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Wo man uns findet:

01.05.2010
Vulkanradweg

22-24.05.2010
Lohnsburg Freeride + Challenge
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-bereits ausgebucht-

29-30.05.2010
Kaffee Schnaps
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31.05.2010
Girls Jam and Workshop @ Hoghill
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04-06.06.2010
Altusride

12-13.06.2010
Tank Outlaws

26-27.06.2010
Kaffee Schnaps
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15-18.07.2010
Almabtrieb

06-08.08.2010
Insul

18-22.08.2010
Zeltlager Jungholz
Allgäuer Longboardverein e.V.

27-29.08.2010
Beton on Fire
Bobbahn Altenberg
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26.-29.08
Gioasteka Freeride

04-05.09.2010
Kaffee Schnaps
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Tripping

Get Lost!
You never know what you´ll find

Reisen bildet, so sagt der Volksmund. Das Longboarden bietet uns die Möglichkeit Menschen und Länder aus einer ganz eigenen Perspektive kennen zu lernen. Reisen ist ein wichtiges Element um nicht im Alltag stecken zu bleiben, um Ideen und Ideale auf den Prüfstand anderer Denkmodelle und kultureller Sichtweisen zu stellen. Rucksack packen, Brett unter die Füße und los gehts!


Portugal Roadtrip 2009

An Email from Duarte Reis, the organizer of Longboarderz Festival 2009 in Carvoeiro close to Porto, caught our attention and the idea of a roadtrip was stuck to our minds. A couple of days later we decided to give it a shot and see what Longboarding in Portugal is all about.

It didn´t take long and we had a bag full of contacts, spots and invitations all around the place. Once again longboarding proofs to be a nice medium to get in contact and to share passion with people all over the globe. We´re stoked to meet you guys for we already had the warmest welcome possible!

Preparations

It´s been some greasy two days fixing the axle boots and some other stuff on the White Shark, our expedition vehicle. We have more than 5000km ahead and we´d rather bring some skateboards instead of a big toolbox. Ivo took a shower not until 3 days of hardcore working and turned our bathroom in something like a devastated oilflield - watch out for this guy, he´s gnarly :)

To put things in perspective again, Ivo did a great job planing the trip, getting in contact with a buch of locals and preparing for filming our mission. Check this page and our road trip map for regular updates
Watch Layback goes to Portugal in big

On the road

Thursday, september 17, 21:31 and finally we´re off. Ivo, Manu and Hackenstein are heading off south. We have a 6 hour drive ahead for our first spot the Rooler Gab. Hopefully there will be some sunny patches for this crazy piece of skateboard enthusiasm. Stay tuned!

18.09.2009 Rooler Gab

Some of the best things in life are brought to us by mr. coincidence. In this case it´s been only 3 days before we left when Ivo came across an article in an old magazine about a unique spot called Rooler Gab.

We´ve been driving all night getting close to the spot around 6 in the morning. Of course there was nobody to find helping us out with the exact location this time of the day. In the end the White Shark had to go through some serious off road action and eventually we spotted our destination from a neighbouring hill.
Rooler Gab was put into life by Gabriel Lauret in 1992 after his retirement and more than 3 years of planing and fuzzing around with the authorities. The intention was to build something like a ski slope for all year round use. He bought a piece of land, a brand new skilift and went for it. The whole project was established pretty much only for the hell of it and since skateboarding was not really big back in those days it closed after one and a half years of operation. The spirit is still there and you will not find another spot like this in the rest of europe, maybe not even anywhere else in the world.
Nature always takes back what humas claim so the spot turned into one of the most gnarly kinds over the years. On the topmost liftpole there´s a Boardstein sticker saying "Death skates with you". This statement expresses the respect you should bring for this spot. The character is quite unique, something like a bobtrack with banked curves right in the middle of the wilderness. There´s also a mellow vibe coming along with mother natures work and it´s definately a lot of fun skating there. Rooler Gab rules!
Rooler Gab is located close to Durfort in the Gard on 43°58'13.20"N, 3°55'6.58"E.


