Quoting Cody Sanders:

“Oh boy, blade cup. It’s been years since I’ve been to one. Me and the crew usually pick one major event to all mob each year. Blade Cup with this year’s pick. Well, I say “the whole crew,” but usually 80% of them bail once plane tickets start being purchased. This however wasn’t the case this weekend. It was the first time I’ve seen so many of my close friends actually bite the bullet and come out to a blading event.

Even if the goal wasn’t to skate in it, just to be around it. I loved it. We talked about it all weekend, how important it was to be present at the very few moments we all have to gather en masse. What was even more impressive, was seeing some of my friends that haven’t entered a competition (in some cases, in twenty years!) participate in the event. I won’t ramble on too much about the event itself, because the video covers the most of it, but I do want to touch on a few key points that may not be too obvious.

In the middle of the event, my lens broke and I had to scramble to a camera store and buy a new one. Thank you Kirill and Labez for helping me through all of that. I ended up missing a large chunk of the veterans and pro events because of that. So yes… There’s a lot of phone clips in this one. What I was focused on this year was the Bladies event. For those of you that aren’t familiar with that term, it’s the womans event.

I was focused on it because every time I go to an event, I end up having some sort of mishap that causes me to be unable to film it. That happened at Winterclash, Franky Morales Invitational, Carriers Open, etc… So I really went out of my way to make sure that my batteries were charged and I was on schedule for once.

I wasn’t disappointed. I think the female side of our sport is really starting to ramp up. The amount of participation, level and overall vibe was super high this weekend. The pro event ended up getting rained out, which was a bit of a damper. But they did hold a bonus event the day after that coincided with the Brandon Negrete Memorial event. Which was awesome but… Somehow I didn’t get the memo that it was happening. I had made plans with my California family to meet up that Sunday, so I ended up missing it. Which I normally could have been ok with, but Mick Casals won! Man! I wish I would have been there for that. But oh well… I’m sure there’s going to be many more moments like that to look forward to.

If you’re still reading, make it a point to try and get out to an event this year. Even if you’re brand new, you don’t know anyone there, it doesn’t matter. It’s waaay too easy to make friends and feel a part of the event when you’re at these things. The more the merrier. Give yourself a reason to travel. You’re good enough. You’re not too old. Whatever it is that you’ve got in your head, don’t listen to it. Come out and be a part of rollerblading. Blading Cup was fantastic. No matter what happened, absolutely fantastic. Can’t wait to see yall at the next one”. - Cody Sanders (Jumbo-brand.com).

Jumbo: how to fishbrain - Trick Tips. “It’s the little things that make a big difference”. I’ve been talking about making this fishbrain video for years. There’s so many different elements to this trick that make it hard to perfect, but they’re unsung. A proper fishbrain is something we take for granted. It’s the go-to trick for almost every photo.

It’s more complicated than it looks. I discuss it in the video, so I won’t rant about it here, but with every fishbrain there’s at least 8-10 different movements that have to go right for it to work out. I did forget to bring up not to hang your non-grinding foot below the ledge. I’m bummed about that. Big thank you to Anthony Medina for helping me out. As I mentioned in the video, you need to be able to do most of the basic forwards soul tricks before learning this. I would also learn an easier topside trick before fishbrain. - Cody Sanders.

Massive shoutout to my homie Randy for wanting to make an appearance at the end. We’re back!… Sort of. We’re off to a start. Not a good start, just a start. Michael Kraft has been gone all summer, so it was nice to see him again. Anthony Medina has been in Europe. Some of the squad was in Oklahoma. And we have some new faces as well. Overall, it was a good day. I’m happy to see the crew back together again. Was very high, mellow handicap rails the best idea for a first spot?… No.

Was the abandoned building any better? No. That’s fine. I just wanted to get back in the groove. I had been stressed to start working on this project again. I had all of these wild ideas over the summer. I thought I wanted to do some really outlandish, very “youtube’y” type stuff. I wanted to kick it up a notch. I felt some sort of pressure to… I dunno. Keep evolving? As the time got closer to start Jumbo back up again, I realized I was trying to do “too much.”

I had wanted to do all of these silly challenges, with consequences… I wanted to do so much more than just skate. That was never the point I’d first wanted to make when starting the channel. This was just for skating… I don’t know why I wanted to make it into so much more than that. Skating by itself is good enough. - Cody Sanders.

Visit Jumbo-brand.com.

The Standard team (Brian Weis, Yandriel Silverio, Stefan Brandow) came to visit this past week from Thursday-Sunday. When Stefan Brandow had brought this up to me a couple of months ago I had warned him: “you need to come before summer. It’s impossible to skate after june”. Working though scheduling conflicts, somehow we got everyone in the same place for a few days here in Austin, Texas. […] - Cody Sanders.

