling yet it puts you in a strange state of mind. Its fight or flight and after choosing fight  you are in fight mode. I chased that damn dog down the street and around a house. The dog jumped down a 7 foot drop and slid 5 feet on its belly as it barked at me its posture changed from the aggressor to the submissive. I wiped the sweat from my eyes, turned and skated towards Adam and Aaron. Still furious at the dog and the towns people who called me gringo. I needed something to sooth my hot temper.

I want a freaking ice cream cone…

Day 19: Albancay

Our second day and people are already treating us like locals. The biggest factor in this is due to our carrying water balloons around with us. Ready at a whim to retaliate against our attackers. Our Spanish is getting better and we tell the locals tall tales of being professional ventriloquists and drinking cat milk and we tease each other for their amusement. We frequent a small bakery and a little convenience store many times a day and engage in conversation with the clerks and owners. What’s  best is we no longer get Gringoe prices… The first time on the trip everything is much cheaper. In the evening we go to a pizza shop and we get the most amazing tasting food we have had in a long time. My pizza had spinach on it! I can´t describe what this meant to me. It´s been so long since I´ve eaten a vegetable other than potatoes. We almost cried with joy as we devoured our dinner. This was a good day.

Day 20: 2000 meters in merely 4 hours

The day began with running errands and a phone call to my ex spouse which left me in a weird upset mood. We left some balloons with the hostel owners children who introduced us to the popular pass time. Then it was time to pack up. The guy who worked at the hostel whom had been asking us all weekend how much all our stuff costs and if he could have my t-shirts sat in our room as we packed up to leave. He played with our stuff slowing us down considerably. Then when we were a few minutes past check out he tried to charge us an extra 10 soles. We pretended to misunderstand his Spanish and said no not 10 days to Cusco it will only take 5 and we thanked him profusely as we walked out of the hostel and took to our boards.
We began climbing; It was really hot and humid. My freshly clean shirt was soaked with sweat in less than 30 minutes. The humidity also seemed to get into the camera. I couldn´t get it to work at all. I feared it was broken. That paired with the weirdo at the hostel and my earlier phone conversation really played on my mood. Its funny how much bad morale can affect your physical performance. I felt like crap and I struggled to maintain a pace which I normally find child’s-play. Other things set me off. More dogs yelping at me trying to bite at my ankles, believing my skating to be my fleeing from their guard. I also cut my shoulder open on my drinking tube clip. My shoulder was covered with blood and my pack is stained. Somehow I managed to pull my thoughts away from all the negative and I once again began to appreciate the gorgeous scenery. My pace quickened and I began to lead the pack again. I tried to sing but the air was too thin. We were getting close. Fog rolled up the side of the hill and it chased us up the hill to the summit where we enjoyed a view of the clouds that sit to our right flank. It looked like we were gazing directly into heaven. We began to bomb a crazy endless decent at incredible speeds. Adam and I are getting more comfortable with our packs and we begin to push a little faster on the corners. The cars don´t know what to make of us and the children we pass run after us in awe. The sun set as we skated yet Adam and I continued for a good 20 minutes after dark we were having too much fun passing cars and drifting corners in the dark. We stopped because the roads surface changed to chipseal and we didn´t want to leave Aaron behind in the dark. When he finally caught us he was angry for subjecting him to riding in the night. We found our way to a small family’s home and asked if we could sleep in their field. Tomorrow we would awake to more downhill.

Day 21: A monster named chipseal  …and hes hungry for my wheels

The Family was really nice although kinda weird and the mother ripped us off by charging both Adam and Aaron separately for the same items (they had a small store in their home) We continued down the chipseal covered hill for a few hours until we reached the nearest town. We got called Gringo a lot as we ate at a restaurant. A small crowd began to form made up of Peruvians wishing to glimpse at real live gringos. We told them that In the US people eat dog meat and in Canada we drink Milk from large cats. We also told them it took us 2 years to skate from Lima to their town. After skating away really slowly we began pushing down hill again. The slope was steep but the pavement was really haggard chipseal. Every so often we would encounter a fast section that would have us rolling without pushing. I drifted my carves pretty hard for hours and by the time we had arrived at the bottom my wheels were pretty rough looking. We skated uphill for about 15 kilometres before setting up camp on a abandoned bridge that was covered in ants. I spotted 4 different species in 5 minutes including leaf cutter ants. We only have 84 kilometres and two more passes to climb before we reach Cusco.

