Check my vimeo page for the little edit I put together of my Hawaii vacation.

I just got home from a week long vacation in Honolulu. Let me tell you, going from -20 to +20 in a matter of hours is incredible. Stepping off that plane I was immersed in a very strange, yet entirely appealing culture. I’ve never really enjoyed the USA very much, they tend to have their heads up their asses and their noses in everyone’s business. Hawaii didn’t strike me that way at all, and I’m left to assume that this is a result of their geographic isolation and polynesian influence.
The only time I became angry with American ‘policies’ was when I went into a 7 eleven to buy several items; including wine, condoms and handcuffs (seriously) and the dumb lady couldn’t read my drivers license and decided to tell me that she “only accepts American I.D”. So I told her “There is a reason why the entire world hates your country” at which point she started stuttering and looked like she either pooped herself or wanted to cry. I bought the condoms and handcuffs and went next door to buy the wine.

The thing I found most interesting about Hawaii was how deep surf culture permeates their society; sort of the way Hockey rules Canadian culture. Even their sports bars have surf boards all over the walls signed by pros and surf legends, the way we have pictures of hockey greats. In fact while I was there, the Volcom Pipeline Pro competition was going on and it was on all the TV’s at the resort and bars we went to. Very cool. Obviously surrounded by all of this, I was pumped to give surfing a shot. We found a little beach on the South West shore of the island where the waves were manageable, and called ‘Hawaii Surfboard Rentals’… an interesting venture which will deliver a surfboard to you anywhere on the island within 20 minutes for 30$; and you get to use the board all day and then they come and pick it up…
Learning to surf was pretty fun, I didn’t take lessons or anything but I managed to get up all the same. I definitely recommend trying it if any of you ever find yourselves near the ocean.

The surf culture in Hawaii has resulted in a great collection of concrete parks all through the island of Oahu. Before I went there I had a really hard time finding good pictures and descriptions of the parks. And the parks that I did find weren’t as good as the parks that I actually rode. The first park that I rode, I found by accident. On the North Shore of Oahu is the most famous surf spot in the world called Pipeline, and right across the street from this beach is a well hidden little bowl park filled with salty old surfers that would put ol’ Redbeard to shame. The first time I showed up and took my bike out of the car, I knew it was a no-go. 20 or 30 skaters giving me the stink eye. So I returned the next day at 9am and gave it a quick shred. The park was built around an old pool, classic 70s kidney pool with stairs and everything you’d expect. Some of the smoothest trannies I’ve ever ridden too. I would love to ride there without worrying about having skaters murder me for falling and scraping the concrete. I did get a chance to ride a couple of other parks though. I met a bunch of locals, and had a great time riding my bike… if only for a couple of days before I came home to this frigid climate again. I have a video that I’m uploading right now, and I’ll have posted soon that will give a better idea of what those parks are like. But I do have one photo from the Pipeline skatepark below. Note the bathing suit styles with no socks. Just like it used to be in the 206 days.

The trip was great, I could have spent much more than a week on that island. Unfortunately I ran out of both time and money, but I’m coming home with memories that definitely make it worthwhile. I’d love to go back someday on a dedicated BMX trip, it would definitely be worth it.

We went whale watching one day and spotted this humpback just off the south shore in Waikiki.

Roland already posted this on the message board, but it’s a great read and I didn’t want it lost in a sea of posts in a week and bumped off the page, so I’m re-posting it here. Stay tuned for Day 2. Take the time to read some inspiring words from this Ottawa BMX veteran on his long quest to ride Woodward.

This was a long time coming. I think I first saw adds for Woodward around 1989 in the BMX magazines and have been wanting to go ever since. Over the last several years I’ve tried a few times to get there without success. A few years ago my sweet wife even bought gift certificates to take me and we booked a date. Unfortunately I got injured and we had to cancel. I don’t even remember what the injury was but by the time it healed summer came around and I decided to wait until another cold season. Again though things didn’t go as planned…

That summer I got hurt pretty bad. Bad enough to not only affect my riding but my lively hood, my ability to be a good father, and a good husband. Anyone who has had a long term injury knows how tough it can be. I’ve had other injuries where I thought I may never ride again but this was worse. I was pretty sure I would never ride again and while I found that difficult I was more worried that I wouldn’t event be able to take my son to a movie. So…I put my Woodward gift certificates up for sale and I thought that dream had passed.

