Sunday, May 26, 2013

glorious displacement haha





my current levels of exhaustion have thankfully been rarely reached.  A week of Multi-faceted cooking, thanks to an overall sense of GSD and commitment to the get shit done lifestyle, has lead me to here, a place where my ability to recall any particular details of note from the last few days is equal to the stamina left in my body after not sleep, working and multiple hours of fury-skating and hiking (and the staircase to stoke, which serves me an averaged total of 456 stairs/hour.  All I need is an early night but hindsight/95% of the time I hit a wall post-dinner of such gargantuan strength that only complete conformity can get me through it (unless i go to bed at 7:33m which is probably not a bad idea but GSD) and right now I am on that path.  I figure meekly writing on this blog might take long enough to open the gate to productivity but I seem to just be sinking closer and closer to deep zees.   I might just leave this here as, right now, my need to think, work and not fall asleep is greater than that of trying to manipulate semantics into substance.







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fast forward is backwards

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here's another video from NZ and the N-Tense D-Centz tour, I filmed it, with the help of Gabe and MattK did the editing, im pretty stoked on it, the video is almost as chilled as the trip was.



















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Saturday, May 18, 2013

thinking of you



n.b. this is a very extended blog post.  deEP potensh?










there's a buzz in my chest, it makes me shiver and it makes me shake and I know it's your affect because the closer I get to you, the closer I get to incapacitation; but not in the all-consuming manner, in the loss of desire to consume, socialise and move because when I'm with you all I want to do is type.  To touch even just a handful of your 78 keys, to feel the feedback and the resulting character that illuminates infront of me (even in this extremely bland blog-post-creation page) makes me stoked beyond words.  I was away for 3 weeks and even though you were by my side every day, our relationship was stressed, thwarted by the lack of voltages and the isolation from connectedness that searching for hills in an RV implies.  I turned to my phone in desperation but it proved torturously fruitless, eventually I gave up on you and your backlit aura, only to be reunited right now in a flurry of key bashing and leg tapping.











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I don't know if I already wrote on here about the tour that just concluded; basically it was a Landyachtz tour of down under, organised by yatedawg and executed by all!  On the trip was myself, 2 other
Australians (Adam Yates & Josh Evans) and 4 Canadians (Guff, Striker, Dillon Stephens and Kyle Martin) and the plan was 3.5 weeks of travel from Brisbane down to the Mornington Peninsula/Melbourne.  We had an epic luxury RV, a very sick crew, a well thought out plan, perfect weather and best of all, I got to sleep in a swag under the stars every night, it rained only once and I was perfectly cocooned, cosyness took a turn for the next level on that evening.  If you want to read a more in-depth insight into the trip (i might get around to doing one in the future but for now I gotta GSD) you can go Yates' and Striker's  blogs, they're still being updated as to the trips progess.






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I just now realised I ranted at my phone about the trip while in the airport a few days ago so here it is  "it's done, 24 days of adventure, exploration and representation.  When I was asked if I wanted to be included in Landyachtz's Palm Trees and Pits tour I was frothing majorly, a little more majorly than normal as this time I was going to get to experience a completely new bunch of dudes, a trip were my sole responsibility was to take photos and to be making bank made it all the more sweeter.  Being on the road, doing all things related to skating (finding hills, skating hills and documenting hills) and enjoying the fruits of travelling has been the trend of my 2013 and although this was 'another' skate trip I can't relate this one to any other. We had a luxury RV, a hero of a guide (yatedawg!!!) a proper sense of Team (not the usual assembly of generally rad riders which is equally rad) and a bunch of dudes whom I am somewhat indebted to as they, before this trip, had already given me much stoke plus we had David Leslie, who has filmed everything Landyachtz!!, and a plan to preach.  Upon transmission of meaning from fingertip to brain all of those things sound pretty standard but this was like no other.  Landy are OG and they do it right. Having a filmer meant that I could, not only concentrate solely on photos, but also to have a corner buddy and someone that shared my ambition of collecting beauty made for max hillside fun times.  We climbed waterfalls, lurked in ditches and waved at a whole bunch of passerbys, his name is Guff and I love him.  The plan was to do a road trip proper, to document it and to represent Landy.  These things were all easy because when a company like this wants to spread stoke, they take a blanketed and generous approach. Everyone was stoked, every grombate whose board was signed by striker's knife was stoked, the RV gang was stoked and I was definitely stoked.   "



so yeah that sort of reiterates exactly what I said just before in a less concise manner... but still, it was a rad trip!  Here are some fots






The crew minus Guff, he was on the hill.