Day 22: Limatambo to Anta

We woke and up brushed the ants off our gear before heading on to Limatambo. At the restaurant I got laughed at for being a vegetarian they suggested Chicken because it wasn´t meat. I had some egg sandwiches (stale bread with a fried egg) then we headed up the hill. The Chipseal made the climb hard. It was by far the steepest mountain pass we have encountered But that also means the climb would be shorter than any of the others. I felt sick so I took a few breaks and Aaron had to clean his wounds as Adam went on ahead. After a long gruelling stretch it began to rain and for some strange reason this cheered me up immensely. I splashed upwards to the summit and met back up with Adam.
We had a few hours of fast flat mixed with downhill all the way to Anta. In Anta we ate dinner in a restaurant. The owner was a kind honest lady who gave us fair prices on everything (in fact I think she undercharged us). We asked if we could sleep on the floor in her restraunt if we left before they opened and she agreed. I tried to give her some money and she smiled and told me to save it for Cusco. Tomorrow we will skate to Cusco. We have one more tiny pass to tackle before we drop into Cusco. We´re managing to do one pass per day… We´re getting tougher.

Day 23-24: Cusco

Woke up, thanked the owner of the restaurant and began our last accent to Cusco. It took us two hours. The climb was a joke, A tiny hill before a massive downhill through the streets of upper Cusco. We blitzed over speed bumps around people through dense traffic and drifted alongside cars through the windy corners that plummet towards downtown. The drivers here are a little nuts. On my way into downtown I encountered people passing vehicles around blind corners. I found myself on a few occasions threading the needle between cars that were 3 wide in two lanes around rough chipseal corners with little traction. It was exhilarating and it gave the locals something to watch to I´m sure.
In Cusco we found a quaint little hostel, we ate pumpkin soup we threw water balloons at Gringos from our hotel room. It seems the only way to cope with the constant staring and Name calling is to make it a joke and parody it. Cusco is too touristy. I am constantly bothered by street vendors that try to convince me that their Alpaca sweaters are not too heavy for my backpack. Adam tries to buy a 750ml bottle of water and they ask for 4 soles, 3 too much. It’s not the Peru I know, yet it totes itself the cultural capital of Peru. It’s very European filled with Churches and other fine buildings likely build by the Spaniards using the hands of the natives. Although I must say I enjoy how you kind find mostly anything here in Cusco (except for HDV Tapes for our video camera). We ate well the last few days and now I´m just about to go for lunch and then skate off towards Bolivia.

I´m getting sick of transcribing my notes to this computer so I´m off for now. More updates in a week.

