Here's some good news for a change today, lol... and I want to use the pics I took to make a point here. Before all that UNWANTED DRAMA & GRIEF unfolded in the Alamogordo Walmart parking lot with the poor old guy taking a hard fall as described in my recent 'Good Samaritan Action!' thread, well, I was running errands, and one of those errands was to drop off a short stack of books (which I had already read) at the local library. And since I was doing THAT, I figured I'd take some shots of a nearby concrete drainage ditch which is totally rideable if you're on a skateboard or bicycle, lol. And part of the point which I intend to make here is this:
AS AN AVID BANKED & VERTICAL & OVERHANG SKATEBOARDER IN MY YOUTH, I CANNOT PASS A SINGLE CONCRETE DRAINAGE DITCH WITHOUT ASSESSING IT & ASKING MYSELF: "CAN THIS DITCH BE RIDDEN?"
Same goes for swimming pools, go figure. And now that I'm 60 years old (or young, depending upon your perspective, lol), well, I ain't about to SET FOOT on one of those goldurned DEMON SKATEBOARDS again, I can assure you. I took a darn BEATING at the Show Low Skatepark at "double nickel" (age 55), though I DID pull some frontside grinders in the deepest bowl, lol. But I also picked up a nasty "hipper" (or raspberry scrape on my starboard hip) which lasted a darn WEEK, then I SLAMMED my already-damaged shoulder (half the tendons missing) and THAT pain lasted a MONTH, at which point I donated the board to a wide-eyed kid before I broke my FRIGGIN' NECK, lol. "HERE YA GO, BOY, IT'S ALL YOURS!!!"
Paying it forward, as the saying goes. Alright, where the heck was I? Oh, yeah, drainage ditches... I recently spoke to my good friend "T-Bone" whose family ran the first surf shop in Coronado, and we were talking about skating various kick@$$ drainage ditches in San Diego County back in the day. We both skated some hardcore concrete ditches, though hardly ever together, aye? We'd go with our own different friends, I guess, but we skated together on the wooden ramps I built at my house. Anyway, I stopped today and took some shots of a local ditch here in Alamo, the ditch looks good for riding a skateboard or a bike, and I have that bad boy SE Racing 'Rip Style' Cruiser which will EASILY handle the ditch, lol... here we go with some pics, despite the drizzle & whatnot.
Okay, first of all I wanna tell ya that my pinner Canon cam ALWAYS makes deep ditches or obstacles look like they're ONLY a yard deep, which is total BS, this ditch is 10' or 12' deep in many places, and it runs for BLOCKS at the very least. That's a 6' chain-link fence, lol. The stretch o' ditch seen in the first pics has smooth rounded transitional "corners" down where the banked sides meet the bottom. Not only that, but there's actually more than ONE concrete drainage ditch: as you can see in that last pic, we have TWO converging ditches which offer an interesting "point" between the troughs that might be ridden hard, lol. Transition is harder and rougher to deal with in the last two pics...
Now, before we have an INTERMISSION wherein I grab another cold beer and possibly take a slash, and after which I shall continue this thread, I want y'all to know something very important: AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, THAT GOLDURNED CONCRETE HAS NOT GOTTEN ANY SOFTER!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Dang, sometimes I slay myself... alright, back in a moment with Part II of this thread, AYE??? Oh, yeah, BTW, that 'Chihuahuan Raven' number just HAPPENED to be nearby when I was taking pics, so I bagged a shot of it for all my fellow bird lovers here at H&CL, it would be a sad reality indeed if we didn't honor our little (or not so little) feathered friends.
--------------------------------------------------------------------INTERMISSION----------------------------------------------------------------
AS AN AVID BANKED & VERTICAL & OVERHANG SKATEBOARDER IN MY YOUTH, I CANNOT PASS A SINGLE CONCRETE DRAINAGE DITCH WITHOUT ASSESSING IT & ASKING MYSELF: "CAN THIS DITCH BE RIDDEN?"
Same goes for swimming pools, go figure. And now that I'm 60 years old (or young, depending upon your perspective, lol), well, I ain't about to SET FOOT on one of those goldurned DEMON SKATEBOARDS again, I can assure you. I took a darn BEATING at the Show Low Skatepark at "double nickel" (age 55), though I DID pull some frontside grinders in the deepest bowl, lol. But I also picked up a nasty "hipper" (or raspberry scrape on my starboard hip) which lasted a darn WEEK, then I SLAMMED my already-damaged shoulder (half the tendons missing) and THAT pain lasted a MONTH, at which point I donated the board to a wide-eyed kid before I broke my FRIGGIN' NECK, lol. "HERE YA GO, BOY, IT'S ALL YOURS!!!"
Paying it forward, as the saying goes. Alright, where the heck was I? Oh, yeah, drainage ditches... I recently spoke to my good friend "T-Bone" whose family ran the first surf shop in Coronado, and we were talking about skating various kick@$$ drainage ditches in San Diego County back in the day. We both skated some hardcore concrete ditches, though hardly ever together, aye? We'd go with our own different friends, I guess, but we skated together on the wooden ramps I built at my house. Anyway, I stopped today and took some shots of a local ditch here in Alamo, the ditch looks good for riding a skateboard or a bike, and I have that bad boy SE Racing 'Rip Style' Cruiser which will EASILY handle the ditch, lol... here we go with some pics, despite the drizzle & whatnot.
Okay, first of all I wanna tell ya that my pinner Canon cam ALWAYS makes deep ditches or obstacles look like they're ONLY a yard deep, which is total BS, this ditch is 10' or 12' deep in many places, and it runs for BLOCKS at the very least. That's a 6' chain-link fence, lol. The stretch o' ditch seen in the first pics has smooth rounded transitional "corners" down where the banked sides meet the bottom. Not only that, but there's actually more than ONE concrete drainage ditch: as you can see in that last pic, we have TWO converging ditches which offer an interesting "point" between the troughs that might be ridden hard, lol. Transition is harder and rougher to deal with in the last two pics...
Now, before we have an INTERMISSION wherein I grab another cold beer and possibly take a slash, and after which I shall continue this thread, I want y'all to know something very important: AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, THAT GOLDURNED CONCRETE HAS NOT GOTTEN ANY SOFTER!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Dang, sometimes I slay myself... alright, back in a moment with Part II of this thread, AYE??? Oh, yeah, BTW, that 'Chihuahuan Raven' number just HAPPENED to be nearby when I was taking pics, so I bagged a shot of it for all my fellow bird lovers here at H&CL, it would be a sad reality indeed if we didn't honor our little (or not so little) feathered friends.
--------------------------------------------------------------------INTERMISSION----------------------------------------------------------------
Last edited: