This evening I paid Slasher a visit at his homestead above a travel agents, and whilst watching various skate videos and bits of footage from his upcoming Mongolia edits, we both got super hyped to skate. I’d already been over to the annex, and wasn’t really thinking that another skate would happen today; the comp had been a good laugh and I’d stuck around for a fair bit, tiring myself in my old age (well, when I say old, I mean I was the oldest one there…). The sudden need to skate at about 7.30 this evening came as a bit of a shock, but I knew I just needed to skate, even if it was in the alleyway that I’d parked in. I was even in the mood for flip tricks and flatground; just anything related to skating. The only catch was that I couldn’t be bothered with the bullshit that accompanies skateparks; ramp slags, kids on mountain bikes, people with egos the size of King Kong. I was searching for a session out of the public eye, away from streets, parks and average Joe. Then it hit me.
I’ve been hiding a secret. A few of us have. I know of a secret spot in the middle of nowhere, where only the most adventurous of skaters dare explore. Last summer Burrell, Joxa, Rosko, Hellbrow, Swampy and myself had begun work on something that looked like the most epic spot ever seen. Basically we’re talking about a crazy ditch/bowl. It was completely overgrown when we first got there, and we decided to get to work and tidy things up a bit. After 2 weeks solid work, we’d cleared up the ditch, got rid of the moss, cut down the horrible, thorny bushes and concreted some transition around the base of the ditch all around the shallow end. The next part of the plan was to build a pump bump in the centre to make it easier to keep your speed… and that’s where we kind of left it. Our motley crew of DIY park builders disbanded and the spot was left to nature’s mercy once again.
For some strange reason, I thought that this spot would be totally skateable and totally rad. There was a little bit of doubt that it would be completely overgrown and back to how it was before we’d touched it, but for the most part I didn’t care. My curiosity simply took the better of me and I was determined to skate the spot, no matter how badly it had fallen apart. Slasher and myself travelled over to the spot (location; top secret, sorry), with a broom and a spade in hand, and arrived at the ditch to discover… That it wasn’t so bad. There were some rotten leaves from the previous autumn, some of the weeds and bushes had grown back a tiny bit, and our concreting work from last year was still mostly in tact (if a little bit weaker after the horrid winter).
Pleased that we wouldn’t have to perform our own episode of “Ground Force”, we swept up the leaves and stones and pushed them all into the rubble pile in the middle (for that pump bump that we will eventually build), and we got our skate on. However, I rode up to one of the walls of the ditch to discover that this spot wasn’t going to be as easy to skate as your average mini ramp. I barely reached the lip. This was going to take some hard work.
Slasher and I worked and worked and worked to find the right line and the right part of the bank to pump on for speed. Eventually, after about 20 minutes of giggling from near slams, sketchy rock n rolls and pushing further and further up to the lip, I locked into an axle stall. This was the turning point. From this point on we both knew it was possible to get some tricks on this thing. We both managed to get onto that lip with a few sick tricks, filming a few of them for the video and just getting so stoked on such a rad spot. Then Slasher rode up to the lip when I was taking a break from the sesh, and something even more awesome happened. He fucking slashed that lip.
Some of you may be sitting there thinking “So what, he did a slash grind. I can do them!”. If you ever have the amazing fortune to skate this spot, and if you see the lip the way it is now, you’d have a very different view of any grind that is done on that lip. The lip is covered in moss, the transition leading up to it is full of horrible bumps, cracks and stones, and the run out will either see you heading towards rough and bumpy ground or a pile of rubble. Make no mistake; this spot is so hard to skate, but so awesomely rewarding and fun at the same time. This is the kind of spot I’ve been waiting to skate my whole life, and as much as I love perfect transitions and waxed, metal coping, sometimes you need to skate dirty spots that feel like you’re going to slam every time you drop in.
The Terrible Company 
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