Long Treks on Skate Decks

Day 16: I´m sick…

We earned ourselves very little sleep in exchange for our 7.30 soles we each paid for our room. The night was filled of blood curdling snarls, gargles and whines from dogs growling at people and fighting each other. At one point I had to pee, I brought my knife. Luckily at that point the dogs had circled to the other side of the hostel. 5:30am finally rolled around with the sun we headed across the street for breakfast. Aaron locked me out of the room. By the time I got an extra key he and Adam had left to begin the climb without me as I rushed to get my stuff ready and clean up our collective mess in the room we had rented. I was perturbed. It took me a while to figure out where they were and when I did I began to skate in a fury. I pushed past them tossing some of Aarons forgotten gear to the side of the road as I sprinted up the huge hill. I gasped for what little oxygen the thin air carried. I´ve never breathed so hard in my life. My lungs would fill to full capacity effortlessly 2 times per second and I was still running a oxygen deficit. I smelt blood on the exhale. (I have experienced this before when training really hard. I think it means my lungs were working at full capacity. When saturated to this point you can smell it.) I pulled over to hack and cough and remove my bandage on my hip. My leg seems to be infected too. Equipped with only surgical sponge I wasn´t to excited about throwing a new bandage on my hip so I after cleaning it thoroughly I left the wound to dry and scab in the open air. Not wanting the wound to adhere to my pantaloons I skated the rest of the day without pants. To make the day more desirable It seemed as though I was fairly ill. My nose ran I had my first real battle with “the shits” and my energy levels were really low (when not fuming angry). By 10:00am I had calmed down, and we had reached the top of the pass. Then began 6 hours of dowhill broken by short stretches of flat ground. It was gorgeous, we skated down into lush fields and thicker air. We raced in our tucks, we carved for hours, I honed my speed checks on backpack, it was great! One section was incredible long steep and frighteningly fast, considering our extra weight and lack of protective gear suitable for the blinding speeds we were achieving. By the bottom of the steep section our wheels had become noticeably worn. It was great although exhausting. We continued down a fair slope until we found ourselves at a small fish farm and restaurant nestled in a canyon. I actually ate fish for dinner today. I feel as if I have lost something, but after spending nearly a full month eating nothing but cookies, stale white bread, and the odd plate of French fries I was willing to try to see if it would help me feel better. I may be sick as a result of malnutrition. In the evening we set up camp on the property of the restaurant and we enjoyed the sunset in the canyon floor.

For pictures and more information, please check out http://www.longtreksonskatedecks.com

Day 7: Nasca

We spent a night in Nasca in a hostel. In typical Peruvian fashion the doors came no higher than my chest the bathrooms are cramped, the toilets have no seats or toilet paper nearby. I washed the sweat and grime off my body in a freezing cold shower, the initial shock superseded by the refreshment of having clean skin. Nasca was a crazy town. People were very interested in our longboarding, and Gringos’ seem to be fun for the locals to stare at. I took a plane ride in the morning and got to film footage for the video from the plane. I filmed the Nasca lines and the highways that we had climbed the previous day. By about 3pm we were ready to leave town and we were off to approach our first really big climb. We camped just outside of town in a farmers field under some nice trees. The ground was soft and the warm and mild climate was great. I´m sure I´m going to miss sleeping at low altitude. We quickly set up camp and just as we were going to go to sleep we saw lights flashing at us and two men started yelling “Hey!” My first though was that the owner of the farm had saw us and called the police… This could be bad, The police are notorious for robbing tourists especially when they have some leverage against them. We approached the lights and told the men we were just camping as we rode to La Paz des de Lima. “Beuno!” The shadowy figures exclaimed as they hid behind there bright laterns. They had no problems with our staying there they were just patrolling their farm for burglars. They were Sandia (watermelon) Farmers, we sat and spoke for an hour, I offered them peanuts and they in turn cut up a 3 kilo watermelon for us to share before we went off to bed. With our tummies full of fruit we slept under the trees where we enjoyed our most comfortable sleep since we arrived in Peru.

For more info and pictures check out www.longtreksonskatedecks.com

Day 8: Into the misty hills…

We woke at 6am and tore down our camp, did some yoga, ate quinoa mixed with Vega supplement and then we skated east uphill. The pavement was rough and it seems to be made of a mixture of tar and sand. As we pushed over it our wheels seemed to sink in slightly causing our boards to freewheel no more than a few inches alter each push, even on flat sections. Some areas the road Would get so rough I don´t know if I could continue to call it pavement anymore. The corners that adorn the hundreds of switchbacks Were so pitted and corroded that I Would merely place my board with my foot and then step with my other. As I pushed my board it would drift out as I tried to turn around the bends. It was really slow moving and extremely hard work. We had low morale and we spoke very little. By the time we had climbed 2000 meters high the air got really misty. We became engulfed in a dense fog that soaked us through. It began to rain… the first rain of the trip. We dressed up in our rain suits and gaiters. And now on top of the horrid pavement we had to push water uphill. After checking Adams GPS we deduced that we were near the town of Hallaua. But we couldn´t see more than 10 feet in front of us. For all we know we could have been in the town at that moment. We spent the next ten minutes or so skating and yelling “Holla!”Into the dense fog until we got a response.

