Roland’s Woodward Log – Day 2
Posted by Prashant - 29/11/09 at 04:11:16 pm
Click below to read the conclusion to Roland’s Woodward experience, and soak in the wise words of a Real Dad.
Foreword: A lot of sessions happened in a short period of time and they kind of blend. I’ve tried to get stuff in the right order but forgive me if some of it isn’t quite right. Call it poetic license….
Day 2 – Reinforcement Day
Parenthood shapes you in many ways. Most are positive but… despite a full day of traveling and riding the day before, not really sleeping well, and the fact that I could definitely use a few extra hours of shut eye, sleeping in just wasn’t going to happen. 8:00am is about as good as it gets. Oh well. Hmmm…what to do today? Lets see…some of the most iconic, and best parks anywhere await. 9:00am to 11:00pm wow. I guess I better pace myself.
My first step out of bed lays out an early path for me. In one of my last few runs the day before I sprained my ankle. Nothing too serious but with two days of riding left I better do what I can. After making myself reasonably presentable its off to the lobby to find some breakfast, some ice for my foot, and something other than Gatorade to wash back some Ibuprofen.
9:00am rolls around quickly. Of course none of the rest of the crew are even remotely conscious but the parks are open!
I had planned all along to wait for the reinforcements (Rich, Brandon, and Jay) to arrive around 2:00 before getting things going. I mean riding for 13 hours is just not an option so this idea made a lot of sense. Might as well wait to ride with my buddies. Still… I spent some time contemplating the absurdity of the situation. Namely, being within 300ft of 3 great parks and choosing not to ride… Anyone who knows me, knows that when it comes to riding I don’t stop…maybe even can’t stop. In a move that is totally out of character for me though, I do the right thing.
It really was a beautiful morning with not to many more like it left in 2009. The leaves were mostly gone, but the sun was shining, and the hills were still green so I went for a walk. I wandered towards the X-games bmx downhill track. This thing is unbelievable. Its all grown over and it took me a while to figure it out because the gaps are impossible. Next I followed the signs to the ropes course which is in valley with a small creek running through it. The ropes course looks like fun but what really got my attention was the mega-ramp set-up. This is for training and is much smaller than the competition ramps used at X-games…but damn! I stood at the top for quite a while just trying to come to grips with the idea of rolling in never mind hitting the 10+ ft lip at the bottom. Freaky. (http://www.zapiks.com/le-vrai-premier-double-front.html
). Hidden over another small hill I found a competition style dirt jump set-up…this place just keeps going!
I headed back to the lodge to see if the guys were up and get some more ice. The lodge is actually a really nice place.The main focus of the area seems to be farming, purveying radness, and Penn State University. This happened to be the weekend of the big Penn State vs Ohio football game. As a consequence many of the guests were a little confused as to why a group of mostly grown Canadian men would drive 8hrs to ride little kids bikes and we were a little confused by the idea of a tailgating grill (http://www.topoftheline-travel.com/trailer-hitch-grill.html). I really enjoyed the conversations and atmosphere though and I learned a lot about the differences between my Canadian University experiences and the US experience.
Yep I was still stalling before hitting the parks…
I even went for a little nap. At about 1:00pm I decided it was time. A quick lunch of left over pizza and some scrounging for some tape for my ankle and I geared up…nothing worse than starting with a sweaty helmet. When I got to Lot 8 I was surprised to see that Rich, Brandon, and Jay were already there and going strong. The first thing I saw though was Chris going for flairs from quarter to bank over the 4ft gap. Really, really close. With a full compliment of guys it was really hard to keep track of things but some of the cool stuff I saw was Kyle doing lines through the bowled corner wall area and bar spinning the gap. There was also lots of foam pit shenanigans. It seemed to take forever for me to get going but my ankle finally loosened up. For the most part I just rolled around and tried to figure out how to get over the box in the center with some speed. I spent some time trying to figure out some kind of nosepick-wall runningman-decade-540 thing which didn’t pan out but not for lack of trying. Then, I tried to get smoothly into the corner pocket bowl, and fired out the high speed wall transfer, and gap to the quarter on the bowl deck from the day before. Not clean but getting there.
Later we headed back to Cloud 9. Most of us were hitting up the foam/resi area and a flurry of foam flairs was thrown with Chris, Jorden, Chris, Jay, Rich, and Brandon getting in on the action. There was some good attempts and some not so good ones. My favorite was when Brandon ended 4ft up, with his back flat against the wall, his knees bent as if he were sitting in a chair and totally upside down. Watching Kyle try to flip into the foam was also entertaining. Chris was throwing flip attempts over the spine resi which looked really do-able for him. After a while Jorden took his flair attempts over to the vert resi and the rest of us slowly migrated over. He had his usual amount of good luck. In sliding out of one attempt he managed to get his arm caught in a bubble at one of the seams. lt looked like it hurt a bunch but it could have been so much worse. Gruesome. Chris also took a pretty good slam trying to flair transfer from the mini to the vert resi.
One of the treats of the evening though was watching Jay play on the monster vert ramp. He just looked so natural which isn’t easy to do on 13.5 ft ramp. He also landed a flair on the resi. The first one rolled away from all weekend!
I spent a lot of time on top of the vert resi contemplating doing flairs. It didn’t really scare me but for some reason I just didn’t do it…I must be getting soft.
From the vert ramp things moved to the Cloud 9 mini which is as close to a perfect ramp as you’re going to find. We had a good session with pretty much the whole crew getting in on it. At first I was having a hell of a time just getting over the spine without hanging up…spines are my personal nemesis. After Rich gave me some really obvious advice, something along the lines of “You have to jump over it…” I actually started to figure it out and even enjoyed going over. Never thought I’d say that. I ended my mini session by scaring the hell out of myself on a 360 nose pick to loop out though. I’m a little embarrassed by my helmet and bike throwing afterwards. I don’t often react that way but I was just so mad at myself because I almost ended my weekend right there. Time to take a break and get some supper.