L-R  Kyle, Josh, Yates, Dillon and Striker


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here's Guff :D :D :D

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And here is the rest of what I can upload for now, I can't post anything until it goes up on the 
Landy blog so there'll be prenty more soon.    As for now, here is Josh, he was the grom but he's not a grom, plus everyone was too polite to make him do shit, lucky grom.



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Striker pursuing the 'pits' component of the 'Palm Trees and Pits tour'.



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whynot....


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These dudes saw the RV when we were lurking and they frothed, it's nice seeing people froth so much, Strike and Yates battling for the pen.


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 Cedar Creek!  strike avoiding yates' balls... he was naked (100% of the time everytime we were met by a body of water) 


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Josh lurking at Kangas, I wasn't pleased with any of these photos, shooting whilst skating can be tough!!  KM, Josh and Strike (barefoot on a 90km/h run, casj)




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Heavenly place,  one of my most favourites in Straya


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Dog seeking the ridge


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Kyle and Guffrey


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two dogs


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Guff and the dog.


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ANZAC DAY!!


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those photos above, they're the blog photos from the Brisbane/Goldcoast leg of the trip, the first 6 days basically. I wish I could put the bangers on here!









I've had another thought about frequency/quality of blog posts and I concluded that at the end of the day, regardless of how many posts I make I'll always put up the same photos.  Rants are the only thing that change and at this point in my life I'm enjoying making gargantuan blog posts of miscellaneous avenues and a general disregard for continuity.







here's a lovely place, I took this photo a very long time ago,  maybe 2.5 years ago :O


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Here's a big storm!  a photo that i took, from this exact spot but 5 minutes earlier, was a finalist in the QLD Lord Mayors photo comp, I didn't win but its casj, I was stoked regardless.



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THIS HILL!  I miss this hill a great deal but I'm going back to NZ in Feb so we will soon be reacquainted.


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Here's my super buddy Chad, he's going away next week for a long time :(



this is him at work

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and here he is at skateboarding (front)

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Here's a photo from Japan, atop Kichigai (the sickest hill ever) on one of the many days that we were there..  During our Japan trip we covered 3000kms+ and even after 3 days here, we had to come back for more before we left, you'll see why below.



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ALSO HERE IS THIS!!!!!!  The first of multiple videos that we shot while we were over there.  This one was filmed at Kichigai (the photo above) riding was Matt K and we got it on the first take.  I was relieved that we got it in one because this hill is an open road, 2 lanes and for the most part it's barely wide enough to fit the logging trucks that the road is accommodating for. We retuned here in the last days of the trip to film this run, as we'd not had a chance to film on our first stint as it rained on the day we'd planned to film.  We shared a few runs and Matt said something along the lines of 'yo, i'm not gonna crash so feel free to bump me with the car' so, without being a complete loony, I got really close while gabebro operated the pan and Ben sat in the back of the car concentrating on his sphincter and maintaining a seal.  I'm really stoked on this video, Raw Runs (1 cut videos) in my opinion can portray the glory of this sport better than any other filming style or medium, raw and fun.  it's sick.  shot on my 5d3 and Brisbane Camera Hire's 15mm 2.8 fisheye.












a while back Cliff Coleman and Sergio Yuppie came to Aus to play skateboards.



This is Cliff, he was once a world touring yoyoist, he pioneered the only decent way of stopping a skateboard as well as the use of the glove, the coleman slide and most importantly has spent his life using his gifts to tour the world and inspire people to be better people!  I got to hang out with him in Berkley earlier this year and I can't really describe how nice it was being around that dude, so wise, humble and mellow beyond possible description.  That was in Jan, this event pictured here was in Feb and when we started the day he got everyone into a group and said 'being a good skateboarder does not make you a good person, be a good person and everything will come to you'



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Here's Sergio, he's from Brazil, note the motion blur in his hands and only his hands, he was probably mid 1080 or something luda like that..  shot from DGM


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Chaddy gown switch


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probably looks like he's falling over but to be 100% honest, he's just temporarily grinding his helmet on the ground....


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Cliff in Thrasher 1982.








some typical QLD weather, 24 hours,  a few days before the Landy tour.



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this is Kevin Reimer, he won the first world title race at Newtons this month, he's very very good.  photo from DGM



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another DGM shot, James Kelly or AmDrem or the America Dream or anything you want, he wont care, he's maxicasj.   I shot this on our LA-SanFran roadtrip in January.  



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I'm probably done with this post now.  here's a lovely song as a reward for your efforts in going this deep.