South Africa – Hot Heels 2012

Novermber in Zurich was as grey as usual. Makes me work more & live less… which technically isn’t a disaster… but when December comes and South Africa is on the travel list: Life tends to be that tiny bit better.

We had everything this year.
To start with the good part… I got two podiums! A second at Hot Heels Africa, last IGSA World Cup race of the season, and I got second as well at High Rising.
We saw spiders, snakes, baboons, chameleons, penguins, camels…
We ate big animals, and generally ate well and a lot, we went geo caching and go carting, hiking and swimming, we drove on the left side of the road and we had the best host we could wish for!

Have a look at the rest of the pictures on my flickr!

In the semi finals of Hot Heels, Felipe Malaga, our friend from Peru had a horrifying crash resulting severe head injury. He is today, 28th of December, still in the hospital in South Africa where he recovers slowly.

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Photo by Brittany Fine

Camouflageing Kopie

baboons Kopie

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Pat and I at Highrising Kopie

Bakoven Kopie

concies 2012 Kopie

gate to the sea Kopie

Hot Heels 2012

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Lion's Head Kopie

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sunset at HH Kopie

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those two Kopie

Photos by Tamara Prader

beauty of the moment. about solo sessions

Skating is good for the soul.
A lack of motivation to look for company made me go to Dolder and Rigiblick alone. I haven’t skated on my own in a very, very long time. It felt great!
The things I was working on didn’t work any better only because I was skating by myself but stubbornness made me skate three hours, run to the gondola to catch it again and push harder. It made me swear silently when things didn’t work out and it made my soul happy.

tamara ovronnaz@olivier séguin leduc
Photo by Olivier Séguin- Leduc

Before I went on my solo mission, I visited the Museum Rietberg with my mom. It has an incredibly beautiful garden and very nice buildings.
The exhibition was called „The beauty of the moment“ and showed Japanese, hand coloured Photos from the 19th century and woodblock prints from the 18th and 19th century. The Japanese culture has such an entirely different understanding of room and proportion and I am fascinated by the reserved and powerful beauty that comes out of it. The high diligence in the details makes me feel humble.

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Japanese Photo 1890 ©2012 Museo delle Culture, Lugano

 

EuroTang

The Euro Tour is already over. I can’t believe how fast those four weeks flew by!
I am happy to bring home one podium! My results over all could have been better, I finished with a 5th in Kozakov, a 3rd in Teolo and a 6th quali time in Péyragudes.

eurotang
Graphic by Tamara Prader

The crew this year was Patrick Switzer, Maxim Garant Rousseau, Alex Tongue, Mauritz Armfelt, Josh Torres, John Barnet, Caio Cezar, Luke Melo, Thiago Lessa, myself and Olivier Séguin- Leduc our photographer and videographer.
After talking to a few travel crews that had issues here and there or even split the group half way through the tour, I felt lucky to have such an incredible team. Little fights were fought quickly and out of the way before they could become a bigger issue. It is not always easy to travel in a group of ten to twelve people basically spending 24/7 for a month. Our trip took us from Paris to Switzerland for some freeriding. Then to Kozakov, CZ for the first race, to Prague, to the most beautiful mountains, the Dolomites, further down south to the race in Teolo and then for a day to Venice. After that to the Pyrénées, south to Barcelona for a week of relaxation and scooter racing through the city and finally back to Switzerland before everybody had to fly home again.
A very big thank you to Orangatang the guys I traveled with!

Sanbernardino
San Be, Photo by Tamara Prader

san be

See my arms?

what to do at nufenen

What to do with so many roads?, Photo by Tamara Prader

venice bogen

venice pat

venice

peyragues
Péyragudes before the fog rolled in

barca bank

barca gaudi

Waves on our Gaudi tour

sargada barca

Sion

Mary- f*ing- hill

Maryhill! How long was I waiting to skate this hill! …and it turns out, I’ll wait a little longer.
I tried to take a run on the first day of the 5 day event, following Patricks lines down, slower than I ever skated. I figured I wouldn’t be able to go for it with my cast on and decided to sell my ticket.

But it was a five day event… I had to keep myself busy somehow?!
So I started a little „Inlaw“ race during the freerides after the first round of qualifying.
5$ entry fee, the winner takes all!
…and my list of riders was GOLDEN!

