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AoS-Fest IV : Paradise in the Desert

Intro

Thursday

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Friday

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Saturday

( 1 2 3 4 )

Sunday

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Day 3: Saturday December 9th - West Phoenix Tour

Who�s idea was it to wake up at 6:45 am?!?! Oh yeh�it was mine. Got up and threw on some clothes for the day. Down for breakfast and once again, Patrick and I were the first to make it. I ran back up to my room for a second and ran into Kerry. I joked "ya know...we could just skip Wickenberg, go back to sleep and go to Peoria after lunch". With all seriousness, Kerry replied "We planned on Wickenberg, so we are going to Wickenberg". That man was ready to skate! Everyone got breakfast and was ready to hit the road by 7:45 am. Thankfully, Butch volunteered to take over driving duties for me. Being sick still, I felt even worse that morning.

The drive to Wickenberg from Tempe was fairly long. We drove from the 10 to 17 north and took the Carefree Highway to cut across. The scenery was great. The guys all got to see some real desert landscapes. This made the trip go much faster. Although some had told us to plan on taking two hours to get there, we arrived at Wickenberg a little after 9 am. We made great time. A quick pit stop by the grocery store to grab some drinks, take some restroom breaks and stretch a bit, and we were soon at the skate park nearby. This would be the first of three skate parks for the day.

Wickenberg Skate Park

The Wickenberg skate park is tucked away behind a baseball field, playground and picnic area. It is a very small space, but whoever designed it did a fantastic job of using the space. There is a small street area that flows back and forth and a bowl separated behind it by a high barrier (to protect from riderless boards shooting into the bowl). We were the only ones there when we arrived. Being the first stop of the day, there was of course some warm up time involved. We all took it slow at first just putting around in the street course and then easing into the bowl. Patrick was the first to really jump right in the bowl and find lines. The bowl is an right hand kidney of sorts. The shallow end is more squared with two rounded corners and seemed about 6 foot deep. The deep end is a round bowl but fairly cramped with not flat and was about 9 foot with a foot or foot and a half of vert. The two are connected by a nice waterfall and a sharp, pointed hip. As a "goofy footer", it took me some time to get use too with most runs starting out frontside. After a dozen runs or so, each person seemed to find their favored lines. Soon Patrick was buzzing around the bowl in a flash. Kerry and Jay found their frontside grinds in the deep end and Butch got his backside double-trucker too. Once more for me, I got going good and then got too worked up. Popped up, ran to the grass and puked. I ended up puking twice at Wickenberg. Fun fun. After the second time, I decided to stop and just take pictures. I wanted to save myself for Peoria. The others kept ripping it up. Kerry even found his line to frontside airs out of the deep end. That�s his measure of how well he skates a bowl. (haha) Towards the end of our session, a young local skater showed up. He stayed on the street course but would take breaks to talk to us. He gave us the lowdown on the park and the town in general. He even knew about the AoS-fest and my site! Soon, we decided it was best to head out. We were at that point where folks wanted to start trying harder stuff and pushing it, but feared that doing so would keep them from getting to skate Peoria. We packed up and headed to lunch. On the way, we all strongly agreed that Wickenberg had been well worth both getting up early and the long drive. That park is fun! We ate lunch right around the corner from the park at a place highly recommended by Rob Locker (AZPX) and others (even the local kid we met!). It was a Mexican-Southwest place called Anita�s. Great, filling food and nice people there! Butch and I liked their hot salsa a lot! After stuffing ourselves, we were ready for the 45 minute drive back towards town to our second park of the day, Peoria.