We approached the solitary voice calling back at us. It was that of a woman, we asked if there were any near by restaurants as we had not eaten since the morning. She told us of a nearby restaurant but it was closed for the night. However she sold Cookies and bread out of her small home. She invited us in and we ate banasa warm yogurt drink and a lot of cookies. We sat and spoke with her and her family for hours laughing as we translated words from Spanish into English for their enjoyment. They offered us dinner of rice, corn, and “Coco mate” or Coco tea. A tonic that tastes similar to Roilbos tea that helps cope with the high altitude of the Andes. Coco is Illegal in Canada because it is used to make cocaine, however its affects are nearly unnoticeable. When used traditionally. After dinner the family took us to a nearby school house. They unlocked the doors and we slept there.

That night I awoke having troubles breathing. “I´m only at 2200 meters! Could it be the altitude?” I thought to myself. I sat up and my vision faded to a red haze before I collapsed onto the floor and I began to have a seizure. Afterwards everything seemed to work fine unnaturally calm about the recent episode I fell back asleep.

The next morning I awoke at about 4 am, I had to pee really badly. While peeing in the cold rain outside the school house I deduced that the happenings of the night was just a type of lucid dream called “sleep paralysis” Describing the inability to control my movement and my breathing. I have been know to have these dreams in the past. I have read that people have more vivid dreams when they ascend to greater altitudes. I headed back into the school and tucked myself away into my sleeping bag for another few hours.

For more info and pictures check out www.longtreksonskatedecks.com

Day 9: More climbing…

After we woke up we cleaned up the school and we set out to purchase more cookies to eat for breakfast. The fog had cleared over night and we were left with a fantastic view of nearby mountain peaks nearly all of which lay below us surrounded by sparse clouds or mist. Cookies for breakfast sounds horrible, but trust me you don´t know the half of it. It’s really all we could get until we got to the restaurant which was anywhere from 2 to 10 km away. After 30 minutes of skating we reached the restaurant where we received great “gringo pricing” on all our food. 4 soles for a 2.5 litre bottle of water is ludicrous but this guy had a monopoly on food and water. There is little we could do other than pay the fellow and be on our way. We skated aggressively uphill after many Kilometres we ran into a pair of Germans doing a cycle tour coming in the opposite direction. They spoke English. They told us of the road conditions ahead it was a nice interlude amongst all the Spanish and the gruelling climb. Shortly after they left the fog rolled in. Not wanting to get rained on again we climbed a small rock wall and found camp on top of the hill we were on. We set up camp by 3:30pm. The elevation was 3100 meters above sea level and we definitely noticed an increase in respiration. I wrote in my diary and we all slept early as it poured outside our tiny uni-shelters. It rained for over 15 hours and that’s how long we spent cooped up in our shelters with little more than a few inches to shift around. The fog seemed to get into our vents and it soaked our sleeping bags by the time came for us to crawl out, stiff and freezing from the cold mountain temperatures.

For more info and pictures check out www.longtreksonskatedecks.com

Day 10: Heaven?!

…Well it may as well have been… at 4000 meters high it sure was close enough.

I´m pretty sure it’s safe to say that we were all sore, tired, and cold. Our gear was heavy from the mud and water that saturated it. To make things worse we hadn´t eaten much since dinner the previous day that’s when our supplies seemed to run out. The lack of Carbohydrates really placed its toll on climbing the steep pitted pavement. There was no sun at all just fog or dense cloud cover. We slogged uphill for hours upon hours on pavement most would decree to be unridable on most bicycles… let alone a skateboard. It was about 2 pm now. The next town was 70 km to go, uphill mostly with a crazy 23km deadly downhill which we would have to tackle in the dark if we were to press on. Then a miracle happened. We saw in the distance a small boy riding a bicycle. A pathetic attempt to hasten our pace we struggled on towards the boy. Where there are children there are towns… hopefully. Then we saw it. A small truck stop/ restaurant nestled in the mist in the middle of nowhere. On display in the window was a selection of soft drinks waters and cookies. We hoped off our boards and danced with glee as we skipped towards the small building. Inside we found a well stocked shop with a large variety of various sweets and bread. The menú for the day was Fried eggs, Rice and French fries (Papas fritas). It was run by cute Quechuan family of a mother and her four daughters. The two youngest danced around as we ate and the two older ones were very interested in what we were doing. The oldest daughter Victoria asked us many questions and was enamoured by how tall Aaron and I were. She was the prettiest girl I have seen to date in Peru (I developed a tiny crush). Maria the second oldest wanted skate lesson so I took her out and taught her how to push and coast along. Before I knew it I was instructing nearly the whole family. My hands were freezing and I had to go inside. Aaron began to entertain the family by playing his ukulele (or charango as it is called here) Victoria enjoyed the song very much and wanted to be in a picture with Aaron. Her sisters joked about her falling in love. Adam and I convinced Aaron to give her a kiss on the cheek when the photos were snapped. The family roared with laughter. The rest of the night the two of them flirted as Adam and I ate tons and hung out with the family. We payed 6 Soles to sleep in a small bamboo and straw hut and hid from the rain. There we dried our sleeping bags, tents, and our clothes. Aaron has a date with Victoria if he finds himself passing through Nasca on the way home. The hut was cramped. Designed to fit one person, but we slept comfortably anyways.

For more info and pictures check out www.longtreksonskatedecks.com

Day 11: Peruvian death hill…. Take 2

We woke up ate breakfast, stocked up on our new found diet of cookies. We did our yoga session with the family and Aaron said bye to Victoria. Even with the thin air we left feeling stronger having eaten so well (figuratively speaking as most of what we ate were cookies). We skated an uphill gradual climb with some rolling hills for a couple of hours until we reached the summit. From there we overlooked the downhill. 23km long, the pavement horrid… Horrid isn´t a good enough word. We jittered shook and bounced over the ruined road. It felt like riding rough cobble stone with pot holes that would swallow you up and throw you out after moving your footing to the extreme edge of our decks. My feet felt hot with the vibration. Soon after they became so numb we couldn’t even feel tingling… beyond sensation. At one point while filming Adam on a very fast section I bounced off the deck and landed 90 degrees to my left standing on my toes as the board drifted violently away from the curvature of the road. Almost Keeling over while holding our $4000 camera in my unshielded hands. However it was not all bad, we were rolling downhill, the air was growing thicker, and we were graced with the most beautiful mountain vistas any of us have ever seen. No words nor photos will ever do what we saw justice. After about 7 km the pavement gets smooth, mostly. Adam and I start barging. Full tucks with our large back packs. Laughing - we capitalize on the ease this new grade of pavement brings us. We race around corners scrubbing speed with standing speed checks before entering the hairpins. We blaze through a small town and the people there are completely in awe at what they see.

Now we all know I can be quite the showoff. I would bust loud speed checks infront of the natives on my deep unworn speedvents (wheels). This is tricky wearing a heavy pack, and the wheels made it rather unpredictable. Eventually my reckless manner caught up with me. I failed a toeside check and I had a glorious bail. My board raced off the road into a duct full water where it was completley submerged (Thanks water Prof. Bearings) as I highsided and slid my speed off on my hip and my backpack. Suprisingly everything came out okay, only a few scrapes on myself and my gear.

I grabbed my board from its pool, hopped back on and skated down with the same degree of caution as I had practiced before my bail. I wasn´t going to let it ruin the downhill, or this scenery. I earned this. In total I figure we spent 40 minutes on slow primarily rough pavement and about 20 minutes on the smooth fast portion of the decent. We arrived at the bottom. The most majestic landscape, beyond our imagination. This was a good day, well worth the hard work and misery we have endured from the first day of skating.