20.09.2009

Today we finally arrived in Portugal! Right now we are hanging out with Joana and Eduardo who invited us to an amazing home cooked dinner. Eduardo proved himself to be as good of a cook as he is of a person.
we just arrived here in Ericeira but we already feel at home.
It may be prejudice when you say that longboarders are great people, but it really seems to be the truth. All the people we have met so far have been so welcoming and exited to skate with us. we are looking forward to the next couple of days here around Lisbon, to skate with the locals and to try to surf. portugal e fantastico!!!!!!

22.09.2009

On monday our priority was hanging at the beach for a while and feeling the vibe of salty mama. Unfortunately there´s no ocean close to Freiburg so we had to take advantage...

Many thanks to Eduardo and Joana, we enjoyed our time with you guys and we´re looking forward to skate with you´re crowd again at the festival. The downhill session last night was unbelieveable! Lighted roads all the way down to the beach are a pretty nice thing to have in your neighbourhood but the most unbelievable thing to us is bombing by the police and there´s no running, sirenes, flashlights or handcuffs. They just watch the whole thing and pass by. Thumbs up for Portugal!

La Noche En Blanco

Time for a little flashback on Madrid. On Saturday we we´re checking the bowl in Matero close to Barcelona when we heard about some kind of session going on in Madrid. Little did we know but it sounded interesting and we punched in the address of the Caribbean Skateshop which was supposed to be the meeting point. Half an hour late but still quite in time the white shark landed and we were welcomed by the biggest bunch of longboarders we´ve ever seen in one spot.
La Noche En Blanco is a cultural event throughout Europe where some cities close they´re streets for all sorts of cultural things. Street artists, open museums and a bunch of longboarders taking advantage...
The organizer of the wildest citycruise ever is Ra, a student of novel engeneering and a style master on a longboard. It´s the 3rd year longboarders meet up to skate Madrid with closed roads. Whereas in the first year only 10 skaters showed up the second edition drew attention of about 120 people. Estimates go as far as 160 riders for this years´s edition.
The first spot was Moyano, a wide and smooth pedestrian zone with just about the right steepness for all sorts of expressions on a skateboard. We saw crazy slides, smooth dancing, kicked back carving. A lot of different and clean styles were put on the smoothly tiled surface by riders from all around Europe.
From there we hijacked a train to Nuevos Ministerio to skate back into the heart of the city surrounded by thousands of people. Imagine skating in the middle of a rock concert. The flow was just unbelievable.
After a very short sleep we got picked up by Ra and the Mad Surfer for some bowlriding in the outskirts of Madrid with a bunch of suspects we met the night before. Quite a nice way to end a most crazy session.

23.09.2009 - Luis Paulo

Actually we lost track a bit with our diary and we´re already on the way back home with an unplanned stopover somewhere in Spain. The white shark was running like a champ but all of a sudden refused to work. We already made it to a work shop, connected to the internet and found out spanish names for stuff like diesel injection pumps. Without even a word of spanish. We will see...
When it comes to skateboarding in Portugal there´s one name you shouldn´t miss: Luis Paulo.
Luis Paulo is 43 years of age and skateboarding for 33 years. He skated with Tony Hawk, Duane Peters and Jay Adams just to name a few.
We met Luis Paulo in his house near Lisbon and after showing us around his skate museum, he took us to some skateparks he designed. I´ts been a real pleasure to skate with the grandmaster of skateboarding in portugal.
Luis Paulo is into various things. He´s not only skating street and bowls, there´s also quite a bit of longboarding. Beach cruisin and downhill, he always puts on a nice and fluent style. As a newcomer in slalom he went straight to the first place in a spanish championship race.
We like the way Luis Paulo is treating things. For example he painted one of his skateparks in a sandy yellow in order not to disturb birds on they´re way south. He´s also running a skateschool for kids going along with them all the way up to professional level.
Luis Paulo´s and his wife´s hospitality was amazing. Showing us the nicest spots in town, getting our bellies stuffed with a delicious dinner and what would be a portugese day without some night downhill - Again we were on the road with a bunch of very nice portugese riders...
Obrigado Luis Paulo, we felt humbled skating with you. Keep up the good work!
In the meantime we found out more about the white shark´s issues. My first mechanical lesson on cars was to take out the injection pump, getting it all stripped and putting it back together again in the right way. That was with 180000km on the clock. Now we just made it to 300000km and the pump is striking again. We´re just waiting for pickup and the car will be sent to us within the next 2 weeks. Good to have a service insurance but still, this kinda screws our trip. However, a pump is just a pump and there´s friends who know friends... it´s all organized, the pump will be fixed and we will keep continuing our trips!

