Rained out. Instead we hit the Grand
BITCHES
Curtis grinds the Salton Sea pool.
FLAGSTAFF
Canyon, witness an electrical
storm, and build an all-night fire.
Big thangs.
ALBUQUERQUE
This is where the trip opens up. We hook up
with Ryan Simonetti at Evolve skatepark.
Evolve, Ryan, and the Albuquerque crew all rip.
Mike Garcia, switch slob at Evolve.
I've been hearing about the ditches of
Albuquerque forever, and, like the Grand
Canyon, no photo can ever do them any
justice. They simply must be experienced firsthand:
Big Bear: What is it, like 30 feet deep? I got speed wobbles head-
ing up my third wall. Snap a kingpin here and you're gonna need a
new set of teeth. Ryan drops in switch. Psycho.
Jefferson-Ozuna: A good warm-down from the Bear. Less
Barney-friendly; i.e. you gotta hit your tail. The natural fun
box/channel roll-in is the highlight. Ray Chavez: frontside 270°;
Ryan: frontside flip; Mike: wrecks himself.
Indian School: Five miles of wide open downhill ditch with roll-
out decks, hips, channels, ladders, tight drops, and high walls. A full-
on Barney hard-on.
Four Hills: Another wide open downhill ditch. Delicious mini-
ramp transitions in the top section, harsher Wallos-like trannies
in the bottom half. Top and bottom are divided by a seven-foot-
high, forty-five-degree roll-in to a pitch-black six-foot fullpipe.
Ryan nollies in. Too sick.
On our way out of town, Ryan takes us to an empty pool right
across the street from his skatepark. It's a kinked-out Roman end
with meatloaf coping. We slap some grinds and cut out for Santa Fe.
Albuquerque crew, big ups.
MOR
Big Bear.
Ryan Simonetti, channel ollie at Four Hills.
that everyone's hair was sticking straight up.
Lightning struck and hit the canyon rock, and
we all left amazed. Back at camp it started
raining the thunder was earth-shattering. I
built a pine needle dam around the tent to keep
it dry. We made a huge fire on a barbecue pit.
The fire and an 18-pack of Coors and a Jiffy
Pop would be our entertainment of the evening.
Then the rain slowed to a light drizzle and
burned the Jiffy Pop.
Day Four.
We got up, saw the canyon one last time, and
left. The skatepark in Flagstaff was still wet so
we were off to New Mexico. It was a long drive
through the rest of Arizona-red crumbly rock
layered in desert colors with cactus and dry
stuff, ravens, hawks, and lizards. We finally
reached New Mexico and headed for
Albuquerque. This town is weird-big mutant
white people and lots of Native Americans with
reservations everywhere. "Authentic Indian
art" and casinos are the big cash-out. This is
where things really started looking Southwest;
all the houses were "adobe colors" and the
whole town was too. The guys went to skate an
indoor park called Evolve with a guy named
Ryan. After, he took us to a bunch of water run-
off cement ditches, some close to a quarter mile
long. They loved it. That night we slept at a
Doubletree after drinking with the gay bar-
tender in the lobby.
Day Five.
We headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico and went to
the skatepark that was again all adobe colors. The
kids were goofy and the guys didn't like the park
at all, so we bailed to Lake Abiquiu to jump off
rocks and swim out in the middle of nowhere. The
night before we met up with Kathy at Santa Café
and camped in her yard with a fire.
Day Six.
Day Seven.
We left for Amarillo, Texas; we stopped at Wal-
Mart when we got there to get a couple rubber
rafts, oars, buckets, brooms, and stuff, then
went to Lake Meredith and proceeded to
Same as the day before. We stayed at Kathy's Sanford Dam. We decided to take the James
again, barbecued, etc.
Bond water attack route because this was after
all a highly stealth mission to get to the 25-foot
fullpipe in the dom. The pipe is of course on
federal "no trespassing" land. Anyway, we
inflated the rafts, put all our stuff in plastic
bags, and slithered into the water, swimming
and pulling the rafts alongside the lake around
the cement canals and to the bottom of the run-off
110 THRASHER
111