We made our way past bull drawn hoes and lush green fields stacked upon the mountain side on our way to Lucanis. A quaint gorgeous little town in this paradise. There is fruit… for one night we don’t dine on cookies. We find a hotel with a room open. We wash our clothes by hand on the roof and go to bed shortly after sunset.

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Day 12: And they said we couldn´t skate it!

Last night ended with my first electric shower. An electric shower is a type of shower that uses an element in the shower head to heat frigid water as it leaves the shower head. The water has extremely little time to heat up before it leave the head and hits you. Its gives one degree of added warmth. Basically deadly cold becomes liveable… but still unbearable for more than a few minutes. I washed one body part at a time as I shivered violently. Afterwards I slipped into my freshly hand washed clothes, still wet and equally as cold. Then it was off to bed. When the sun returned to light the beautiful countryside view just outside my hotel room window we packed our bags. We grabbed some food supplies for the next few hours and the we embarked yet another climb. This time the pavement was nice and smooth, and more unbelievable scenery. After a few hours at the top of our climb the road conditions turned for worse. We have repeatedly been told that the last 10k to Poquio ws not skateable due to lack of pavement. And for good reason, the road becomes a gravel path adorned with man sized potholes. However after only 3 km of flan it becomes a steep downhill gravel path with large man sized potholes. We pushed hard through the flat barley scraping by. (perhaps a great way to ruin a foam core board) when Adam and I got the decent we bombed it. It was rouge but little is more difficult than what we have endured in recent history. Just before the bottom of the hill Aaron had a nasty spill that required medical attention. I cleaned out his wound which was about 1 inch squared by a quarter inch deep. We then found a hostel… Hostel Riso in Poquio and from there we sent Aaron in a three wheeled buggy to the closest hospital, were he would be cleaned up again and prescribed antibiotics. Adam and I walked around town, perused the various mercados and I purchased some Amoxacilin (antibiotic) for my crushed tooth. I love the names from drugs down here. All you have to do is say the english name for the drug and affix Either an “a” or “inos” the the end of the name. Ei. Amoxacilin is “Amoxacilina”, and anti inflammatory are “anti inflamatorinos”. Aaron came back looking good and we then went to the fanciest restaurant we could find in Poquio just because we were fed up with cookies and stale bread. The food was bland and cheap… Over our meal we spoke heavily on the topic of food. The best part about Peru is the views, the beautiful terrain, and at the bottom of the list comes cuisine. This is become a major issue, I am a vegitarian and I am begining to feel the clutch of malnutrition, my general good healthy feeling is diminishing at an alarming rate. While finishing my Nancy pants meal of stale bread with old cheese sandwiches and coco mate we hear someone ask, where are you from, in English. A older German couple sitting at the table next to us wants to know if the Coco Mate Hill have a positive effect on them in their attempts to acclimatize to the high altitude. It so turns out they are on a motor bike tour of South America. It also turns out they are both physicians. They take us back to their Hostel and give Aaron muscle relaxants and some fake skin to use to bandage his arm and help it heal faster. Then to top it off they gave us blank prescription papers to use at the pharmacies incase we want to claim medicine on our insurance plans. (Otherwise there is no use for prescription papers down here as you don’t need prescriptions to purchase drugs. Esther its illegal or it isn´t.)

We walked home in the dark through this strange dark town with muddy dirt roads getting strange looks from the locals who maybe see white people once per year. A midnight marching band marches by just before we make it to our hostel. Now in my cushy bed, I´m just about to fall asleep as I write this so good night.

