Keep Portland weird!

… no need to support that. This place would have a hard time trying not to be weird anymore.
One of the highlights of this week was the Mount Tabor race! Enjoy.

TaborDH_Poster_800px_Tall

we love spandex

Mini Bikes

missing the buttcone

Spandex makes you win

How can Chris McBride see

Jeff Spicoli

Spending a week in Portland, I learned some – more or less – important lessons about the survival in a group of skateboarders.

1 The dynamics of a group of skaters

The easiest way to make a group of skaters move is, to point out a place with cheap beer and food! Success rate: 95%
Coffee can work, sometimes.
Skating will most likely not work. It is too specific and depends on too many factors that you can never guess. The circumstances under which skateboarding happens are not the most obvious ones.

2 Drinking habits

You can’t keep up with the drinking pace of all the different teams! Some might simply have more practice than you do. Goal is, to realize early enough and when you do, stop drinking at their pace. Your liver might be happy about that. And you can avoid many headaches.

3 Spandex makes you win races!

4 Helmet safety

When we were kids, our moms told us to protect our heads. For all the sports we did, we had a different helmet, protecting specific regions of our heads, depending on the activity. Then, downhill skateboarding happened! The aero helmet is a self-made shell with some recycled helmet foam inner shell. It’s not about how protective this helmet is, it is about how cool it looks! It tells how much the rider cares about his style of riding. F* your brain. Who needs it anyways?!

So, get a very aero and expensive outer shell. If it looks ridiculous, the better!
Invest a lot of money in a rad paint job!
Don’t forget to find a fabric with a print that matches your individual style.
Consider that if you can still see because your self- tinted visor doesn’t fog up, you lose a decent amount of style points.
Quite important for this protection plan is not to crash!

5 Injuries

You hurt yourself? In the United States?
First and most important rule: DON’T GO TO A HOSPITAL!
You can buy painkillers. And if you want to rather spend your money on drugs, they most likely do the job too. If you’re not into drugs, go get the painkillers and mix them with alcohol, preferably stronger than beer.
Never get something stitched up! It’s a waste of money. You are a downhill skater so you’d typically carry around superglue.
Sit down, take a deep breathe, and superglue the sh* out of the gaping wound! Don’t forget that superglue tends to spill and superglue things together while you’re waiting for the pain to go away.

6 Strip clubs

Strip clubs in Switzerland are not worth going to because the lowest bill is worth more than 10$.

What’s a broken skater to do?

… not a question I planned on having to find an answer for! I guess there is always a reason for how things like these come along. At least I had no issues so far with keeping myself busy!

Kevin Reimer is back! A happy winner of the Britannia Classic 2012, one year after he got injured on this track.
Patrick landed in second, Byron Esset in third.

My disappointment about not being able to race was … huge. The first bummer was to realize, that there were only 3 ladies at the Britannia Classic after having a field of 16 at Danger Bay. Quite as disappointing was the level of riding… but I am not to judge this since I was busy taking pictures – not skateboarding.

The organisation of the event was excellent, Lee Cation did a grat job and made the riders happy with good food, two days of freeriding & a good coverage of the event. Way to go Lee!
Kevin is back

Switzer sailing down Britannia

Spencer leaning

Camp fire
Bouldering in Squamish with Audrey & Max
What a magical place!

Bouler - what's a broken skater to do

Pats glove fingers

double slack action

Bouldering with Max and Audrey

hungry chip monk
All Photos by Tamara Prader

Sunshine Coast – Britannia Classic

Before taking off to the Sunshine Coast, we made a visit at Landyachtz where I got myself some rain wheels! Whoop whoop – ready for the Canadian race weather!

Rainwheels
Thanks to Mike at Landy!

Hopping on the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to the Sunshine Coast! I was so excited to skate these races and to get to skate with some of the Canadian ladies.

After what I had heard about the party at the Danger Bay race I was more scared to go there than excited… turned out that even the skaters get a little older and it was no where near as wild as I expected.
The womens division was the biggest one I had skated in. We had 16 ladies at the start-line!
I managed to make it in the finals and had the lead until I got taken out ending up in 4th place.

Ishtar and I didn’t get to skate together at Danger Bay. It turned out we were the only ones racing Jakes Rash. We had a sweet battle down this mellow road with quite some leaning action. And drafting her all the way down, I just had enuogh speed to beat her at the finish line.

After coming back from the Coast, we heded up to Squamish for the Britannia Classic. I was very excited for that one and than very disappointed when I realized that there were only two other ladies registered. May it be this fact or some other reason that I don’t know about yet, I broke my left radius in the first run of the second day. That means if I am lucky, I’ll be able to be back on a board for the Maryhill Festival of Speed.

4th at Danger Bay
1st at Jakes Rash
down at Britannia…

Ferry to the Sunshine Coast
On the way to Danger Bay

We got ourselves a new Housemate. Peppermint at any time!
Carole, the Team Green ‚manager‘ invited a huge crew over for dinner after Danger Bay. What an incredibly beautiful place the Sunshine Coast is!

lake near Carol's
peppermint

Catalina Island Classic 2012

LAX
Catalina

Avalon
Catalina Island – the view from the startline, Photo Tamara Prader

I got to Los Angeles, straight to the Newport Beach Film Festival, picking up my brand new NJK leather suit and then heading out to Catalina Island!
What a start!

its a squirrel
Fitting at NKJ, Photo Pat Switzer
We were convinced, the race action would start with some freeriding on saturday. After we had found out that we’d only get one day on the hill, the party became a lot better.
And the Mexican guy behind the bar made some very generous Margheritas! …guess I should have gone for one more Dollar Taco.
The Catalina Island Classic was held back in 1977 the last time. It was a great pleasure to meet one of the ladies competing in the race back than! She and her sister both did race and they still enjoy the island life, getting Sophia, Karens daughter, ready for some downhill action.

flying sesh with graham

Flying away with Graham, Photo Pat Switzer

rider meeting
Rider meeting! Photo Tamara Prader

It is about an hour from Los Angeles to Avalon, the tiny capital of Catalina. Avalon is a very pretty place where skaters usually wouldn’t spend too much time. Only one funny story about this place, they have buffalos there because a film crew simply left them on the Island after they were done filming.

The race day started early and on time. Three runs, that was it for practice on a pretty technical hill. The heats were set. No qualifying.
There were six ladies at the start line! We got to do an awesome amount of runs thanks to the point system we ran the race on. Thank you Dubes!
The guys had some gnarly heats down the narrow race track! James Kelly won the race, Patrick Switzer came in 2nd and Alex Tongue took 3rd. Pam Diaz took 3rd in the womens division, Christine was in 2nd and I won my first race! Whoopwhoop!

Prader Catalina 3

CheckCheck

…for some more skating!

We had to leave this extraordinary place on monday to go back to Los Angeles and a different scale of city again. Seeking for some more and different adventures!

south africa – about sweepers & braai

After a busy second half of Novmber in the office and a lazy time here on my blog I am now back from South Africa, a place with some of the most lovable people and more braai than ever!
A backpack full of stories… soon to be told here!

Until then, I leave you with a first impression and…

Super happy with a 2nd place at Houwteq, South African National Race.
And a 2nd place at Hot Heels 2011, IGSA World Cup Race! AWE!Houwteq_1_2011

Houwteq