crash

It was nearing the end of the first day at Barret Junction and everyone was at the top of the hill ready to take another run. The road was clear and the street lugers took off first as usual. Everyone was coming down the hill and it wasn’t until Doc’s corner that things went wrong.

Doc’s turn has the name for a reason. It is the fastest part of the road and it also the part where most of the gnarly crashes happen.

“The bike was coming up the hill towards the middle of the road and as soon as he saw me he veered to his right and I veered to my left” said Ryan Farmer.

They basically both tried to avoid the other person but swerved into each other. Ryan was probably going close to 50 mph down the hill while the bike was coming at about 25-30 mph up the hill when they collided. Ryan actually hit the bike so hard the forks on the bike bent.

“So when he came up the side of me he hit my hip, just a little bit lower then my ass, like just the top of my thigh, and then rolled up towards my shoulder. When he hit me the way that my tuck was on the luge, the tire hit my forearm and it pushed it into the side of the luge which then pushed into my side like rib area. What that did is pushed those two bones, the ulna and I forgot the other one. When it pushed it up it broke the ulna cleanly by the elbow and then dislocated everything right there and pushed the two arm bones up like an inch, so it made it look like my elbow was swollen, but it really was just where it was at and like the forearm was at the wrong angle. It was weird. It dislocated everything inside and I had another fracture going up the bone. When I went into the dr. they had to push it back into place the first night, and then the next morning they could do surgery.”

The road was supposed to be closed off and people were supposed to be stopping others from coming up. The guy on the dirt bike was a skater as well and he should not have been coming up the road at the time he was. Ryan is still alive and in good spirits but also in a lot of pain. This is a crash that never had to happen and is a good reminder to everyone to know what is happening on the road and that street luging or downhill skating are not a joke. People get hurt and usually it is unpredicted elements that come into play that cause the most damage.

The crash is one that didn’t have to happen but Ryan remains in good spirits about it and can’t wait to get back on his luge again soon.

Waldo Autry 1957-2013. On January 23, 2013 Waldo Autry, a skateboard legend, street luger and the definition of an adrenaline junky passed away. Waldo was a friend to everyone that knew him. He touched the lives of many and his passing away was a shock to everyone who knew him.

Waldo was best known for inventing the kickturn on an invert in the Baldy pipes. He raced in the Signal Hill speed runs and made the cover of many skateboarding magazines. He was always pushing the limits with everything he did. “If they were going to jump over a car, I was going to jump over a garage” Waldo said in an interview with Juice Magazine.

Not only is Waldo well known for skateboarding but he was also a well known street luger. Most people who don’t know much about street luging know him for his participation in the Red Bull luge launch in San Francisco.

The skateboarding he did in bowls far exceeded others of his time. Anybody who skateboarded in the 70′s would know who Waldo Autry was and anyone who has ever had the chance to meet or ride with the man has a story to tell.

My first time meeting him was at Barrett Junction and it was obvious that he was willing to push the envelope. Waldo only knew how to charge into things hard.

At Barrett Junction I saw him crash twice and both times were crazy. I know he liked the way I told the story of his crash. I was street luging right behind him and almost got tangled up in his wreck with Niko Kroha. “It was probably better to crash there then to make it,” Waldo said after I told him my recollections about watching his crash and how crazy it was. I pretty much had first row seats to the crash following right behind him down the hill.

Waldo Autry’s crash with Niko Kroha was one of the gnarliest street luge crashes that I have witnessed in person.

Niko was out in front of Waldo, I was right behind them and Tabitha Mitchell was right behind me.

Waldo went for the pass on Niko on the inside. Niko was pretty far inside though and there wasn’t much room for him to pass.

Instead of throwing his feet down and braking Waldo was trying so hard to pass Niko two of his wheels left the road for a second. As soon as this happened he got the speed wobbles and wobbled straight through the right hand turn before Docs corner.

As he wobbled through the turn he clipped wheels with Niko causing him to lose his line.

Waldo hit the rock and dirt covered wall at around 45 mph and the wall exploded around him.