Heath Burley have been working on fimling a part since before we ever started Jumbo. Clips don’t come easy though, so it’s taken a while to get this one together. We also both don’t like to just go out and film any old trick. The spot has to be right. Things have to “click”.

It’s not as easy as, “lets just go to the ledge down the street and stack a bunch of tricks we can do”. I feel like, because of social media, we’re all a little desensitized when it comes to watching skating. So when you’re trying to put out a full part, there has to be something that separates the spot from just another run of the mill social media post.

There aren’t any 900’s in this video, but there are truck grinds, bricks, rocks and a lot of shingles. It’s just effort. Life in the moment. It’s been a lot of fun making this section. I’m both happy and sad to be done with it. I hope the footage speaks for itself. I’m sure that it will. Jumbo forever. - Cody Sanders.

Gigantic is a skate video filmed in 5 days in Barcelona. Featuring skating by: Michael Kraft, Zachary Gutweiler, Caleb Benavides, Heath Burley, Mick Casals & Cody Sanders. PLAY.

More Media: Jumbo in Barcelona (2024) - PLAY: Day 1 - EP.24 | Day 2 - EP.25 | Day 3 - EP.26 | Day 4 - EP.27 | Day 5 - EP.28.

Jumbo: Barcelona, Day 1 (Episode 24) - PLAY

After Winterclash 2024, me and the boys traveled to Barcelona for a week to skate. This was day 1. It was rough. No tour guide, no real plan, just stumbling into spots. But, luckily we’re not spoiled with spots, so anything is pretty fun.

I feel like you always see a lot of the same spots when people film in Barcelona, so I was excited to maybe look at some old spots with a fresh take on it. Pretty sure the first building we skated was skated by Danny Beer, so the escalator was off limits. But I’m pretty sure the gap to gutter is untapped… I dunno. It’s a safe assumption to assume that everything we touched has been thoroughly destroyed. Who knows. The next spot was basically a skatepark, which I think is a first for one of our “4 the streets” things, but that’s ok. It was a good warm up day. - PLAY.

Jumbo: Barcelona, Day 2 (Episode 25) - PLAY

Texas is a big state. A lot of things here are very spread out. Not a lot of cities have good public transportation so you have to drive to most places if you want to get anything done. That’s what we do when we skate, we drive from spot to spot. That is NOT what people do in Barcelona and we were ill prepared for it. The first day, we took it at our own pace, just bopped around the neighborhood and skated whatever we saw.

The second day, we met up with dudes from all over the place. And we skated… and skated. and skated. I clocked as many miles on skates as I was doing when I was 14 before I had a car. Which was great, an amazing way to view the city and honestly really fun. Buuuuut… Incredibly taxing if you’re not accustomed to it. Somehow we survived and still had the energy to skate the spots. First spot was absolute ice. Not sure what that ground was made out of, but it was impossibly slick. It was also a skatepark, which is rare for us to skate. We left quickly.

Nick Lomax took us to the second spot expecting us to skate these line ledges, but as things happen we found a trampoline, a couple of gutter spots and a broken down ol’ bench to skate. I dunno, the whole day was good. Eating fresh oranges out of the tree. Taking a side quest to see the ocean. Getting lost and dodging the rain. Thank you Immony Men for helping me film from time to time.

If anyone hear has heard of Orange Wheel Company, that’s his. The dudes cool and I’ve got nothing but respect. So if you see those wheels, it’s always a good idea to support our real ones. That’s enough ranting. Another day down. - PLAY.

Jumbo: Barcelona, Day 3 (Episode 26) - PLAY

Day 3! We’ve made it to the final half of the trip and we’re on our own again. We’re meandering around without tour guides again. Warming up on aluminum downrails and finding the trash spots of BCN. - PLAY.

Update: added “Jumbo Mic’d up at Winterclash 2024” by Ricardo Lino to the post.
Quoting Cody Sanders:

I’ve always wanted to go to a Winterclash. For as long as it’s been happening, I remember there’s some old video where Jon Elliott says “If you haven’t been to Winterclash, you’re not even rollerblading”, or something like that. Definitely not an exact quote, but you get the gist. You have to see it to understand it.

I came in knowing this was the worlds biggest contest. Professionally run. The highest level… Two things stuck out to me though. The skating was great, but it was the attendees that brought the energy. Even if I was upstairs, away from the contest, I didn’t feel like I was missing it. No matter where you are or who you’re with, you’re in it. It’s truly unlike any contest in the rollerblading world. Incredibly professional… Which is great… unless you’re trying to show up, unofficial and make an edit of the weekend… Which is what I tried to do.

