Firstly, thank you to all the riders, last weekend was freaking awesome (as proved by the buzz on the days, and by the mass of awesome media showing you all having a rad time), and I'm still riding on the stoke. You all rode fantastically, were patient during racing, and made everything go smoothly for each other and for us folks trying to herd you around the venue. Your attendance makes these events possible. Looking forward to seeing you all again in July!
Second: The organisers and the volunteers! thanks guys for helping us out: you know who you are, you all got some rad stuff from the event, and plenty of gratitiude. Normally we need about 8-10 volunteers across the course of the weekend, with perks ranging from drinks and a sarnie to the whole weekend free (!) alongside some merch.
Third:
- Hargreaves Scout Camp - thanks for letting us stay (thanks campers for keeping it tidy)
- St John's Ambulance for patching you guys up when you decinded to hug the ground at high speed
- And of course, Redbridge Cycle Centre for being so accommodating of all us dirty skaters! Cheers again guys!
Fourth: Sponsors!
Thanks to everyone who put swag into the pot, turned up with demo boards and helped out by turning up with shops. In no specific order:
Thanks to everyone who put swag into the pot, turned up with demo boards and helped out by turning up with shops. In no specific order:
- One Tree Boards - Fantastic boards for top podium places, hours of love and paint made three gorgeous boards and a load of sweet tees and sticker packs - watch out for more in the future
- Arbor - Late in the game but showing up with a ton of demo boards, offering up gloves wheels copies of grade and posters, a big thanks to Lyndsay for sorting us out!
- Longboards UK - Not only has the London based shop sorted us out with three sets of wheels, 2 sets of trucks and 1 set of bearings, but helped DAS Industries buy the two manual pads you saw on the hill. Expect more variants of them in the future: we're going to try making them into flatbanks for g-turns next time!
- Mindless Longboards - you saw me riding around on one of their boards (pintails for life!), and they chucked us a pile of wheels, bearings and trucks (in quantities of 3,2,2), with a couple of bits that you'll see crop up inn other DAS events in the future.
- Kryptonics put some wheels up for testing on the slide hill - stateside riders use both the blue and greens for freeride. We saw wheels going to riders across all disciplines
- BTR put forward some coins so that everyone at the campsite could have a bit of a picnic. Nice one!
- Seismic - Providing Slalom race spreadsheets every time, Dan at Seismic keeps the UKSSA on track and stops them from bickering about that final 0.01 seconds.
- Octane Sport - Supporting Slalom and Sliding, sweet wheels, a G&S board and some threads made their way out to some lucky riders. Octane also provided timing gear and ramps to complete the slalom ensemble, alongside running the octane mobile shop!
- Grip Shack - Grip went into the prize pot, but inundated with gear, we saved it up for go skateboard day (Notts Edition), and future DAS Stuff
- Newton's shred chucked in some wheels and a complete D-Street board for the 1st place in the open category.Attending with their shop and plenty of wares and advice, it was great to catch up with the guys.
- Thrill mag support all DAS events through free ads in the mag (sadly no longer in print) and soon to be free ads on the website! keep checking back for news on the UK scene
- Dangerous Decks unfortunately couldn't attend, but Pete Davies, repping dangerous luge tech and the UK open Lunge championships came along, and made some sweet racing happen, with a trophy taken by a brand new street luger to Hog Hill
Aaaaaand I think that's it! Please check out all the sponsors on facebook, and help them help us.
Fifth: Keep that media coming! Media dumps coming sooooon!
Sixth: See you in 6 weeks(ish for the Summer Swine Stomp!
Peace, love and skateboarding,
Timmy :)
