The Great American West (and some Mexico)

I have been on the road for the last 6 weeks or so. I left SF and headed east to Colorado with an unknown final destination and an unset date or timeline. Semi mid-life crisis tour. Day one of the trip I drove to the border of Nevada and Utah and set up camp.

I slept in my truck at the Bonneville Raceway.

The pet area.

Bonneville is a historical location for setting land-speed records as well as the location for the first ever North American transcontinental telephone line.

64 miles west of SLC and 10 more hours til Boulder, Colorado.

Made it in one piece to Boulder and met up with Brian Ball and The Ice Box.

while I was staying in the Boulder area, I camped out at my friend Rob’s place a bunch. His house is super sick. His roommate did this rad series of paintings based on celebrity mug shots.

Another spot I posted up at was at my buddy Reed’s house.

This is Reed and Elijah. Dude has like 10 guns.

and this is what we were shooting at. Reed’s ramp is pretty freegen hard to skate.

Lazor.

While in Boulder I bought a motorcycle from JAM, and right here Lazor and I went to get a new battery for the bike and we had to fill it with acid. The batteries that fit my bike are sold so infrequently they are sold dry. It was gnarly.

The last morning I was in Boulder I helped Brian with a weekly skate camp he does with local kids every Saturday. It was super fun.

First night out of CO. We drove to this campsite outside of Utah’s Arches National Park. The spot was epic.

It was in this ravine that opened up into this huge circular room with a pool of water in the center.

For the first part of the journey the suspects were Jam, Rob, Brian and Myself. Road warriors in route to Phoenix.

Rob, Brian and me. Team Plaid. (Jam shoot the photo. Also dressed in plaid)

In the state of Utah you can only buy 3.2 beers. It’s dumb.

Lee Bender and Boomer. (but Lee and Janet just call him Chicken)

Lee and his hog. This bike sucks. There’s basically nothing cool about it.

The Love Bowls.

It the first time I’d ever been there and it’s so gnarly. The tricks that have gone down on that thing are insane. oh.. and I have no idea what is going on in this photo, but I can tell you that Jam gets weird about sunlight.

Thanks for letting us skate your ramp. It’s seriously amazing.

This was in the same yard as the ramp. Bowl thing… work in progress. looks like it’s going to be so fun though.

No mystery that the Phoenix area is backyard pool heaven. Here’s an example of a perfect egg. Skating this pool was the first time I’d ever gone over steps in a real pool. Thanks Lee.

Jimmy and Heidi host a backyard pool contest every year. This years event just happened to be while we were in town.

Another good example. This is Adams at night.

Adams in the daylight.

Chris Livingston. (was ripping)

Bars had been visited. Beers had been slammed. 24 hour fast mexican food had been consumed. Then we find Jam, Blacked out (again).

Brimley Skateboards released two Lee Bender tribute decks. The graphics are Lee’s arm tattoos. Brian found both of them at local shops and made Lee sign um.

Thanks again to Lee and Janet for letting us camp out in your yard for over a week. You two are the best.

When we made it to SD we went for it. It was the 2 year anniversary of Jam’s accident. This is Jam coming out of a blackout (again). The little guy was so hung-over he slept the entire day in my truck behind my seats. Border crossing, military check point, all the way the beach. Dude was hurtin.

…to Mexico.

We drove south of SD and went down the Baja peninsula in search of a hostel we had heard of called Cuatro Casas. We got to the right zone but couldn’t find it. It was a moonless night and pitch black out. After getting stuck in the mud a few times we decided to just pull over and post up. This was the sight we woke up to. needless to say, it wasn’t painful on the eyes.

Still in search of Cuatro Casas…

After driving around for an hour or so we saw another car on the road. We posted up and started working on our spanish when it ended up being this dude Richard, the owner of the hostal, and he pointed to the top of a nearby hill and said “thats it“. We had finally found it.

Its a surf hostel that decided to build a bowl about 4 years ago and named it “The Show Bowl”. Its about 9 feet in the deep and 5 in the shallow. and, it’s so much fun.

It cost $15 a day (USD) and that gives you a bed for the night, an all day pass to skate the bowl, and access to a community a kitchen, bathroom and showers. If you only want to surf and not skate, you can pay only $5 a night to camp in the parking lot/beach and surf all you want.

Making all our meals there and eating on the patio really didn’t suck at all.

and walking to the beach (40 feet away) to watch the sun set every night… again… didn’t suck.

… not at all. In fact, it was this beautiful… every night. We all decided that we were ok with leaving because we all knew we’d be back again.

In returning to the U.S. and back into SD, we stayed with our friend Louis again. Then skated Washington Street in the morning before making the trek to Vegas, and then the long haul back to Colorado.

Somewhere in Utah.

Somewhere in Colorado.

The last few days of the trip were long and gnarly. I drove through snow in the Rockies, dropped off Jam and Brian in Boulder, then started the long drive back toward San Francisco. It snowed the entire first night of driving. I slept on the border of Wyoming and Utah, and after driving all day and into the night I finally pulled back to SF.

After it was all said and done I drove over 3000 miles through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, back to Utah to camp, then into Arizona for a week, then back to California, south to Baja Mexico, back to California for a night, then to Las Vegas Nevada for only 2 hours, back to Utah to sleep roadside, a quick stop in Colorado, then slept roadside in Wyoming, then once again across the great state of Utah, Nevada, and finally home to San Fracisco, CA.