Thankfully, time takes care of a lot of things. I’ve since made a full  recovery and had a chance to follow some other dreams. Riding, while still a passion of mine, has a much different flavor and feel. I am still hardwired with a drive to push things and progress but I tend to direct it along different, less dangerous paths.

So when the latest call to the BMX mecca came I was shocked at my apathy. I kind of  wanted to go but it wasn’t with the same driving need I’ve had in the past. Based on tired old man thinking (long drive, away from my family, ….) I actually had decided not go. Thankfully Shelley reminded me of how we want to live. Namely, life is short, make it count, follow your dreams small or large. Ok sign me up! Even after paying though I had to choose again. The friday before we were to leave I was offered a pretty good work assignment which would have sent me to San Fransisco for the week. I chose Woodward again but this time my wife thought I was crazy to turn down a trip to California LOL. Then I got really sick and thought I might have to cancel again. Shelley even mentioned that I must have some sort of Woodward curse. For 3 days I forced myself to sleep, popped lots of cold fx and vitamin C and hoped. When Thursday finally rolled around I declared myself ready to go and hoped it was true!

Finally after a long drive, a night in hotel, an epically long wait for food at a Denny’s, and a Wal-Mart shopping spree we were at the gate. Yes Roland has arrived. I was kind of hoping for trumpets or something…oh well. We checked in (really nice digs) and got ready to ride. I forced myself to take as much time as possible to get ready. Two reasons. The first was that I knew there was a lot of riding ahead and the second and more important was that I was vibrating I was so excited and didn’t think I’d actually be able to ride that way! I rode around all the outdoor parks to check them out than walked all the indoor parks. It didn’t work. I was still vibrating but I wasn’t there to check out the PA countryside, beautiful as it is, so I joined the boys in lot 8 and dropped in. I wish I could tell you what happened next was some epic riding because it would make a better story but, well, that didn’t happen. I did find a gear I hadn’t used in a while though and managed to get a high speed wall ride thing done and worked on a high speed transfer to a small ramp on the deck of the bowl. Enough to leave me grinning and feeling 30 again!

Time for a break. Chris, Jorden, and I left Lot 8 to go find some food. I don’t remember the name of the pizza place in the little town but the food was amazing. Next mission, beer. We headed up the street to the “hole in the wall” bar. Classic. The best was watching the old surly local guy declare himself liquor inspector and take Jorden’s id. After he finally figured out the date he pronounced  “…yure lucky…”. The whole time Jorden was awkwardly smiling and bobbing his head waiting for the guy to smile and say he was kidding. Instead when asked: “…I don joke”. Too funny. My turn to buy beer. Been a while since I got carded. Once the formerly surly fellow and his friendly partner figured out how old I was they decided that I should probably be staying in the local cemetery instead of Woodward. They also added that I should have been there for Halloween because that is when the graveyard parties the hardest…

Sooo…. back to Woodward with beer in hand and stinking like smoke an stale beer.

After dinner we geared up and headed to the Playground. Weird little setups but some cool stuff to ride. Kyle was working over a multi-step sub setup, Ace slammed hard trying to log some clips, Jorden was doing lip slides and grinning ear to ear, and I jumped through a wall of foam bricks which sounds much cooler than it was. We finally decided to get out of there because we were all getting beat down by all these tiny ramps. Funny how that works. So we moved on to Cloud Nine and the LARGE foam pit/resi area. This is where the theme of the weekend really took hold with Chris and Jorden starting the quest for flairs into the end of the foam pit. By the end of the night Chris was getting them pretty decent into the foam and I was hoping Jorden wouldn’t try it on a real ramp (sorry Jorden but its true).

Other cool stuff included Chris throwing easy double flips, and other flip variations into the foam and Kyle was doing multi bar spins variations on the resi. For the most part I stayed away from the foam because it is just too exhausting but i did throw one back flip in there and also discovered that I could to front flips if I wanted too. I  landed tires on my first try…cool but not going to happen. I spent most of the night re-learning nothings and supermans on the resi and the last hour was seriously some of the most fun I’ve ever had on my bike. I’ve never charged anything like that before….so much fun. I was going way too fast (well maybe not) but if you could have still framed my face you would have seen me grinning at the thought of pedaling as fast as I have in years towards a monster 6ft lip. Time for some ice, a shower, a few beers in the hot tub. Totally satisfied. Time to get ready for day 2.

