Here are the pics I took during the Sizzler trip. Some are sorta bad – I was trying to pan along with the racers. A few are not too horrible though.

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From STIBroker – Giant Slalom on Day One:

From Chris Doan — Hybrid Slalom on Day Two:

Day 2 starting ramps!

Wow, after hanging on the hill all day Saturday, even without skating, I was pretty beat. Slept late at my host’s house, some old college friends, and my buddy Russ made some excellent french toast. After loading up for the day and for the trip home later, I headed over to the Day Two location for Tight Slalom and Hybrid Slalom – Ghetto Hill #2 (or is it #3?)

I got there around 10am, and skaters were of course already practicing for hybrid slalom. This hill is shorter and mellower than the frightening monstrosity on which Day One was held, as Tight and Hybrid Slalom are more technical forms of racing.

They had a a problem with the electronic timing system which seemed to set the race back by about an hour. I spent some time cruising down the hill a few times on one of my downhill boards. Fun.

At last they got the racing going. The format was head-to-head — two racers on parallel courses. Very exciting stuff, and lots of entries.

Frankly, today I was kind of tired of shooting pics. I got some nice shots of skaters and friends hanging out, and a few of actual racing, but really just kind of hung out and enjoyed the scene.

Hybrid Slalom!

The great John Armstrong showed up later, and I had a good time riding with him on the street down at the bottom of the hill.

By 4pm they were just getting around to getting close to almost being ready to run the Hybrid Slalom finals, and that meant we still needed to get through Tight Slalom. Then the awards and dinner at Wahoo’s later in the evening. Well, I decided it was time to get home, so I said my farewells, thanked Eddy Martinez for his efforts at running such a great event, and hit the road back to Dallas.

I am uploading a ton of photos right now, and tomorrow I’ll get them posted. I’ll also get some video from Day One posted. Should be rad.

Update! Photos by Newk!

Left Belton this morning, headed to the coffee shop and filled up on caffeine. Went right over to the hill, where the Giant Slalom and Downhill events were held today.

Photo by Jack Newkirk.

My first thought upon seeing the hill as “Damn, this is a real hill”. Really nice pavement and steep. The launch ramp for Giant Slalom was – and I shit you not — 9 feet high. I’ll post pics when I get home, but combining that ramp with the steep hill, and you have the makings of some fast skating.

They ran the pro and A Class races, and moved slightly lower on the hill for B Class. If you have never seen this kind of skating, pictures and video don’t do it justice. I’ve see dudes on vert ramps doing 8 foot air, etc, etc, but I think Giant Slalom may require the biggest yarbles of anything in skating, except maybe the mega-ramp stuff. These guys are turning and pumping hard around cones at 40mph.  It is no joke. The skating was good. I don’t think I saw a single person go down to the ground today.

After doing a time trial to see how to group people up, they ran the downhill as 4 man races, from the very top of the hill. The hill has some curves, and while it isn’t really a “technical” hill, it is curvy enough to be interesting.

Lou Statman, blasting down the hill. Photo by Jack Newkirk.

I guess the winners will be announced tomorrow, after Hybrid and Tight slalom.

More pics and video tomorrow.

Photo by Jack Newkirk.

A quick blog entry for TLB – 10:45pm, 3/26/10/

Today I started the 2010 Texas Sizzler Road Trip by driving down to Waco and skating with Kevin Clancy and the Waco Longboard Club guys.

Got to Waco about noon, parked at the alumni association building, and skated over to campus on the Minicarve. It was the first time since I guess 1990 that I’ve skated on Campus. Spent about 45 minutes carving around in front of the gym. Lots of fun. It was warm. Got a call from Kevin to meet him and the boys at Teriyaki Park, a local Japanese eatery at University Parks and Franklin. That part of town has changed. Its kind of nice, actually.

After lunch we headed up to Cameron Park to skate. Cameron Park is a hilly place, with generally good asphalt roads. The section the guys skate is pretty steep and twisty. The park is heavily wooded, so you have to be very careful about traffic. In my usual fashion, I let them lead, to take out any cars that might be coming up against us. Old guys are smart.

Funny — When I was skating that town, these guys were either about one or two years old, or hadn’t been born yet.

Public parks are weird places during weekdays. There are usually some sketchy characters just sorta hanging, driving through, or “whatever”. It is the “whatever” that is sketchy. Today was no exception. No place to be, and nothin’ to do.

That being said, we had 7 or 8 people skating, and didn’t have to rumble with any drug dealers or pimps, so I guess its all good. The riding was fun!

Then we headed down to Hillcrest Hospital, south of town on IH-35. Back behind the hospital is a very nice hill. You can get a good quarter mile run on some smooth and buttery new asphalt. The wind was with us, which was also nice. I took a few runs, and did some filming. Hopefully I can splice together something interesting with the footage.

The session was cut short when the Waco Fuzz showed up, pulling over our “tow car”. Yes, the boys had been skitching back up the hill, and the Man in Blue had all 7 or 8 of ‘em sitting on the curb. I happened to have just been sitting on the curb at the top of the hill fiddling with my camera when this happened. La Policia asked me if I knew them, so of course I lied and said no. I’m sure he didn’t believe me, as I was sitting on a longboard, and had a helmet on. But he didn’t push it. Pretty sure I was a good ten years older than the cop.

Anyway, he gave the lads a short lecture, was polite to them and didn’t write any tickets, and told us to scram. So we split.

Lesson #1. Don’t skitch.

Lesson #2: It is fun to ride with a lot of guys, but if you do that at one of your favorite spots, it is likely you will get kicked out, arrested, or ticketed. Really, I think if there had only been 2 or 3 skaters no one would have cared.

This was about 4:30 in the afternoon, or maybe 5pm. I considered my next move. I thought about going back up to Baylor and skating my old spots some more, but decided instead to head down to Austin. At 8pm there was supposed to be a Riders Meeting and Meet and Greet at Wahoo’s Fish Taco, for the folks racing in the Sizzler on Saturday and Sunday.

Got to Austin about 6pm, I guess. Made the mistake of driving near the UT campus. Traffic was, as always, bad. I had a small delay due to about 200 cyclist coming through for Critical Mass, but since I’m a cyclist myself I kind of enjoyed seeing them. All kinds of bikes and riders. Anyway, stopped at a cash machine to get some green, and then headed to Wahoos. Parking was an issue. That part of town is much, much busier on Friday night than it was back when we lived near there. After about 25 minutes of searching, I lucked out and got a killer free parking spot near the restaurant.

Wahoo’s Fish Tacos is not only a great place to get some food, but it is a skate-food mecca. They always are very supportive the local skate and longboard scenes, and the skaters reciprocate the love.

I walked in and quickly found Lou Statman chatting up a couple of out-of-state people. Glen Bukowski was there too. I got some food and sat down with Glen. I was running on empty, so four tacos hit the spot quite nicely. As I was eating, Eddie Martinez and Mark “Gumby” Gosser, founding members of the Texas Outlaws walked in. I greeted them and continued stuffing my face. Over the next hour the place filled up with old guys in Vans skate shoes. Slalom legend and new Texas Outlaw Henry Hester showed up, as did Richie and Maria Carrasco. Gary Fluitt was in the house. The Bomb Squad was there. Mark, from texaslongboards.com was there. Etc, etc, etc.

I took my leave of the place about 9pm, as I was pretty tired and needed to drive an hour up to Belton, to my place of rest at Mike Moore’s house. On the way to my car I bought a nice big slice of cheese pizza from a pizza cart. I tell you — it is like a carnival down there now.

Pulled into Mike’s driveway about 10:15pm, typed this up, and now going to sleep. Good night.