road rash

Talegalympics

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

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.

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!

So Cal Represent 2010

The Dethbox crew rolled down from San Francisco for an epic weekend of riding. Filled with some of the best roads in L.A and Southern California and lots of blood and sweat. I lagged hard making this video but here it is for all of you to enjoy.

Film/Edit by Lee Eisler and Dan Shanker

Riders: Dub C Rider(John Laudin), Bently , Bob Glashan, Lee Eisler, Dan Brunner, Chipper(Nic Ruiz), Gooner(Austin Lin),

Alex McClellan, Tyler Stoehr, Damian

And Freebords version made and filmed by Bently Anderson

Car Pass Crash

Riding with the Dethbox crew for their So Cal Represent Tour 2010 was fun. This Gnarly carnage occurred on my second run of the first day of their tour. We were riding a fairly simple hill and I was feeling confident with some speed when I saw the opportunity to pass a car. Passing cars is completely bad ass unless you pass them only to crash. Basically I caught a heel edge and got some of the gnarliest road rash I have ever gotten. It also caused me to break the Scaphoid bone in my right hand.