OC All Day: Order out of Chaos

I’ve been living with Ariel Surun and my Girlfriend in Orange county for the last 2 months. Lots of blading has been going down. Not just “aggressive” blading, but also some freestyle rolling…as in just taking off on your skates not knowing where your going, or just having an idea that starts you somewhere then ending up somewhere else. The latter is what happened in the story and pictures I’m about to show you, and this particular adventure ended up sparking the desire to embark on a long distance voyage to Venice for the LA Allday Event.

When there is free time in the day, Ariel and I sometimes blade to the beach from our house. It takes about 15 minutes to get there, and once there we just cruise the cement strip along the beach and check things out. There’s usually lots of people out, and when its sunny its just nice to be out by the beach. On this particular day, we decided not to go to our normal route to the beach, but to just keep going down this one main street which I can’t remember the name of. At one point we ended up seeing this hilly street and decided to bomb it. Bombing hills with the Fusion x7 frames and skating in general on 90mm wheels flat is probably the funnest time on blades you will ever have. It takes you back to what rollerblading used to be and feel like. Makes you feel like a kid again.

At the end of the hill, we ended up at a apartment complex with no through street. We were already going fast so we just kept going right into the complex, weaving around the sidewalk path. After doing this and jumping some speed bumps, we couldn’t find our way out of the complex so we hopped a fence which led to a park with a cement trail. We followed the cement trail until it ended and a dirt trail began as well as a drainage ditch. We immediately jumped into the drainage ditch and followed it down until it turned where there were some cement trannies built by what it looked like bikers.

The banks were pretty steep and abrupt, but finding something like this on accident was just a really cool feeling in itself so we just played in this ditch for a while. Ariel was getting air out of it and stalling on this tree which was lying next to the ditch. We didn’t get any pictures of me in here because I got into the photo taking zone and just wanted to get shots.

After we played in the ditch, we decided to continue down this dirt path, as we thought it would be a faster way to the beach from where we were. This actually turned out to be pretty awesome because the dirt was hard enough for our wheels to roll on. We rolled on this path for probably a mile before it dumped us out on a street which led us to this overpass with another cement path underneath it for bikes and walkers which went straight to the ocean.

This is a photo of Ariel pointing to where we came from. Over the hill he is pointing to, and a few more miles or so past that is where we began. We started in Costa Mesa/Newport area, and ended up on the boarder of Huntington

Once we got to the end of the trail and saw a “Huntington Beach” sign, we decided to head back in the direction of our house. On the way back we skated past an area that looked familiar to me. As we came up on a set of stairs, a stream of old school video clip memories came to mind. The names Jake Elliott and Bruno Lowe came to mind.  The t-dog instantly came out and I got juiced. I had to skate it. I had to do something on it. I didn’t have normal frames on so I couldn’t do any frame tricks but I did have a big soul plate, Soooo………

I decided to rockio the shit out of it!

I also training wheel’d the shit of it. This photo came out fuzzy but I still thought it worth posting. This was the last spot we ventured to before blading 5 or so more miles back home. The day was very…lively. I use that word because when you go off somewhere and really don’t know where your going, yet somehow find a path of experience, it makes you feel alive. I like when order comes out of chaos. “Chaos” being the decision to take an unknown path, leading to the  “order,” of  all the cool stuff that happened that day.

And even though I got a sweet pic of this sunset to end the day…the day didn’t end. While we were going back up a hill on the way home, this older dude on a beach cruiser went by us while I was taking a picture of the ground and said “you guys aren’t stopping so I can catch up are you?” We started to follow this dude, and then went into the street to pass him because the street was so smooth. He seemed to take it as a challenge and started to speed up, so Ariel and I sped up too until it became and all out race! Beach cruiser vs. Tom cruisers. We smoked him of course, and he stopped on account of his “chain breaking.” Ariel things he was lying, but either way it made for a funny and random moment.

Here is what I was taking a picture of on the ground while blading up the hill which ended in the epic race and victory.

This is a picture of Ariel and the dude we raced, right before it began.

To end an amazing day of freestyle rolling, my beautiful girlfriend had an amazing pasta dinner waiting for us. Eating good food after a long day of physical activity is one of my favorite things to do.

Here  is an edit of all the clips I got from this day. The song I chopped up (“The Funeral” by Band of Horses) is one I have been listening to alot lately after I watched a section with a dude on a trial bike  I think its called, do things I have never seen a dude on one of those bikes do. It actually inspired me so much that I’ve been listening to it many times over. You know that feeling when you watch a section of your favorite blader dude, and after you find the song that was in the section and put it in your ipod to get amped. This section did that to me, and its always awesome when I can get inspired by people who are expressing themselves whether they are on a bike, blades, skateboard, etc.. Were all trying to get to that place that makes us feel good and right. The only difference is what we use to get there.

Here is that section. Some of the stuff this dude does just blows me away. The ammount of control he has with his bike is unbelievable.

So….that is that. I will have another update in a few days about my 50+ mile trek from Costa Mesa to Venice for the LA all day event which went down a couple weekends ago. Lots of pictures and other stuff to come. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!