After his wheel was clipped Niko was also headed to the dirt and rock wall. As soon as his luge left the road the front dug into the dirt and catapulted him into the wall.

Me and Tabitha Mitchell threw our brakes down because we were right behind them when all this went down and the crash looked pretty intense.

I looked up to the crash scene and waldo was laying on the side of the road not moving. His street luge was flipped upside down on top of him.

Niko was also walking towards Waldo. “Waldo? (no response)…….Waldo are you there?” said Niko.

All of a sudden Waldo started shaking around and shoving the street luge off of himself. “I was just checking everything out, making sure I was alright” said Waldo.

Waldo Autry was a man, a legend and a friend to everyone who knew him. His passing is definitely a big blow to the community but he is a man who will never be forgotten.
The stories about him will live on forever. – Lee

Ninjacats: JBall from Ninja Cats on Vimeo.

If you have ever tried to ride a fixed gear bike then chances are you know how tough it is. I have never seen anyone ride a fixed gear bike the way our homie Jonathan Ball rides his. I don’t even know how half the stuff in this video is possible. Burly crashes, stairsets, gaps all while pedaling the whole time.

Look out for Jonathan Ball to innovate the sport of fixed gear biking as his list of tricks grows and grows.

Make sure to go check out his blog called Suck My Cog for more action. – Lee

The Talegalympics was a series of events set up very loosely and there was not enough time in the day to complete everything. Races, team relays, slide

Hey it’s me coming around the corner! Photo By: Justin Reed

contests, longest slide and unused ramps stood on the side of the road. It was many kids first times to the road and lots of kids left skin and blood at the hill. If you start to take Talega lightly it will bite you. I’ve been there. It’s a hill that is pretty gnarly. You have to know what your doing there.

For those of you unfamiliar with the road at a place we call Talega here’s the rundown. It’s a service road that leads up to a water tower. The whole road is very narrow. (About the size of a lane on a freeway.) From the very top of the road it is pretty much just a straight bomb down a narrow pathway where you accelerate to maybe around 40 mph. Then it hits a slight uphill section to around a 500 ft flat section. This is where the technical part of the road comes. The road then winds left and then shoots down a steep section into a hairpin right which requires a small pre-drift into it although I have seen riders grip it before. It then shoots down another steep section into an off camber left hairpin turn that causes most riders to crash. “Crash corner” i have nicknamed it. EVERYONE CRASHES HERE! The turn is slanted so as your sliding into it it is throwing you off the road. It is a very tough turn to navigate. After all of that you are shooting down the last steep section (each section just as steep as the last) into a hairpin right turn. This is another turn you have to drift and it shoots you across the finish line. The only easy part of this road is the straight beginning, after that it’s all tech.

Cameron Zweifel gets steezy with his stand up slide. Photo By: Justin Reed

Alex Wu, 20, of Yorba Linda, Ca shows off his road rash. Photo By: Justin Reed

Anyways with all the events it turned out to be a long day on the hill, not that it wasn’t fun. Just looong and the event took forever to get started but once it did everything got going kinda smoothly besides the fact it took us all to walk back up the whole hill again and again. After the racing was done the slide jams and other contests started.
The team relay was the first event and an interesting one because it hadn’t been done before. One rider would bomb from the top to the flat section where he would tag his awaiting team mate who would have to go through the hairpins. Me and my team mate Tim Bogart actually won this event. Go Tim!!!

Everything else was pretty standard, time trials, slide jams, longest slide. Fun stuff.

“I think it went awesome,” said Kye Pirrie, 18, Redondo Beach. “It was definitely worth it.” Kye was the event organizer and he was going just as hard into it as anyone else. During the time trials I watched him high side into the final right which was toe side for him. It was a brutal crash that left him in the bushes. He trooped it out and finished the race only to later on find out his finger was completely broken all the way through on his thumb.

Kye wasn’t the only one to leave skin at the hill. Just about everyone actually left some skin there. Everyone who skated for the most part anyways. “I kinda underestimate it, hit a patch of gravel and that was it,” said Alex Wu, 20, Yorba Linda. Alex left a lot of skin actually as you can see from this picture!

