The importance of getting tabled.

Oscar Wilde reference?
Now playing: Lucero: I kissed the bottle (live track).
This has been my viewpoint for the last few days. Either that, or with a shoe in my hand, pointing out the features and styling high points. I've been running it hard from morning til night this week, but I did get to ride Modern again last night. There weren't very many people there, but the dudes on hand were key players. My man Jason Burton was there, flying around the park at ultra-high speeds with buttery style. He's really coming into his own as a rider and it's great to watch it happen. C-Hat, Fro and Otto came in and made the session complete. Jeff Tabb is back in the area, larger in size, and advanced in skill. I love that kid. I didn't realize it until after time was up, but I did something funky to my ankle and I've been shuffling around like an old man since. I wanted to ride Ollies, here in Kentucky, tonight, but decided that my ankle hurt too badly to do so. As I crossed the river from Cincinnati, I decided that there was no way I was going to drive past Ollies, fairly early in the evening, with my bike in the van, and not stop to ride. I rode for about an hour and my ankle felt good for most of the time. Then, I started getting brave and 180ed this big step up thing and it hurts again. I have no regrets about the decision to ride, but I do have a pronounced limp.
When I was at Modern last week, Kevin Beauchamp asked me I was okay with him getting a tattoo of the Deliverance "Born To Lose" graphic. I was flattered that he wanted to get that graphic permanently emblazoned on himself, but also a little freaked out. I drew it with a sharpie in about five minutes and the message isn't exactly positive. It's tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, but people do take it the wrong way. I was wearing a BTL shirt one time and this dude laid into me pretty hard, saying "That's not right, no one is born to lose". I didn't even know what to say to him. I know for sure my response didn't include explaining that I had "designed" the shirt.
Anyway, Kevin wasn't joking about getting the tattoo....

I'm definitely honored and seeing this made a rough day much better.
This filthy fender-glacier will probably be on my van until April...

This photo was taken by my good friend Dave Davenport at the Fullerton, California skatepark in 2003. I've posted it before and it's in the "5 year slideshow", but I love this photo for a lot of reasons. The palm tree is so California. When I was a teenager, California was the promised land. All the BMX companies and most of the pros were there and I dreamed of someday moving there and living the BMX life. That dream became reality eventually and I spent three years there. I can say without reservation that California is not for me as a place to live, but it still has a big place in my heart.
This particular trip is the first time I stayed with "Double D". He took me to something like eleven different spots in a day and a half and they were all great. We've hooked up several times since and it's always a good time.
The other thing is the table top. I don't really do "tricks" any more (not that I every did very many) and a table top isn't really even considered a "trick"by today's standards. Mine are the old style table and not the neck-buzzer inverts of today, but they feel great and I like the way they look. I have a kind of agreement with myself that as long as I can do a tabletop and it still feels good, then everything is as it should be with my riding. I was tired and burned out last night but on the very last run of the night, after every other person besides Jason Burton and myself had "left the course", I did a tabletop over the hip--my favorite hip of all time, by the way, that felt just right. I have a birthday in a couple weeks and I'm not excited about it, but that moment in time, where my feet got sideways on the pedals and my bars dipped low and to the right, it felt pretty fuckin' good.