- Roland Labreque

Check back for the rest of the woodward coverage over the next couple of days.

Landozine Toronto Trip Sept 2009 from Rob Lando on Vimeo.

Chris Chitaroni put together this video he filmed and edited of his, Jorden Guth, an Andrew Grant’s trip to Toronto earlier in the month.

This ramp doesn't even make sense. The only thing it was good for was doing a high five on top of.

For the past couple of days, Jorden Guth, Andrew Grant and I were engaged in a short BMX tour of Toronto. I always look forward to visiting stinktown; its constantly an adventure. From the crazy jibberish speaking hobos, to the amazing pizza places on every single street corner to the abundance of incredible riding spots, you can easily spend a weekend immersed in the constant engagement of awesomeness.

On the first day we rode Wallace Emmerson park, the place where they keep all the not-so-metro ramps during the summer. All of the ramps were in pretty terrible condition though; soggy decks, transitions that didn’t quite meet the ground, broken ramp ribs everywhere. Despite all this, we still had a pretty good time. Mike Heaton was there building ramps for next year’s not-so-metro, local kids were ripping it up, and a hobo came through talking crazytalk to himself. Textbook Toronto.

After riding Wallace Emmerson, we went to hit up some street with the original ‘Bear Jew’, Leland. Andrew had never ridden Toronto street, and seemed pretty impressed with the little bits we found. Right at the base of the CN tower (the bonercolumn) he used a little tranny bump to 180 over a big metal footing for some kind of construction project. He cooked at it through traffic and asian tourists taking pictures in front of the tower and nailed it first try. It was epic.

We took a journey out to the east end of T.O to check out a new skate plaza that was half finished. Construction materials were still strewn about everywhere, but there were easily 20 guys riding BMX. I heard something about filming for a local scene video and that was why everyone was there. The park is going to be pretty rad when it is done, we were more or less exhausted by this point but Jorden still managed to kill it. There is a little quarterpipe-ish structure that is about 2.5 feet wide and 5 feet tall and you need to hop into it… Jorden managed to go above ‘coping’ and throw some sick barspins.

The next day, we left the city to check out Jorden’s hometown of Brampton. The reason we decided to go there was that there are like half a dozen free outdoor public parks. We rode two wooden parks and one concrete, all of which were super neat and entirely original. The first one we rode was my favorite, lots of flowing hips and interesting ramp structures. The second was a concrete monstrosity, every quarterpipe was worse than the last and all the rails pointed you in completely intersecting lines. It was nearly impossible to do more than one trick in a run.

We didn’t get the chance to stop at Bellwood’s for a one pound burger though, which is always a highlight to a TO trip, but one of Jorden’s friends from Brampton hooked us up good at Wildwing where he works. Half price wings and a cute asian waitress who ‘bites’ according to K-mart (Jorden’s buddy) was what our after riding eating session consisted of. Once we finished that, we hit the last park of the day… another wooden gem located on the other side of Brampton. This one had some gnarly ramps and lines, and would probably be a lot of fun if we weren’t completely drained. We managed to snap a couple of photos there but by the end none of us could really do anything more than suck.

Big thanks to Dave Waddell and Leland Nightengale for putting us up while we were down. I think we all had a blast, and I’m optimistic about another trip down before the snow flies. Check below for the photo gallery.

Regardless of who is doing the most work on these trails these days, the man who made it all possible is Nick Barnard. Dude seriously put in 8 hour shifts, and made his kids help him. Thats a real dad. ‘No juiceboxes until the landing is packed!’ The trails scene in Sudbury is pretty gnarly now, lots of young guys throwing serious bangers consistently. When we were there, we didn’t really get to ride with any locals so I don’t have any pictures to show. But take my word when I say that these kids are good. 

 
When you first get to the trails, you might assume that all the jumps were built with a machine of some sorts. Usually jumps this size are built with bobcats… but not in Sudbury. All of these jumps, even the enormous step-up with a landing the size of a house were all built with nothing but shovels and a work ethic that exists only in a blue collar city like Sudbury. In fact, compared to any other trails I’ve ever ridden, these are in a league of their own. I literally could not believe how much larger they are compared to last year. But they’re built immaculately, each jump gives you just enough speed for the next. They’re downhill, effortless and scary as hell. 

