Roland’s Woodward Log – Day 1
Posted by Prashant - 17/11/09 at 02:11:35 pm
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
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