For more info and pictures check out www.longtreksonskatedecks.com

Day 13: Short day

Late Start today, Adam and I got up and bought food and then waited for Aaron as he spent 6 hours at an Internet café. Once he returned we promptly left town and began yet another climb. This one was to turn into one of our high passes. After climbing for about 3 hours it began to rain so we found a field and started to set up camp. The owners of the property found us and we had a nice chat. We got along well with Jenny a chechuan teenager who was caring for the cattle that inhabit the field during the day. The rain died away and we decided that our food reserves wouldn´t do us very well the next day and that two of us should return into town while another stayed back to watch the camp site and guard from thieves. It was a fun and face downhill. I volunteered to stay back and guard but I was going to skate the top section of the downhill with the others first then I could take a short cut back up the hill to our camp. Speeding down the hill without the weight of our bags was amazing. I stopped about 4-5 corners down before returning to camp. While Aaron and Adam shopped in Poquio I session the three corners that swept around my camp. So good. I love speedboarding. Aaron and Adam came back after about an hour in a little three wheeled taxi and we spent the evening talking about geeky skateboard stuff and eating mangoes and cookies.

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Day 14: Long day

It was a wet night – dew and fog saturated our gear again. Luckily I am using Event and Primaloft gear that does better with dampness than Adam and Aarons down gear and regular PTFE fabrics. We waited for the sun to rise to dry out our gear before heading off to climb. 90 percent of our skating was all uphill. It feels like we skated at least 70km. I don´t trust the maps. A straight line on a map could contain 100´s of switchbacks with kilometre wide straights. Many short stretches have turned out to be much longer in real life. It’s a good thing we got more food last night. We spent nearly the whole day skating with no towns or shacks on the way minus one truck stop located in the middle nowhere. It was manned by two lovely ladies one of which was 8 months pregnant. We ate eggs and French fries the standard fare in every mountain restraint we´ve been to thus far. Some places only cook this. (and they sell cookies and stale buns). We had fun with our Spanish and we told all kind of crazy stories to these girls about how in Canada we drink cat milk and how in the US people eat dog meat. Once again we were off. To climb for more hours. Through extreme winds, With the sunlight quickly fading away we Stara to think about setting up camp. We are 14036 ft, that’s 4279 meters high. For some reason it feels like the highest we´ve been. Even walking comes with heavily laboured breathing. 1.5 breaths for each push of the board up hill (constant pushing). One thing is for sure, this would be the highest altitude we would sleep at. I spotted a small grouping of rocks that formed a wall about 25 feet tall that World block the crazy winds for our camp. The camp site was surround by a nice soft strange looking moss. We enjoyed what is likely to be the most beautiful sunset I´m likely ever destined to see. You can see the pictures but they won’t approach a fraction of the beauty that surrounded us. The temperature in the evening sunlight was 5 degrees Celsius (40F) that’s the rating of my sleeping bag, I´m in for a cold night. I figured this World happen… I chose weight over comfort. Its lights out in this bivy bag…

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Day 15: A black cloud of Mayonaise

I awoke covered in frost… No feeling in my toes, must have been below freezing. It took hours upon hours to warm up, and dry out. We spent the first half of our day skating uphill to Negromayo which I believe is a direct translation to Black Mayonaise. All they had in town was cookies and we were hungry. Living like every 10 year old boys dream after days of skating we gorged ourselves on animal crackers and crème wafers. Unfortunately we are not 10 and this diet of cookies is starting to toll on our energy. On the brink of vomiting we left town praying some real food might find its way to us. The rapid deep breathing of skating uphill above 4300 meters really agitated our stomachs and many breaks were taken to prevent ourselves from losing our cookies. Suddenly, the temperature dropped from 25 degrees Celsius to 10 degrees and it began to hail… big painful hail, it hurt! The cursed black cloud of mayonnaise was not about to let go of us so easily. We sprinted onto Conndorcocha where I got to eat real food… Eggs and French fries… Another dish that’s becomes all too regular. After dinner we got to do our first decent in days of skating uphill. We blitzed it in the rain, and it dropped us into a small town nestled between two large walls of rock named Panoamarca. We grabbed a room for 6 soles each so we could dry our staff out a bit more as we slept.

I forgot to mention while in Negromayo we almost purchased an Alpaca for 90 soles (30 us dollars) We spent much of our day chasing Alpacas too. Thus all our attempts at become alpaca herders have failed…

Maybe tomorow?

For more info and pictures check out www.longtreksonskatedecks.com