24.09.2009 - Up north

On the drive north to Porto we decided to follow the sun for a bit, kicking back and recovering from a lot of skating. Again it was by chance that we ended up in some little beach town with a nice skatepark and some sandy playgrounds for the offroad sharkster.
Manu and Ivo did some shredding, filming the sunset and reading in the beach lounge. For myself the only thing to do was deflating the tyres down to 1.5 bar to handle deep sand without any trouble at all.
One side of travelling foreign countries is getting to know the people and different perspectives on life. The other is not seeing a single soul and getting indulged in the sheer beauty of mother natures work. Just as we enjoyed hanging with the bro´s we were stunned by the wonderfull scenerie out on the beach

25.09.2009 - Casa da Musica

It´s been getting close to the Festival so we hooked up with the guys from Porto and the english dudes at Casa da Musica in Porto. As the name suggests the building was dedicated to music in the year 2001 when Porto was the Cultural Capitol of Europe. Architect Rem Koolhaas was really a cool dude when he decided to build a giant and smoothly tiled wave around the building!
For sure longboarders and streetskaters alike enjoy this great piece of skateboard architecture. At first officials from Casa da Musica were not amused with followers of the sideways culture surfing the placa and told skaters off. Architect Rem said the place should be enjoyed by all kinds of cultural movements so now the wave is pumping 24 hours a day.
No matter what kind of skateboarding you´re into - Porto is full of crazy spots. Mild climate and friendly people do the rest. Don´t miss Porto on your skate travels!

26-27.09.2009 - Longboarderz Festival

Finally the days of the festival had come. A little convoi of 5 cars packed with longboarders and equipment made the journey 45 minutes south east of Porto. Carvoeiro is a small and sleepy village surrounded by green hills and roads for downhill riding. The track chosen by the Longboarderz crew made for downhill riding with a max of 70 kph, mellow sliding and slalom on the bottom part. The atmosphere was chilled with a friendly vibe among the riders.
For the downhill session we set up a track with cones sweeping down the road. Sliders had they´re spot in the steepest part right next to the food tent. Some longboarders from Lisbon joined in making a total of about 35 riders.
Longboarding in Portugal is still in the early days where passion is the driving force. The event was a two day session with riders who love to feel the flow of longboarding instead of putting on a grim racing attitude.
Pushing longboarding to a higher level and bringing the sport towards more acceptance in public usually brings in a more competitive attitude to the expense of soulriding. In Portugal this has not happened yet. For portugese riders and organizers it will be the challange for the future to keep the soul but also pushing the sports for more international attention. We´re looking forward for a big crowd on a portugese hill next season with a lot more riders doing what they love to do. Portugal is worth the trip for sure.
To bring it all down to a few words, we enjoyed it a lot getting close with the portugese longboarding scene and taking part in the Longboarderz Festival 2009 which was a great event. You guys are great people, we saw awesome riding and we´re stoked we made the trip!
Like on every good party there should be a chillout part before getting back to what is generally thought of as reality. Sunday after the Festival the remaining riders went freeriding on a sideroad with beautifull surroundings. Getting back to Porto Leo Gonzales took care of our well beeing and showed us some nice sides of Porto, ending up again at Casa da Musica till 5 in the morning. Thaks Leo for everything.
It´s been two intense weeks on the road. The three of us made it back in one piece with only the white shark missing in action. It´s good to have a place like home for healing the wounds and preparing for the next journey. Merci, gracias and obrigado to all you guys we met and who helped making this trip unforgettable. We will see you around and maybe some of you will even make it to Freiburg one day. There´s some nice hills aroud for sure.

Portugal Roadtrip Part I

Ivo Knievel, Manu and Hackenstein on they´re way down south

Portugal Roadtrip Part II

La noche en blanco - Epic skatesession in Madrid!