Motherland Stomp - Day 10 - Parks Parks Parks!

After hitting up Burnside I was really feeling good. It was such a rush to leave that great place feeling good and still up. I drove around Portland and tried to find Cal's but did not. I only found every damn yuppie store in the city. Portland is a difficult place to turn left. After I got that under wraps things worked out. I was trying to find coffee and wi-fi and got near Portland University and found a good place. $1.25 for coffee and free Interturd. I must have spent 3 hours in there.

I had to plot out the next few days and get directions to parks and stuff. I was using skateoregon.com and northwestskater.com. Between the two sites you have all you need to know about skateboarding up here. So I went on a rampant skate tour again. I kept telling myself that I was going to take my time and spend the day at 2 parks. Well, i ended up hitting three more today!

It is nuts up here. They have so many parks that if you are not feeling it at one, you drive 20 minutes to another and another and another. My plan was to hit parks on the way to BLM land. I had scoped some good yellow coded area on the map just east of West Linn.

So today, I hit Pier Park. The directions I had sucked, I must have written something down wrong but I finally found the park. This was the one that was supposed to demystify Whiting skatepark. And it did. Pier Park is more gnarly than Whiting. However the finish and the build is far superior. It has similar transitions and a full pipe. It says 11 1/2' for the deep but it really looks like 13'. I spent a little time at this park but I do not have the skills to properly ride a vert bowl like this and kinda got pissed getting out of the thing. I can't believe Hewitt went over the door in the pipe. Straight up gnar!! Pics:


The Groms had moved in on the pipe so I rode the mid sizedd bowl for a bit...



The next place I hit up was Tigard skatepark. This place ruled. The pour is oh so smooth and the features in this park are unique. The flow bowl is supposed to be somewhat influenced by Burnside and lines are very much available. It was the type of bowl that you can just drop in and find lines but you have to really work to get cool ones. There is a bowled second tier on one end that dudes were ollieing up into.





There were a bunch of rippers at this park. I was able to see some serious actions going down. One of the guys (Steve) had some of the best style I have seen out here yet. He must have been in his mid 40s and was just destroying everything!! Fast and aggressive. This other younger guy had some pretty cool tech transfers and crazy lines too. It was a fun time at Tigard.




The groms started to get on my nerves and it was really getting hot out. I was kinda not feeling the snake sesh and so I decided to go hit up the next park: West Linn.


Traffic was kinda sucky but I think West Linn is only 20 minutes away in good traffic. This one dude with a rad old Intercepter cafe' racer said that another park opened just ten minutes from Tigard. So a rad park every 10 minutes in Portland... fuck

So I got over to West Linn and the first thing I noticed that this is an affluent area. I have to say that I am a kinda bummed being in the burbs out here. I really hate it. I was raised in the burbs and I left the burbs for Chicago but i am not sure I like that anymore. After going to North Dakota and Montana, I just want to see land, not shitty Starbucks with AT&T wifi that you have to pay for. AT&T sucks, Starbucks sucks, McDonalds sucks, KOA campgrounds suck, Malls suck...

Anyway, so West Linn, a rich area, you could totally tell too. All the kids were using lingo like "Daaaamn Son" and "Yo I gotta dip" and all of this MTV crap. I got a pretty funny chain email from Jay Kelly the other day with a bunch of suburb kids being influenced by MTV and Hip Hop and so on...

Despite the MTV kids and affluence, West Linn is a really fun park. I think I rode this park the most and the hardest since I got out here. The surface is almost like Whiting but slightly polished like Kokomo. It is rough though and is a multi level flow with every type of transition and crazy corners, hips, and oververt pocket and killer poolblock throughout the whole bowl. Miles of pool block. Like a dream come true and it grinded real nice... I found tons of lines and was getting stupid Lou tricks in there and having a grand ole' time.




A few older kids showed and were really cool, less MTV like. They were just rippin' that thing. All was well until the concert in the next park over started. I was imagining rich white people dancing to some crappy band like Survivor or a James Brown wanna' be. Anyway, I had to get out of there and find a damn campsite.

So the whole campsite thing totally backfired on me tonight. I drove for 2 hours trying to find BLM land. I guess I was too close to Portland because the whole area is populated. Every entrance had a locked gate stating day use or no overnight parking, no camping, etc. All this land had no trespassing signsd and even the country roads were populated. It is the country but there is very little opportunity to crash.


I kept driving towards tomorrow morning's destination because I noticed there was a state park. I get there around 9:30 and the damn place is full. So I found a gravel road and drove a mile into it, found a good spot and was ready to pull over but a car came down the road, and another and another. I was screwed. So I gave up and did the most undesireable thing - had to pay $70 for a hotel room. Damn Motel 8 too. I am only 30 miles south of Portland so it is still pricey out here... Considering, I had spent a total of $4.50 for food today - 70 bucks for hotel sucks.


I am totally spoiled now with Horse Heaven, Big Mountain, Sandpoint,...

I was talking with Doug from Battleground about that stuff. He said that when he was a kid, you could camp anywhere in AZ (where he is from) and now - nothing. It seemed to have happened here just south of Portland. I am heading west tomorrow so hopefully the situation is good there. It is the weekend and the stateparks are bound to be full of reservations... I hope this does not cause my trip to go short.