Rich doing his 1 flip per year. Meeting quota.

Me turning down the big set

Rich, nosed 360 over the step up

Of course with a trails scene like this you’d expect that the rest of the city has to have other things to ride. There is actually lots of really interesting street there, as the city is built on hills and being a mining town was built really quickly resulting in an interesting downtown core with strange architecture and buildings with crazy angles. There is also a concrete park which was built 3 or 4 years ago and has some pretty neat obstacles to shred. 

Dangler Downwhip. nice background though...

Ginger with a pre faceplant icepick.

Sudbury might be a hard place to justify traveling to, what with the 5 hour drive and all. But if you enjoy riding challenging and fun trails, with perhaps a dash of street it is definitely worth the trek. Especially in the Summer, what with the abundance of swimming holes. Just don’t expect to see too many pretty girls, they’re all fat. Where do you think Jeff Bedard developed his peculiar taste in whales?

Kyle with a carve in to the Bonsar full pipe.

39C in a tree.

Marc Boudreau aka Grizzly Adams

Marc taking photos of Kyle’s gap.

Lafleur getting his carve on.

Jeff with a table over a hip at the Vancouver plaza.

Marc up the mountain.

Enjoying the view.

Jeff simply being a creepy dude.

Hood picnic with shopping cart chairs.

It started as an idea on the way to Montreal one day…the idea of taking a few weeks to drive out to Vancouver and back. It was soon becoming a reality. Everyone had the time booked off well in advance, it was going to be the 39C road trip to Van. A week before the trip Leland Nightengale from Toronto and Andrew Gobbo from Hamilton decided they were going to come along for the ride, It was now 39C + 2 = Team Dilly Dally, the equation in reverse is Team Dilly Dally = 6 dudes with A.D.D.

We left Friday after work and were Sudbury bound for the night. After being on the road for a few hours and passing a beer or two from car to car while driving we decided to just pick up Leland in Sudbury at the Greyhound station and continue on to Thunder Bay which would total 20 hours of driving from Ottawa. The night was crazy as we drove through a gnarly rain storm causing us to reduce speed to 50 km/h sometimes. It was a long first night.

Passing beers.

The next morning we were a few hours out of Thunder Bay when Jaime was pulled over for going too fast. While he was being ticketed we pulled over in the small town we were in, walked 20 feet from the car and found 3 good looking handrails and a pre-fab park, the ground was soaked, especially in the skatepark but after sitting in a car for 17 hours it was game on. We rode for a short while, got some breakfast and kept on keepin’ on. We drove through Thunder Bay and stopped in Dryden for the night, they have a fun concrete park and some dialed places to camp and one pretty sweet local that sold us his most of his case of beer because we got there after hours.

Jamie’s car pulled over.

Sunday we got up feeling rested after being up for a couple days, we packed up camp and headed to Kenora to ride big Ben’s home park for the day. The place is really fun and has something for everyone: bowls, ledges, rails, a place to swim and a grocery store next to it. Once the session died there we got back on the road to make it to Winnipeg before dark. We made it before dark but so did the rain, only allowing us to get a quick session in at the Forks (the Winnipeg Skate Plaza). Once we were done drinking in a parking lot we headed over to visit Prasheel Gopal and Ben Kauffman at their hotel as they were in town doing a few shows. We had a few drinks and that was that.
We woke up in the morning at Gobbo’s buddies house to find that the rain had stopped and the ground was drying, we got some breakfast and headed straight to the Forks. The place is insane to say the least, you’ll just have to look at pictures and then you’ll just have to go there. After spending the majority of the day there we trekked over to another Winnipeg park which also looked like a dream and was a nice change from the skate plaza because all this park required you to do was pedal your ass off and jump everything….or go as slow as you can and do 30 foot icepick grinds. We were all tired from a long day in the blistering hot sun and decided to not drive to far and just get a hotel for the night.

Winnipeg Skate Plaza.

Blistering hot sun.

We met up with Prasheel.

