Backyard skate

On Friday I was driving around aimlessly and found myself outside Duncan and Ryan's house. Not wanting to appear strange, I called Duncan and asked if he happened to feel like skating. When he answered in the affirmative, I told him I was parked outside. Ever the good sport, he wasn't weirded out in the slightest and invited me in for a skate of his ramp.

I've been wanting to skate this thing for months. It's two ramps joined together, complete with funny jutting out bits, strange transitions, rotisserie-style spinning coping in one section and a few 'scabs' patched up with stickers and duct tape. Wonderful stuff.

The ramp's star attraction is the 'danger zone' - a section of ramp with no platform. Many have perished trying tricks on this deceivingly simple affair. Here's Duncan performing a mermaid-like rock and roll, singing its enticing siren song to me.

It turns out Duncan had to pack to fly to Tasmania, so he disappeared inside. Ryan and I decided to try and take some photos using his fancy slave flashes. First up, a sequence of yours truly performing a trick I accidentally learned only moments beforehand, caused by the abrupt transitions, god bless 'em. I've never had a sequence shot of me, so I was extremely excited by this.

 

Next up, we tried fitting the fancy slave flashes to my funny Fuji camera. Here's Ryan fiddling with something.

And somehow it started working!

I tried doing justice to Ryan's trademark hurricane on the aforementioned danger zone, with mixed results. Skate photography is hard! Note the visible flash - amateur move.

Tess was loving it, chasing Ryan as he skated, trying to make him fall off or something. What is going on in her head?

Then it was my turn to dazzle again in front of the lens. Luckily, Scottie showed up and was able to crouch within the ramp, holding the flash (as well as Tess) as Ryan stood atop a rickety ladder and shot this masterpiece.

That was really fun. Then I drove Duncan to the airport in peak hour traffic, a tense race against the clock that resulted in a successful boarding. A lovely afternoon, all up.