the killing season.

so not sure if you all have been keeping up with skateboarder mag’s the killing season, but it’s awesome! back in january, i had heard that jonathan mehring was going on this trip at basically the same time that we went. in fact i’m pretty sure by the time these guys were half way, we were probably just reaching hanoi. likewise with the temperature and riding conditions, these guys pretty much experienced exactly what we did (*except we were all on minsks haha). anyhow here’s the 4 part series, along with a couple of excerpts from the article in the mag. honestly all of this hit soo close to home. having traveled asia relatively extensively, if you ever have a chance to go to vietnam, please do it! it’s incredible there.

so first of all this was like an all-star cast. soo stoked on these amazing adventures that mehring goes after. the one thing i’m sorta bummed on is the fact that keegan rode a scooter. you ride a motorcycle back home, how you gonna go on an adventure like this and not get a legit bike!? haha get a honda win at least man.

dude… the rain from this trip definitely has me dreading the idea of ever riding in the rain again. seriously riding in the rain for 3/4 days straight, was like literally being in hell. the skating in this was rad though. you hear them talking about how their ratio of riding to skating was 50 to 1. in our case, it was 50 to 0 as our boards were ruined from the rain fairly early on in our trip. keegan’s ollie line in hanoi (*which has since become a rvca ad as seen below) is incredible. we definitely scoped out that ollie when we were there, but no one was quite up for trying it, so i’m super stoked this trick got handled.

the ah-1 is fucked. honestly stay away from there, especially if you’re riding in the north. on their trip and similarly to ours, it looks like the asians (jerry and i) were the only ones to go down fairly seriously. the way jerry talks about his spill and the events that happened right after were basically identical to what happened to me, when i was cut off my scooter on the ah-1. here are some photos from when i went down… (*shot by skelly)

it was also a discussion we had a few times during our trip, but we were making up random estimates at the number of people who would have died from the traffic everyday. i guessed around 10 or so and i think everyone else on my trip guessed a little less. anyhow from the article, mehring and the crew ran into a minsk tour and actually found that this number was around 40 deaths a day…

so the last part came out today and it was awesome! i could honestly watch another 3/4 of these. that part in this last section about the makeshift skateboard was incredible too! while the adventures over there were sketchy at best, i’d give anything to be back. it’s just such a raw experience and like jerry was mentioning, this kind of a trip definitely changes your life.

lastly, i just got an email this evening, and i am actually traveling through mongolia with patrik wallner and a bunch of homies from china at the end of this month! pretty stoooked! till then…!