The next day was spent driving across the the Praries to Saskatoon. It was a very flat drive but the Prairies were nice to see, its crazy how far you can actually see sometimes, its also really windy. We arrived in Saskatoon late after noon and rode the park for a little bit. After a while we left and a local show us around to a few street spots near by. We weren’t digging Saskatoon and didn’t even want to spend the night there so we called up Ted Bambrick, who is residing in Edmonton, and told him we were on our way out and we’d be there around 3:00 Am. He couldn’t of been happier. By the time we got there the sun was coming up, although being that far north the sky doesn’t ever get completely pitch black. Close, but not completely.

Ted called into work the next morning and brought us around in his T-top Trans Am that he painted himself to a few local parks in Edmonton. It was still very windy out and most of us just took it easy and watched Ted ride. When we were done riding we watched Ted jump into his car Dukes of Hazzard style because the door didn’t open. We got some donairs (the Shwarma of Alberta) and went and threw a couple loonies at some strippers. Once we got back to Teds house Boudreau and Jaime decided they wanted to try and do some wizard training by playing Wizard Sticks (when you finish you beer you tape it to the bottom of the next beer, you keep going until your stick is taller then you…then your a wizard). They both got 12 down and were both 3 cans short….they also tryed to complete this in a span of 3 hours.

Ted’s car.

Ted himself.

Those two woke up feeling like champs in the morning. Ted was gone to work and it was time to start the final drive to Vancouver. It was just another day of driving, we stopped in a smaller town right along the mountain line and rode the concrete park for maybe an hour just to stretch out and then it was back to driving. We ended up on a bit of a detour and it was probably the best wrong turn ever made. We were still on our way to Van but it was going to take a bit longer. Taking the wrong turn we got to go by Mt. Robson which is the tallest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. There was an information building at the base of mountain and it had a good looking rail on the side of it. Jeff manned up and slid a big rail in front of a bigger mountain in the rain with a snapped chain and slow leak in his front tire. We kept driving and came upon a sign that read “Little Hells Gate National Park” we decided it sounded pretty interesting and went driving down the trail looking for a place to camp, we ended up setting up camp right on the look out platform for Little Hells Gate (Which was a narrow spot in the river where the water rushed heavily). It was a little hard to get the fire started as it had just finished raining but city boy Leland got it going and that was probably the best night of camping I’ve ever had.

Mount Robson handrail.

The best camping spot ever.

We woke up somewhat excited to get back on the road…but before we did anything Leland manned up and jumped into the glacier water for a swim, Gobbo got to his waste and threw in the towel and the rest of us watched them freeze. We were on the road and Van was just a matter hours away. We got side tracked when we came across the actual Hell’s gate. It was a big attraction with a gondala and they served there own Hell’s Gate beer. Hells gate itself is another narrow in the river, its close to 200 feet deep and has double the amount of water Niagara Falls has flowing through it. It was a neat stop to say least after spending the previous night at Little Hells Gate. Now we were actually on the final drive to Van. We arrived sometime in the evening and wasted no time unloading our shit at Adam Macky’s apartment (which was in North Van and had a epic balcony view of downtown Vancouver) and catching the Sea-bus into downtown. We got some solid cheap pizza and pretty much just hung around the plaza all night.

Leland with a glacier dip.

Hells Gate.

View of Vancouver.

Waking up to a view of downtown Vancouver was something I could do for the rest of my life. We slept a little late but got shit rolling kind of fast today and headed right for the Richmond park. The park was fun and the sun was hot, we tired of that pretty fast and headed downtown for a bit of street riding. We weren’t down there long when we were struck by some rain, but luckily Gobbo had lived there before and knew of a few spots we could ride in the rain. We wound up at a basketball court that had a bunch of ledges around it that were made for riding mostly pre fab but also a few coped cement ledges. We rode there for a few solid hours and then called it a day and headed back to Adams for a couple beers.

It was now Sunday. We got up, got some food and went straight to the Hastings bowl/skatepark. The lower section that you’ve probably never seen is really fun…the bowl was scary but really fun to pump around. We rode for a hour or so and then headed to the Kirkstone park to watch the Canadian Concrete series contest and just relax for a bit. There were some crazy locals flying all over the place and a good vibe all around but watching the contest got old so we drove down the street to the infamous snake run. It was a lot of fun just carving through but jumping the hips got pretty scary even with a brake. We went and got some supper headed back to Adam’s and just drank there for the night. Some people ventured up onto the roof and Jeff slept in the hallway all night.