Refueled slightly with leftover pizza and free Matador snack sticks, eyes starting to look jaundiced from too much gatorade, and totally exhausted it was time for a mellow session to wrap up day 2. Lot 8, one of the most fun set-ups I’ve ever ridden, awaits. I was really too pooped to party and just nibbled around while, around me, things started to escalate. Lots of guys got in on working over the big Red Bull wall ride which was a treat to watch. Several off us spent some time trying to film some nibbles on the small center box. I got an opposite 360 on, to 360 nose pick off and also did a nothing on, to 360 nose off that I was happy with. Watching Rich rule the box/large quarter section was awesome. One of my favorite moments was when he gave whoever it was on the deck extreme Raditude in the middle of boosting large. That quarter is no joke…at least to the rest of us. I also really enjoyed watching Brandon ride the park. We all know that he is a tail whipping trick machine but he was doing some great lines with power and style. It was kind of an eye opener. I was still dogging it but time was getting short so decided I’d start pedaling and see if I could get a few things done. After a few attempts I finally got the transfer into the bowl deck quarter done proper. Yeah!
It seems that when some of the guys visited woodward the previous year they called out a hand-plant transfer line for me. Time to get it done. I’ve not really played on sub boxes too much and was a little worried that I wouldn’t have enough space to get up and over like I needed too. One of the things I’ve finally learned though is: when in doubt add a crank or two it and it served me well. First try was pretty close. I just needed to clean up a few details (squeeze my feet and pop with my hand). 3 or 4 more tries and it was done. I was pretty stoked but it was really only the first step. What I really wanted, was to do it over the gap. Time to add a few more cranks.
With my first try I just wanted to make sure that I got my hand on good and proper, had the gap under control, and just make it over the wall. It went well but, just like I thought, it was going to be tough to pull back into the bank. The only way I could think off was to get really inverted so my weight would be up instead of out over the wall. I took several runs at it and was getting closer. On one attempt I finally got my weight in but forgot the bike which went flying and bouncing around like they sometime do when granted a little freedom. Ok so weight in…check. Next I just have to worry about keeping the bike with me on the next try. I grabbed my bike, ready to finish it, but its a bad sign when your cranks won’t clear your chainstays. Bent cranks…great.
A quick check with the boys turned up a spare crank arm (Thanks Kyle!) but it would have to wait for Sunday. Time for some more ice, some more beer, and some more time in the hot tub.
Sunday morning rolled around. Another beautiful sunny morning…but who cares! Time is starting to get short so nobody wastes too much time getting ready. I taped up the bum ankle and made it to Lot 8 at around 10:00am. I have some plans to get some things done but we need to warm up first. A bunch of us painted the side of the small center box (driveway?) black with lip slide tire rubber. This session went on quite a while with some good stuff going down and captured on film. The highlight of this small session and of the whole day was Jeff getting an incredible lip-slide to foot jam 360 nose-pick done. He also was getting in to hang 5s pretty consistently. So good. Meanwhile… While we were all busy nibbling on this small stuff Jay was waging an epic solo battle with the elusive flair on the 9ft half. It was crazy we would catch glimpses of him between the ramps. I was pretty tired and need to void some gatorade so I made my way back to the lodge for a few minutes before gearing back up. When I got back to Lot 8 I was a little surprised to see guys pushing it so hard. We still had 2 hours but Jorden and Jay were punishing themselves trying to land flairs on real ramps. What’s going on its still a little too early for that… Unfortunately I misread the small print. The park closes an Noon not 2:00pm! A quick time check revealed 11:59am. Shit!
Ah well maybe It was better I left some stuff for next time. We went and geared down and took the bikes apart. Time to head out…Of course some of the guys were strangely missing. On the way out we found them sessioning one of the other outdoor parks . The fact that Chris and I even considered unloading the car and putting our bikes back together even though we had just ridden for 3 days straight and we expected the session to get shut down any minute is a true testament to…well I don’t know exactly what its a testament to but…
Bike Riding is Fun!
A few final thoughts:
What a great weekend on so many levels. I love my life but I often find myself a little jealous of the young guys when they post stories of their road trips. Its just not something my responsibilities allow me to do very often (Thanks Shelley for making this one possible!).
Woodward itself was awesome and so well done. I must admit though, at first I was a little underwhelmed, mostly due to skewed expectations. I mean the ramps just all seemed bigger in all the footage I’ve seen. Still the real power of the place is that there is just so many to choose from.
I finally spent a weekend at Woodward and only learned 1 new trick…namely lip-slides which I could learn anywhere. Weird.
I’m a little pissed off that I got my wires crossed and didn’t get a chance to go back and try some of the stuff I had in mind on sunday. I guess that just leaves some stuff or next time!
Start planning for early November 2010. Roland’s 40th birtday weekend at woodard!!! Everyone invited.
Cheers,
Roland
3 Comments »
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I feel like I’m still there after reading that, well done. I never want to drink gatorade again after that weekend. lol. A huge highlight for me was watching Roland BOOST huge perfect supermans on the 6ft resi boxjump (which is not that forgiving). I can’t wait for next year.
Comment by Brandon — November 30, 2009 #
YAH COOL READ. I WAS WAITING FOR PART 2 FOR A WHILE!!!
40TH IT IS!
Comment by Rich Red — November 30, 2009 #
I’m usually not very interested in Woodward, or have ever really desired to go there, but after reading these two re-tellings I’m contemplating going next year. Hell of a 40th party!
Comment by Prashant — November 30, 2009 #