I woke up Saturday morning, turned on the radio, and was just in time to hear the entirety of Ronny James Dio’s “Holy Diver”.

It was going to be a good day.

The Lil Surfer ditch.

After enjoying a hearty breakfast with my host, Mike Moore, I headed down to Austin. My Destination– the Lil Surfer ditch. As longtime readers of this blog will know (or maybe they won’t – who knows), this is one of my favorite spots to ride. It’s especially good on a longboard.

The ditch has multiple huge roll-in areas, some parking blocks, some metal pipe coping, and lots of weird angles. One some properly large and softish wheels, it is indeed a pleasure to ride.

So upon arriving I met by Brent and Mark, and soon joined by Jack Newkirk, Eric C, and another rad dude whose name escapes me.

Let me first say that these guys I was skating with, well, they are the masters of this ditch. There are some other great locals, like John Armstrong (currently in Iraq), Shredward, and others, who are all master of it too. So while I’m not really a local here anymore, I was in some good company.

Eric punishes the lip for bad behavior. Later the ditch would punish him back, but that's the way skating goes.

Newk began flowing around, saying he was gonna skate kind of “sissy” that day to avoid injury. That lasted about half a run. Dude just can’t control himself, and was quickly grinding the hell out of the concrete edges of the walls, doing killer Bonedrechts, and speeding all over the place.

Likewise, Eric Conn was seriously ripping the place up. Grinds, bean plants, axle stalls at weird angles, etc. By the end of the session Eric had sacrificed blood to the skate gods, and rung his bell pretty hard. Thankfully he is OK. Dude is a ripper.

Mark, flowing with ease.

Mark Hanks is the flow master of the Lil Surfer. A totally nice and relaxed guy, Mark can move with effortless speed up, down, and across the ditch. The guy never even appears to be pumping the transition, yet the speed remains. The happens only when you are a local who really understands the mechanics of a place.

Brent T, of the whole crew, seems to be the only one with an pop left in his legs. And by that I mean he’ll do an ollie here or there. Really good skater, doing ollies on to the roll out, ollie frontside disasters on the stacked parking blocks, and boardsliding up on of the little retaining walls. Very creative.

Brent, no doubt preparing for a grind or ollie on the next wall.

Skater X -- sorry dude - I never got your name! This guy is RAD!

Skater X. The first thing that came to mind when I saw this guy was Jay Adams. Very smooth style. There were numerous times it appeared to me he was in the middle of a trick and it wasn’t working out, and he turned into something else on the fly. And the guy can stay on his board. Stuff that I would have bailed, he pulled off. He stayed on. RAD!

Here’s some video, shot with my trusty Canon point-n-shoot camera.

I’ll be posting some video and Part 2 of the Road Trip later this week, but my buddy Jack Newkirk took this pic and I wanted to post it. It is nice to have a friend who is a master photographer.

Photo by the great Jack Newkirk.

My good friend John Armstrong, as usual pimping the Gravity Mini-Carve with great style, at the very fun Lil Surfer ditch, in Austin. This time, John is rocking the Randal 150s…nice…

Here are a few pics from a session I was at this weekend at the Lil Surfer ditch, in Austin. These are shots of my friends Jack and John. We were hitting the ditch on Gravity Minicarve boards. They are both Gravity teamriders. Great guys, and a really fun session.

John has really become sort of the master of the Minicarve. He has a great style, and this seemingly primitive board really suits him. I say seemingly primitive because, really, the board is very well-designed.

I have never seen anyone that skates quite like Jack, except maybe pictures and video of Jay Adams. Jack gets sooooo low to the ground, and just skates so fast. I didn’t even gets pics of most of his stuff – he was doing footplants, bonedrechts, etc. Really rad.