Snake run.

Time was winding down and we only had 2 days left before the long/quick drive home. We went and met up with Leland’s buddy at yet another skatepark Monday morning. The park was called Bonsar, and it was really tight and fun with a few different sections to it. It also featured a 15′ full pipe which was a lot of fun to carve. We rode for a few hours but our main objective for the day was to head to Grouse mountain and take the gondola up to the top, so we did just that. As soon as we got there we noticed there was zip lining at the top, as soon as we were at the top we were getting geared up to zip line. There was 5 different lines to do, the longest one was over 1700 feet long, 350 feet off the ground and traveling at speeds up to 80 km/h. It was pretty epic to say the least. We went and got some really good burgers for supper then stopped for some beverages on our way to Port Coquitlam to ride one of the lit up parks. We got there and the lighting was dim, we jibbed for less then a hour and just called it a night due to shitty lighting.

Zip line action.

Zip lining again.

Last day! We didn’t do to much new stuff today. We went around downtown to a bunch of spots we had already been to get a few things done. Jaime tried his first handrail and missed his back peg, did a gooch slide until his peg caught the up right and fell over into the garden. Boudreau did the same rail after a few tries and then security tried kicking us out. After getting permission for one more try Jaime got up and with no bitch runs slid the whole rail second try. We rode a few more spots and then hit the Coquitlam park later that night (Not Port Coquitlam) and after being there for 20 minutes I got snaked by a dirt bike in the bowl. True story. About 15 minutes after that I ventured into the bush for a tinkle and came across a city run race track/trails….we barely rode the park after that. The light went out after a while and we headed back to base. Once we were there we equipped ourselves with some beers and headed down to the water front where we partied until 5:30 am. It was around 6:30 in the morning once we finally settled down for a few hours of sleep before hitting the road back home.

Race track. Racer’s ready…

Woke up around 11 feeling half rested but ready to drive. Gobbo had found a cheap flight home a few weeks later and stayed behind in Van. We got out of there around 1pm and headed for Calgary’s Millennium park which would be the last and worst stop of the trip. Driving through the mountains still hadn’t gotten old. We were not out of the mountains and in Calgary now, it was 2am when we got to Millennium which was alright because its lit 24 hours a day. The park is not very fun and all I did was pedal really fast at the full pipe. We stayed for an hour, dropped Leland off at a random Tim Hortons because he had some business to tend to in the Edmonton area. It was back to just being 39C. From Calgary we headed straight to Timmins, which means we drove for 46 hours from Vancouver to Timmins and had the short little stop in Calgary. It was a long 46 hours and was nice to be back near home soil. We spent Friday night in Timmins and got some well needed sleep.

Saturday Jaime and Boudreau showed as a few local spots. The street was gnarly, one fall and you were ground beef. We packed back into our mobile homes and finished the last 8 hours to Ottawa. Being home was nice but I would of much rather still been in Vancouver. Everyone felt the same. If you ever have the chance to drive across Canada or even just take a trip to Vancouver DON’T hesitate and you won’t regret it.

- Kyle Lafleur

Jeff is greazy.

Roadtrip crew in the arms of the samsquantch

Wizard sticks.

Jamie’s tribute to metal.

Jeff’s tribute to Micheal Jackson.

Jeff with a rail hop in Timmins.

Some light reading for the trip.

Leland with a smith grind on a skatepark ledge.

Boudreau with a thread the needle smith grind.

Kyle – oversmith (?) in Kenora

While in Edmonton they met up with everyone’s favorite furnace cleaner, Ted Bambrick.

Ted Life.

In Vancouver they stayed with Adam McKay, and this is the view from his place.

Random dirt biker snaking people in Coquitlam.

By the title of this file, I’m not sure if this trick was actually pulled.

Leland discovering that glacier water is cold.

Kyle – double peg to 180

Summer Jewish Santa.

Kyle with a little prick in his mouth.

Andrew Gobbo with a big hop.

Gobbo hopping over the man train in Winnipeg.

Boudreau – double peg

Jamie Lawlor – wheel jam

Plaza icepick by Leland.

Boudreau with a whip over a bump.

Jeff sliding a big rail.

Suited up for zip lining at Grouse Mountain.