I arrived in SF around 10am and was picked up from the airport by my friend Reed. We went back to his house, got some lunch, and then headed over to Berkeley to check out the park. Reed had heard that the park had opened the previous Saturday but that wasn't the case. The gate was locked and no one was around. We found out later that people had been hopping the fence and skating without too much trouble. We decided to hit up Alameda since it was the closest park. Alameda is a weird park. It has a square bowl that empties into a miniture street course. The bowl is extremely poorly built. The walls are more like steep banks and some walls are much steeper than others. Regardless of all its flaws, this park is actually a lot of fun.

Pat had found the Piedmont park the other day while driving around and wanted to head back. I had seen some pics of the tuning fork shaped bowl at Piedmont and was pretty intrigued. The whole park was layed out a little strange and the concrete work is not very good. The bowl has some nice lines in it and a hidden "danger pocket" that'll throw you. After Piedmont we headed back over to Alameda to skate until the sun went down. The bowl is a lot harder to skate in the dark.

Some of the older guys at Piedmont and Alameda told us about the bowl at Novato. Pat, Reed, and I headed out to the park without any clear directions. Once we got into town we asked some locals who seemed oblivious that there was a skatepark anywhere in the area. Eventually we found some sketchy looking dudes at a gas station who gave us some decent directions. Novato turned out to be the best park yet. Still nothing over 6' but the transitions were nice and the bowl was kinda like a long snake run with a lot of hips. I ended up bruising my knee really bad on a sweeper over one the hips.

Today was my birthday, and Ripon was a nice birthday present. Ripon had a nice 9' wall that comes to vert and was by far the biggest park of the trip so far. The park has a ton of lines, excellent transitions, and is super fun. Its out in the desert so the weather was much hotter than SF, but still not as bad as back east. There was no humidity, which makes a huge difference. The park has metal coping, but there are couple spots with no coping and a grindable concrete lip. Ripon is definitely one of the best parks in NorCal. On the way back we spotted 2 pools from the highway that looked empty, but upon closer inspection, one was mostly full, and the other was filled in with scrap wood and other junk.

Today was the Tim Brauch Memorial Contest at Vans in Milipitas. We went down to check out the bowl contest. Benji Galloway took the title with some sick skating, including a McTwist near the end. Pete the Ox was one of the raddest skaters to watch. He skates like a madman and is always going full speed ahead. Brewce Martin gave me his business card afterwards, which I found pretty funny.

We headed back down to the Milipitas bowl today for a session. There weren't too many people in the park and only a couple took some runs in the bowl. This bowl is sick. Its hard to decide which I liked better, Milipitas or Ripon. I think my vote goes for Milpitas - I'm a sucker for tile and pool coping. I also liked the tight lowend corners a lot. Apparently, this bowl was sand blasted at one point, making it much grippier than the other Vans bowls. I wish they'd wise-up and do that to the Vans bowl in VA.

We had heard rumors that the Berkeley park would open up sometime during the weekend. Today was Monday so we figured it would be open, and if not we'd hop the fence and get a few runs in anyway. We showed up and it was definitely open - and packed. There was a full on snake session going down in the bowl but I still managed to get my fair share of runs in. A lot of pros were out today, including some Anti-hero guys, the Gonz, and Drehobl. Drehobl was by far ripping the hardest while I was there. The bowl here is pretty rad. The concrete is well done and there are a lot of lines. The Gonz got ahold of a bike and took some runs. He attempted to roll-in to the bowl with one foot on the seat and the other on the handlebars.

Got up early and headed to the airport for the long flight back East. I skated 6 parks and saw a hell of a lot of pros destroy some bowls. Definitely a rad trip. It took about 15 days for the swelling in my knee to subside. Good times, good times...