You can find all the pics on our facebook page here! Make sure to become a fan!

Talegalympics winners! Photo By: Grant Kiessling

Hello fellow adrenaline junkies, my name is Stephen. I am 30 years young, and I have been skating for about 25. My first board was a Vision Gator with the neon tail guard and rails, most of you probably weren’t even born yet.

After years of skating street, a lady named Cathy White gave me my first longboard. You may have heard of her son, Shaun. The board was a Sector 9 Luke Nosewalker. When she handed  me the board she said, “promise me you won’t be going down any hills on this, that’s why I’m giving it to you. I don’t want Shaun to kill himself.” Naturally, I said I wouldn’t. At the time, I had no intention of doing downhill… at the time.

Eventually I ran into a kid at school with a S9 mini cruiser that wanted to skate with me. Every time we would skate he would say,”let’s go bomb some hills dude!’ So we did… and then I knew that I had found my new hobby.

Fast forward to June 28th… I was skating with my friend, Doron, in downtown Long Beach. We frequent some garages in the area that are 7 floors with one lane spirals that are super fun. After a few runs in the garage, we decided to move on because there were a lot of cars. We made our way to the lighthouse to wait out the traffic. While Doron talked to a guy we met at the top of the hill, I went down for my first run. The hill is slow, maybe 25 if you get a good push. At the bottom I made the decision to roll into the grass to slow down… wrong decision. My front wheels hit a hole, and my board stopped. I probably would have been fine, but my foot stop pulled my front foot out from under me. My shoulder dug into the ground and I heard a snap. I knew what it was.

My clavicle was obviously broken and almost coming through the skin. So I walked back up the hill to get Doron.

“Hey man…hey… dude…  we like, gotta roll to the E.R.” I said.

“What?! Why?”

“I am pretty sure this bone isn’t supposed to be poking this way,” I said as I dropped my board and put my foot on it.

“What are you doing?! You can’t skate back like that!’ Doron said.

But it was too late, I was already headed back down the hill. The car was about 2 miles away, but we were in a spot that is hard to get to with a car. As I skated back i could hear Doron’s wheels hitting the cracks behind me. As he skated next to me he said, “dude, is it okay that I’m filming this?’ “Of course,” I said. Why not? I’d be filming your ass if you fell, i thought. When we got to the road, I stopped skating and told him to get the car.

Doron did about 55mph to whole way to the ER. Screaming around corners in his little Fiat, he seemed more freaked out than I was. I appreciated the gesture so much that I could not tell him how much he was hurting me by driving that way.

In the ER I didn’t get anything for pain, they only gave me some anti-inflammatory medicine. A few hours later, the doctor came in with my X-rays. Before I tell you what he said, take a look at it.

“Here is a sling, it will set itself,” the doctor said.

“Hahaha, that is super funny,” I said, “you are joking, right?’

“No, it is just a clavicle. These things heal themselves.”

“Okay, but I’m pretty sure I need surgery.”

There it was, I had a sling and 12 vicodin. The next morning, I drove myself back to the hospital to see a real doctor. When I walked into the room he had my x-ray on the screen and he was shaking his head.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you that you need surgery,” he said.

I had seen this doctor before, you see, I’m no stranger to injury. About 18% of my body is covered in burn scars. That is another story all together.

So I spent a week with my bones completely separated, and it was hell. I had a titanium plate and six screws put in, and healing has  been going pretty well.

This bone is no joke though, not an injury I would want to go through again. I skated 25 years without breaking a bone, but when I finally did it; I did it right. I have no feeling in my entire left shoulder, and you can see the plate sticking up through my skin. The doctors said it would be 3 months before I can pick my daughter up, but I don’t listen. I was lifting her the day after surgery. I know I shouldn’t be, but come on… I’m a single dad, what am I supposed to do?

