Island Storms

Every summer Shadd Trepp always hits me up and tries to get some of the Protest Crew to head over to Vancouver Island with him and some of the Tsawwassen Crew. This year was super busy all summer and the only time we could make it happen was the last weekend of September, with by the way the weather went all summer long should have been beautiful, but it totally wasn’t. All week on the The Weather Network there were warnings about the storms coming on the weekend, 50+ mm of rain each day Saturday through Monday, and lots of wind warnings in affect. Did that stop us from going, hell no.

Shadd had a sweet deal on a TimeShare Condo that was only gonna cost us $5 each and we knew there would be covered options. As soon as Friday hit and I finally believed that the storms were definitely coming I booked some time at One Six Ramp for right when we got off the Ferry Saturday morning. One Six is a shop on Quadra Street in Victoria about 20 minutes from Schwartz Bay, it’s a half skate shop, half BMX shop and has a sweet 3′-4′ mini ramp with a spine and wallride. Needless to say we spent a few hours there over the weekend. Super fun, super fast and totally dry.

We had to go peep out Six Side too of course which is the DIY spot under the 6 mile Pub bridge in Colwood/Langford area. This spot puts Leeside to shame for gnarlyness because it is built so compact. The bottom section is insane with wallrides, waterfall slides and a bunch of pillars to smack your face on, but it was wet from the abundance of rain being dumped from the sky so the only skateable portion was the little bowl at the top. This bowl is tough, super tightly built with zero flatbottom anywhere, impossible lines, and a parking curb spine that drops you into a 7′ bowl that’s built like a capsule. Little Andy Anderson dropped in and began the demo, wowing the locals. It was a killer sesh and everyone who wanted to skate it did.

Sunday was clearing up but the wind was coming in hard. They had announced by 9am that Ferry’s in the evening were most likely going to be cancelled. After another sweaty session at One Six, the smart half of the crew headed off to catch the 3 o’clock boat back to the mainland while the jonesers all followed the sunshine to Vic West Skate Park. James Steele dove right into the huge lake in the flatbottom there to open up the drains and the whole park dried up quick. The 80km/hr wind gusts probably helped a bit. We had a solid skate session there but the rain was coming back and the wind was blowing hard, it was time to leave. But guess how many Ferry’s were still running – that’s right, zero.

The trip was all good even with the rain, we had fun together as a group the whole time, but it did make it tough to get any street footage…

Check the video of the stuff we did skate featuring Hippie Mike, Andy Anderson, Cisco Gooding, Jay Mykyte, Tyler Burke, James Steele, Shadd Trepp and Little Kaelen Faux