So as it turns out, this isn’t a contest put on by “one of the homies.” Oh no, no no. You can’t just know a guy and get onto the course to film a couple of clips for your instagram, there was legit processes and procedures you had to go through to get the badge, the jacket, etc… Basically, credentials I didn’t have, haha. But that’s ok! We’re going to find a way to do it. Mick was supposed to skate in the pro comp (he didn’t because he got hurt during warm-ups… we all did). By luck, I just so happened to have a friend who should not be named that procured me a media badge (probably an old one) that was going to allow me to get in early. To maybe be able to actually film the contest well and make a proper edit…

We show up Friday morning ready to warm up. As it turns out, if you don’t practice skating 10 foot high wood ramps, you’re not very good at it. We were off to a bad start. Mick was slipping around a bit, so I thought I’d put the camera down for a while and check out the skatepark. After all, it’s my first Winterclash, I’ve wanted to skate this place for years. I put my skates on, do one royale in the bowl and fall on my face (literally). One tricks, skates off, never skated the rest of the weekend. Shout out to the medical staff on site (yet another perk of the professionalism of the event).

So after a couple of hours of shaking off a mild concussion, the park opened for everyone and it was chaos. Everyone in Europe is good at skating. That’s intimidating. Since I was still rocked from the earlier fall, I was hanging back a little bit. I was missing some of the event, sure, but I got to witness what I’m coining “Stairclash.” I feel like whenever you’re watching a contest edit, you’re always expecting to see “the big hurricane,” “the dangerous disaster,” etc… But you never get to see these super talented people just skate like normal. Stairclash was what I was looking for the whole time. Some of the best, my favorites, just making use of a 6 stair at the largest event at the world. I’m laughing as I type this. I’ll never explain it as well as I’d like.

With all that being said, I don’t want to take anything away from the actual event. It was MADNESS (as expected). I don’t think I captured it as well I would have liked, but that’s part of the beauty I guess. The massive sea of people, the energy from it, there are moments where it feels like everyones in the same rhythm. I dunno.. I just stayed up all night editing this, so as usual, I’m just going to tap out on the writing bit. As I always say… I think only 3 people read these anyway, lol. Good times. Good good good times. I’ve always wanted to come and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the best skate-related experiences I’ve ever had. Ever. If you stopped by to say “hello,” thank you! I might have been a little loopy from a concussion or completely overwhelmed from the experience (and jet lag!!), but I was so happy to meet everyone. Just amazing. I have a thousand little stories to tell but I guess that’s for another time. Love y’all. - Cody Sanders.

Bonus: Best Tricks @ Winterclash 2024 - PLAY ; a compilation by Ivan Higgins.

Episode 23 - Austin VS Dallas - PLAY - February 2024

Battle my crew 6: Austin vs Dallas was in full effect. I better go ahead and say “im kidding” before Videogroove hits me with a “cease and desist”, haha. The boys from all over visited this weekend. Every weekend this past month has been crazy. We had Stefan Brandow in town, BFree was here the next weekend and now we have Mick, Troy and Jordan from Colorado. If that wasn’t enough, about 15 people from Dallas came down to skate as well. I’d say it was a good Saturday. A bit of a cluster finding street spots that can cater to everyone and also not be a bust, but we survived. I have so much to say, but as usual, I’m finishing this late at night and I’m at my wits end so… Cutting this one short. No one reads these anyway I’m sure. Love everyone. - Cody Sanders.

Episode 22 - ‘Petite Session’ - PLAY January 2023

This was a smaller session than normal. A majority of the crew was invited to a wedding, so there was only a few of us left for the Saturday session. Since it was just the few of us, we stuck to our neighborhood. Usually on the weekends, someone has a specific area we all car pool too. It’s a chance to try and escape from the normal spots we’ve all been going to for the past decade or two. I know what you’re thinking, “man that wood ledge looks perfect, I’d destroy that spot! Why’d they just do a soul grind ?” It’s so much harder than it looks… - Cody Sanders.

I won’t lie to y’all, I spent the first half of the day filming the Inspin & Outspin Tutorial Video, so this one is going to be a little shorter than normal. But! We hit two spots and it was really fun. Well… One of them was really fun, the first one was scary.

Denny showed up to the handicap rail we were at and first try, no warm up did a fishbrain. It’s not a chill spot and you can get pretty hurt on it… as you’ll see, haha. All in all, a fun one. They’re all fun, even when they’re not. - Cody Sanders.