~Stephen

So I saw this video before I even knew who Peter Kell was and I didn’t know shit about going fast on a skateboard. Although Peter went 95 mph he got lots of hate because he was in the draft of the truck meaning no wind hitting you so it is way way less gnarly. Well this video was filmed when Peter was also very new to the whole DH skateboard scene.
Well he went to make a rebuttal video of himself being pulled by a car holding onto a wake board tow rope. Well he hit 80 and….. I guess you’ll have to watch to find out. – Leecifer

So a small crew of us hardcore IDGR (Irvine downhill and garage riders) group met up as Spencer “Spez” Adams hill. After 3 practice runs we were ready to start running heats. Thats when things started going down. Everyone was going full blast into the righty and bailing hard into the curb. We actually only got one run in before the Irvine PD came to tell us to stop and to tell me that she didn’t think my helmet was safe? Anyways NO ONE DIED!!! The race got stopped and everyone was bored waiting for pizza and watching the footage. It’s a cruel joke to play that people died. People were calling to make sure everyone was alright…don’t worry everyone was amped  about it. “How’s my back look”, “did you see me jump the curb? I jumped over the curb.” “I think I flew the farthest” “You hit the curb so hard your wheel broke off the bearings” “You totally took him out” etc etc.

In all seriousness though everyone this situation was very dangerous. These riders could have easily been in the way of a car. In my heat a car pulled out in the middle of me and Swagmasters run. I could have skated the hill all day as a group and not done heats and it would have been safer. Re-think traffic control and know the road your skating on. Expect the unexpected. Shit happens, ride safe and ride forever. – Leecifer over and out

P.S. I think you did take him out Gregg. Your line was sketchy.

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IDGR dollar race in Quail Hill

Hiking to an abandoned road nestled in the hills of southern Orange County the sketchiness was already happening with kids jumping, grinding, sliding and crashing. With a great view of Saddleback Mountain and overlooking the busy freeway with cars speeding in both directions off to some important event in their lives, oblivious to the event going on in the hills above them we busted out the camera to capture some of the memorable moments.

The hill had a few features set up which included Wyatt Gibb’s kicker ramp, another ramp made by Gravity Skateboards and a round bar rainbow rail that was steep and short. To add to the sketchiness after a few kids got stung a beehive was discovered at the top of the hill. The sides of the road were over grown with spiky weeds taller than me for the most part and they seemed to find a way to use those to their advantage with gaps over them and shit.

After hiking back to the cars we headed over to the shop for a Bar-B-Q and to shred the shop’s mini ramp. With some rest and stomachs full, some missing faces and some new faces kids were bouncing off the walls and dropping in one after another after another. It was overall a great time and many disciples of skating were shown. We even saw Elijah Vinograd’s head get unscrewed with a wrench skateboard.

The day ended with these troopers winning some shwag.

King of the Jam- Wyatt Gibbs

Gnarliest Crash- Danny Ronsen

King of the Hill- Andrew Schumaker

King of the Ramp- Some shredder doing epic wallrides seen in the pics and video.

Burliest skater- Justin Beavers

Runner Up- Nicolas Escamilla

Elijah Vinograd- Best Style

Please wear all your protective safety gear when riding. Skateboarding is a dangerous sport and these haybales are not very soft. Use caution and stay within your limits. Do not try this at home.

So as I have gathered lots of extreme sports footage….mostly skateboarding I have decided to pull a crash clip a week and make it into a short clip. I hope everyone enjoys this new section. Crashes are always a hit. Even the people who crash will come up to me and ask if I got it on film. Crashing is part of the game and you gotta pay to play.

This footage was pulled from an event called the Dragon Skate Race back in 2011. It was held in Irvine, Ca and it was a lot of fun. If you want to read more about the event you can check out the post at the following link. http://adrenaline-fueled.com/?p=1182- Leecifer

It doesn’t look painful but it is. Strapped into your snowboard you don’t have many bail options. This one was straight to the kneecap. The simple action of being unbalanced on snow, a rail or a box can cause this to happen. Time and time again until you get it right. Sharp edges will of course catch easier than dull ones. Lots of Big Bear and Mt high riders file their edges way down and spin on boxes for days. I only have one shredstick however so I like to keep it an all mountain board. I can take it from the park to the pow pow. Anyways enough of my banter. Enjoy this short little clip of a first person view of this stupid little bank thing that screwed me.