Thursday, October 9, 2008

There's Some New Players up in Dem Hills...

Sent in from Taude:
last Friday I road my bike up Loveland pass (tops around 12,000 ft) and ran into these guys with longboards on top. I asked them "are you guys really going to fucking ride down Loveland pass on a skateboard!" The reply was "yes, we usually hit easily over 50mph". I could not believe it – I asked a series of questions and found out there are only about 10 guys in Colorado that do "big mountain long boarding", it is illegal (a CO State Trooper had just given them a warning so they were going to try the other side), they slow down by power sliding or dragging a foot (at 50mph btw), and crashing is part of the experience "hence the leather suits" they said. The guys also wore full face helmets.

Sure enough a few minutes later totally un-announced two of them jumped out of the truck and kicked full speed right down Loveland Pass (for those of you who have been here this is the road you use instead of I-70 and it drops into the A-Basin Ski resort). It is super steep and has several 15mph hairpin turns. Anyway, I jumped back on my road bike and quickly pedaled to follow them directly and watch the carnage that was surely about to unfold. I hit 47mph on my bike but could not catch them, they were gaining on me the whole time - it was fucking nuts – I have no idea how they made the turns faster than I did or how they kept gaining but they did. I followed and watched their whole 7 mile ride and they never crashed – this was for sure one of the sickest things I have seen in person before.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

First I'd heard about this crazy activity was on HowtoAvoidtheBummerLife. You can check it out here, just scroll down a bit to the Vimeo video. The insanity ensues about 2:30 into the video.

But these dudes do it in style... Totally insane, if you ask me.

Direct link to the video is: http://vimeo.com/1654340