The next day we meet in the lobby of the hotel to find out “Where do you want to go today?”. I have family that lives in Elkhart, Indiana, that has an awesome Italian restaurant, D’antini’s. This is the town my mother and father grew up in. I was looking for an excuse to drag the crew a couple hours east. There happened to be a new park that opened about half a year ago there, so that’s all I needed. The crew and I started our journey for some fine dining in Elkhart, but we’re stopping at Blindside Park to work up an appetite first.
We got to the park, and as we were rolling in we rolled over a hidden spike that blew out the rear tires. Luckily we were in the RV capital of the world, so Frank took care of the RV as we went and hit up the park.
The park was fun. There were some lines for all of us. I found a nice little ¼ pipe that if you hit it hard enough you could make it to the wall and ride it over the canyon and back into the other side. There was a canyon you could air into a sub-ramp, but I tried a no hander over it and my hand hit the rafters hanging from the roof, and knocked me off my bike. Nasty was pimpin’ out some flips over this little 3 foot ramp only like he can. He clipped the ceiling with the bottom of his wheels a couple times. Thorne had to get out of town for some gig he had in Atlanta, but he’ll catch back up with us on in KC. Between Rueben and Seth they uncovered every hidden line that nobody but them saw. It’s great to watch their imaginations at work. We all just cruised around and dodged each other as everyone was in their search and destroy mode.
After the session we went to my Uncle Mike and Anti Ang Italian restaurant, D’antini’s, and grubbed down on a feast. We wobbled back to the RV and headed back to Chicago for a late night street ride.
We met in the lobby the next morning to find out “Where do you want to go today?”. We eventually needed to make it to KC to pick up Thorne and ride Dennis McCoy’s set up. We had talked this paintball place into letting us bring our bikes into their virtual city. We had guns strapped to us for an all out war, but it was either that or stop off in St. Louis and ride KC native Tom Raniollo's park, Ramp Riders. We rolled in around 6pm, still having a 5 hr. drive to KC, so we thought we had time for a quick two hour session. There were three levels to the park. There weren’t many big transfer or big air lines, but there were tons of little tech lines. I beat the hell out of myself, trying to get my tech on. I had a lot harder time walking out of that park then I did walking into it. Even though I was going to have a difficult time getting out of bed the next morning I had a good time riding and taking it. I could go into everything everyone did, but you’ll see it in the game and on ESPN2, so I’m going to let your imagination fill in the blanks.
We packed up and headed to KC, arriving around 4am. Tomorrow we’re going to Dennis’s backyard set up. I can’t wait.
-Mat
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