So we have just arrived back to O'ahu after spending 8 days on the Island of Maui. Maui was like a dream and defiantly somewhere I could see myself living. It was so much like home in so many ways, everywhere we drove it was Australian bush. Huge Eucalypt's and wattles, miles of dry long grass. The only difference between Maui and South Australia was the epic mountains that tower over each end of the Island.
90% of Maui's roads are skateable. They range from rough, narrow and scary runs that you have to be constantly sideways on your board for to long winding runs down mountain sides with fast corners that can just be gripped. The biggest mountain on the island which has just been deemed and active volcano (the crater) has a run from the top, all the way to the beach which is just under an hour of non stop downhill.
The thing I love about Hawaii so much is that bombing hills is standard. There are no divisions within skateboarding on the islands. If you ride park or pools you bomb hill, it's natural. If you bomb hills you ride street or transition. Skateboarding is one big entity over here, free of bullshit, scenes, groups or ego. There are some killer parks on maui, most of them filled with transition. We also stumbled upon the house of big wave surfer David Langer who has an insanely huge and awesome bowl in his backyard. He encourages everyone to come over and skate it and was a rad bloke.
The excuse we had to head to Maui was the second race of the winter series that takes place over different Hawaiian islands. The road that was originally selected for the race hill was in an un developed housing estate. The land was huge, the grass was incredibly green and the road (which was the only thing that had been built) was butter smooth black top with a top speed of around 65KM/h. The other benefit is that the road was a dead end at the bottom meaning that we could be 100% sure that there would be no cars coming up. We got in 2 or 3 practice runs which were awesome before some ladies who were watching told us to look out for the guy who owns the property because he is a bit of an ass. No more than 2 minutes after they warned us, an extremely angry man in a tractor arrived and attempted to fight about 30 bewildered skaters. We politely said goodbye and told him we were happy to leave but he decided it would be more fun to jump into his truck and chase cars up the hill in reverse. Eventually he lost everything from the back of his truck and hit a tree. Amusing, but a little intimidating to say the least.
The race was moved to another road which we had skated the day before. It's a super long, winding road which will turn your legs into jelly at the finish line. Stopping on a skateboard is extremely hard when you can't control your legs so we saw a couple of amusing crashes at the finish line. My first heat was super tight but I squeezed into second place and advanced to the next round. In the second heat I screwed up the push at the start line, lost the pack and without the draft of other riders to pull you along tucking the whole road was just to difficult. It was an awesome day though, we got extra runs in afterwards and then headed to the beach.
Maui waves are stompers! Easily the biggest waves I have ever seen and always with some crazy mofos surfing them. Even standing on the shore line you will get picked up and thrown back onto land with no mercy. As well as awesome beaches there are stunning waterfalls with huge overhangs to jump off of. One of my favourite places was called 7 pools. It was a hell of a drive and turned into a pretty scary mission eventually but it was totally worth it. It is a massive pool of fresh water but it's close enough to the ocean that when there is big swell the salt water will push it's way into the fresh water pool. It is surrounded by rock walls were really fun to climb and if you fell, you just landed in 15 foot of water. Fresh muscles that could be eaten straight off the rocks, caves in the water and a little island that we could swim across to and explore. Writing all this down, I realise I can do it no justice with words. Maui should be on your list of places to go!
I dunno what else to write now, I have posted a short clip in the ''Rad Shit'' section of the eventual race hill.
If I remember more I will write it.
Aloha.
O, if you wanna see more photos. Check em here
90% of Maui's roads are skateable. They range from rough, narrow and scary runs that you have to be constantly sideways on your board for to long winding runs down mountain sides with fast corners that can just be gripped. The biggest mountain on the island which has just been deemed and active volcano (the crater) has a run from the top, all the way to the beach which is just under an hour of non stop downhill.
The thing I love about Hawaii so much is that bombing hills is standard. There are no divisions within skateboarding on the islands. If you ride park or pools you bomb hill, it's natural. If you bomb hills you ride street or transition. Skateboarding is one big entity over here, free of bullshit, scenes, groups or ego. There are some killer parks on maui, most of them filled with transition. We also stumbled upon the house of big wave surfer David Langer who has an insanely huge and awesome bowl in his backyard. He encourages everyone to come over and skate it and was a rad bloke.
The excuse we had to head to Maui was the second race of the winter series that takes place over different Hawaiian islands. The road that was originally selected for the race hill was in an un developed housing estate. The land was huge, the grass was incredibly green and the road (which was the only thing that had been built) was butter smooth black top with a top speed of around 65KM/h. The other benefit is that the road was a dead end at the bottom meaning that we could be 100% sure that there would be no cars coming up. We got in 2 or 3 practice runs which were awesome before some ladies who were watching told us to look out for the guy who owns the property because he is a bit of an ass. No more than 2 minutes after they warned us, an extremely angry man in a tractor arrived and attempted to fight about 30 bewildered skaters. We politely said goodbye and told him we were happy to leave but he decided it would be more fun to jump into his truck and chase cars up the hill in reverse. Eventually he lost everything from the back of his truck and hit a tree. Amusing, but a little intimidating to say the least.
The race was moved to another road which we had skated the day before. It's a super long, winding road which will turn your legs into jelly at the finish line. Stopping on a skateboard is extremely hard when you can't control your legs so we saw a couple of amusing crashes at the finish line. My first heat was super tight but I squeezed into second place and advanced to the next round. In the second heat I screwed up the push at the start line, lost the pack and without the draft of other riders to pull you along tucking the whole road was just to difficult. It was an awesome day though, we got extra runs in afterwards and then headed to the beach.
Maui waves are stompers! Easily the biggest waves I have ever seen and always with some crazy mofos surfing them. Even standing on the shore line you will get picked up and thrown back onto land with no mercy. As well as awesome beaches there are stunning waterfalls with huge overhangs to jump off of. One of my favourite places was called 7 pools. It was a hell of a drive and turned into a pretty scary mission eventually but it was totally worth it. It is a massive pool of fresh water but it's close enough to the ocean that when there is big swell the salt water will push it's way into the fresh water pool. It is surrounded by rock walls were really fun to climb and if you fell, you just landed in 15 foot of water. Fresh muscles that could be eaten straight off the rocks, caves in the water and a little island that we could swim across to and explore. Writing all this down, I realise I can do it no justice with words. Maui should be on your list of places to go!
I dunno what else to write now, I have posted a short clip in the ''Rad Shit'' section of the eventual race hill.
If I remember more I will write it.
Aloha.
O, if you wanna see more photos. Check em here
RSS Feed