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AoS-Fest IV : Paradise in the Desert

Intro

Thursday

( 1 )

Friday

( 1 2 3 4 5 )

Saturday

( 1 2 3 4 )

Sunday

( 1 )

Day 3: Saturday December 9th - West Phoenix Tour

On the way to Peoria, we took a different, more direct route along the West Grand Ave (hwy 60). I was so full from lunch and so tired that I kept dozing in and out on the way. Again, thankfully Butch was driving. Around 12:20 pm, we pulled up at the Rio Vista park, aka. Peoria, right off the 101 on Thunderbird. About the same time, Barry Gilliland rejoined us (he had skipped Wickenberg).

Peoria (Rio Vista) Skate Park

Peoria was packed! It was insane how many people were there. The street section and flow area were too packed to even attempt to skate. That would be just begging for a collision. The two bowls were surprisingly fairly empty save one or two other skaters. That was great for us though! My jaw was just hanging open as I surveyed the park. It is incredible! The street and flow areas looked so fun and were huge at that. Then I checked out their big bowl. It is shaped liked an "L" with a 5 foot or so shallow end that in the upper part of the "L" that drops down a waterfall into the larger, deep section that looked to be 10 foot or so deep. Next to it is the other bowl...site of the recent Desert Bowl Bash contest. I don�t know how to explain it other than calling it a small, cramped clover of sorts. It has three sections connected with quick rounded hips. The two smaller sections seem about four foot deep or so. One of them has a set of stairs which are handy for grinding over as well as climbing out. The third section is a deep tight bowl that seems about 8 foot deep on a 8 � foot transition or so. The whole bowl has very little flat and is topped with red pool coping that is pretty chunky and sticks out a good bit. Our group started off in the "L" bowl. Besides ourselves, we met some guys from Seattle. One was an older guy named Mike that was hilarious. He was so stoked to be there and just went on and on. He couldn�t believe we came from Alabama. (haha) We all had a great time in the big bowl but the sun was casting some harsh shadows in there that made it difficult to skate. There had been kids "playing" in the other bowl, but once they left, our whole crew took over the smaller, combi-ish bowl. We had a great time trying to figure that thing out. Finding lines in that bowl was a fight. It didn�t help that there was lots of trash in the bowl that made it slippery and some kids had thrown coke or something in the deep part that made it gunky in the sun. We didn�t care though. We were getting to skate an awesome bowl. We were soon joined by another older guy. He had long hair and kind of a Hessian thing going on. He totally ripped the bowl up. We got to talking, and it turns out he just flew in from New York that morning to visit. Trading stories about the East coast, we found out that we had several mutual friends including DC�s own Jaime (high-may) Stapula and Ray Fennessey! Small friggin world! His name was Robb Nordstrom [edit: later found out he used to skate for Wolfpack, a now defunct East coast company]. Also joining the session was another hometown hero, Alabama�s own Jamie Thomas. He showed up with some of this Fallen team. It was fun to take a break and watch them rip the park. One of the Fallen skaters (Tony Cervantes ?) was a young guy that just bounced around the park from place to place just destroying the park. He is one of those skaters that makes it all look so effortless. He came rolling up to the little bowl during a pause in skating the flow area. He rolled in, hit a smith grind here, a floating ollie over the hip there and a long rock and roll slide around the deep end and then popped out and was off back to the flow area�.effortless. Like the other spots, soon our crew found their groove. Jay was killing in the small bowl. He had little, styled out frontside smiths in the deep end and was carving around the stairs in the shallow. He was close to frontside lipslides over the steps too! Kerry hit his frontside grinds in the deep and got a small frontside air even. I tried in vain to find my way around and over the stairs. I just could not keep my speed. I didn�t puke though! (haha) Patrick and Jay hit the street/flow section a little bit, but they were near tapped out. We seemed to be fading much faster than yesterday, and we still had one park to go. We told Rob and the Seattle guys thanks for the session and to meet us at the next park in Glendale if they could. Patrick, Jay and I talked to Jamie a little before leaving. Like us, he was away from Alabama to escape the cold. (haha) He said he would be back home soon to film some and do an interview he has been putting off. We said our good-byes to all and headed off to the third and final park for the day, Union Hills (aka. Glendale).