James, Budro, Dalua, Switzer… hell yeah.
My afternoon flew by!
There were some unexpected early drop outs and some rather going for a swim not even show ups. But other than that, it seemed to be quite a success. The riders were happy with some race practice and in the finals I had Dustin Hampton, Jose Guzman, Dalua and James Kelly.

The winner who took the 100$ had as well just broken the track- record:
DALUA!

Thanks for participating guys!

Dalua

Dollares

 

Kelowna DH

Next weekend, next race. Time for the Kelowna DH!
The nice windy and wide, open road is in a residential area, overlooking two valleys. And again, we found the most scenic spot to park our RV. At the top of the hill, 50 meters from the start- line.

Unfortunately, this race again started rainy and therefore slow. Racers weren’t too eager to roll down a wet track and the organizer’s idea was to get as many runs as possible with skipping qualifying. Since the heats were set, there was not too much pressure on the first day.
This race- course was a decent bit longer than the races before. Runs take a bit more time, shuttles too. Things moved quite slow again on Sunday and unfortunately, half way through the first round of racing, one of the residents decided to be a dangerous and douche- baggy and had to be taken away from the police. This 2 hours intermezzo was very unfortunate but after that, riders were ready to kick ass! A fast track with heavy winds and more than one corner made it more interesting to find spots to take pictures at and watch people skate! The results for the Kelowna DH:

1. Kevin Reimer
2. Andrew Chapmen
3. Dillon Stephens
4. Patrick Switzer

Women:
1. Elena Corrigall
2. Marisa Nunez
3. Amy Brendon

I am very done with not being able to skate!
Stay safe and go play!

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Off to Portland, Oregon

On the way here down from Kelowna, we crossed the border in Osoyoos where the Americans took our garden! We had expanded and had a pineapple sage and a thai basil next to the peppermint. Gone.

We slept at a lake and drove through the land of „cowboys and indians“ in the morning. Passed by Maryhill and ended up in front of Jon’s and Billy’s.

broken limbs at mayhill

wild wild west

Maryhill Hood

Mississippi 4

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.

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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$.

about the joy of passing on things

When I had picked up my new NJK leathers, there was no more room in my suitcase for my old motorcycle suit. I left it at Loaded & Otang with the quote to pass it on to someone who has use for it!
Only two weeks later it had found a new owner in Toronto!
Thanky you Darren for finding Timothy, a talented Toronto grom! I hope to skate with you some time soon, Tim. Grind the suit down to it’s inner liner.

Toronto_Timothy
Photo by Heidi, Tim’s mom

on the way to Vernon DH 8

Before taking off to Vernon, we made a pit stop at Kevin Reimer’s house. After watching the hummingbirds and observing the squirrel- crazyness, Kevin took me on a tour with his Blue Bird!
Happy to leave the different scales of grey behind us, we took off to the wine country. Home of Mischo Erban and more sunshine: Vernon!

greyscale

blue bird

safety is our business

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All Photos by Tamara Prader

Vernon DH 8 & Summerland

The Vernon DH 8 race, in the driest area of BC started with a very rainy and gray day of practice. The sunday was as sunny as a summerday could be and I got the chance to work on my cast tan again!
Since the event was an IGSA race, things rolled a litle bit slower. Scott Peer and Justen Ortiz battled for an inline title, there was a decent crowd of classic luger and street luger and the ladies had a good crew on the startline too.
I was hoping for Kevin, James, Dillon and Patrick in the finals. Things didn’t work out well for James, he dislocated his shoulder and couldn’t finish the race. One of the local groms made it to the open finals together with Kevin, Zen and Pat.

After the race, we took off to Summerland to ride the Giant! …the closest thing to Swiss freeriding. I cried a little bit, not being able to skate. Being broken isn’t fun.
… but I keep myself busy doing the things that I like but usually don’t find the time to do.

Pat

podium ladies
The Ladies podium: Marisa 1st, Elena 2nd, Anna 3rd

podium open
Open: Kevin 1st, Zen 2nd, Brendan 3rd, Patrick 4th

the Giant

Owl shell

mossy greens

pattern

there goes the balance

walking on air Kopie