Heads up, this is a long one. If you’ve been following any of the How to build a DIY tutorial I’ve been doing with Heath Burley, then you’ve probably seen this place before. We call it the dawg pound. We’ve worked on a few different DIY spots over the years, but this is “the one”. The one that we actually want to invest time and money into to build it out into something special.

The problem is, that building something sick is a little expensive. That’s why Heath had the idea to do a small event. A local game of “b.l.a.d.e,” to raise some funds for the next big ramps we want to install. So Heath made a flyer and it gained a little bit more traction than we expected. Soon our 15-20 person session had turned into a 75-100 person event. Which was great but… we also weren’t really prepared for that many people. How could we make it worth it for the people that wanted to visit from out of town? From out of state? Thankfully we were able to get a few local sponsors on board to help us out with the event.

Austin Beerworks was suuuuper cool to us and hooked us up with more beer than we could drink. That’s impressive to me. I can’t tell if I’m proud of my scene for drinking responsibly or if I’m disappointed that we don’t party as hard as we used to, haha. Juiceland was also a big help. Not everyone skating was 21 (surprisingly), so it was good to have some alternatives. It’s also probably just a good thing in general to have something that’s not beer. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I definitely don’t treat myself very well mid/post session. It was nice to mix it up a bit with some juice mid-day.

They also gave us some giftcards and we did side events for them. Shout out to both Sky Louviere and Mick Casals for winning the side events. It was fun though. I don’t know what everyone was expecting, but I heard “this is a lot harder than it looks” multiple times throughout the day. That was kind of funny to hear, because for several days prior to the event the boys had worked really hard at filling all the potholes and cutting out all the random metal sticking up from the ground. I’m happy most of them didn’t see how we’ve been skating it all this year, haha.

Overall, I’d say the event was a big success. We raised a ton of money for the build. It might have been an “event,” but it didn’t feel like a regular one. It didn’t feel like you were going to a normal “contest.” It just felt like a massive session. A session with purpose. I’m really proud of everyone going out of their way to come down to Austin and support rollerblading. Supporting one of the very few 100% rollerblader built DIY’s. Supporting jumbo. Thank you! Really. With all that being said, I tried my best to capture the event as well as I could, buuuttt…. It’s hard to have fun, be engaged with everyone AND film an edit all day out in the sun. Also… The edit is SO long. I did this one a little different than normal. Not a lot of text in this one, because it was just too many people. Some of the games didn’t get filmed, so if you were looking for you clips, I’m sorry if I missed them. I had to take a few breaks during the day. There’s a LOT of footage in this one, but I wanted to make sure that I tried my best to include EVERYONE that I could. I wanna show love to everyone, if I can. Love yall. - Cody Sanders.

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I had some friends from my hometown come visit this weekend. They were very excited to skate the many beautiful street spots of Austin. So what did we take them to? First spot, a bank to dumpster and a rock. Perfect. Honestly, every spot we ever try to go to is terrible. It’s the age old tale of “every street spot is harder in real life”.

That’s never really an issue though. Even if the spot is awful (like the curved handicap we go to in this one), there’s still a curb. There’s still SOMETHING. There’s always something, even if it’s a crack on the ground, skating is always fun. We did something different in this one, something we haven’t really done before… Skated a mini-ramp.

I’ve made it a point during this series to not film skatepark, that’s what instagram is for. There’s so much park footage on instagram, you couldn’t watch it all if you spent the rest of your life trying. That being said, I’d count this mini as a “DIY” spot. It’s not a skatepark… So it counts. Let us slide on this one (literally). If you’re hometown friends come to skate, not every spot can be trash… literally. - Cody Sanders.

Featuring: Mick Casals, Caleb Benavides, Heath Burley, Andrew Broom, Matt Raker, Anthony Medina, Cody Sanders & Friends.

Jumbo Setups with Anthony Medina - USD Aeon

The USD Aeon, the most customizable skate on the market… That’s obviously a joke. But, there are actually a few different mods that exist for these things. Anthony Medina discusses how he’s dialed in his Aeons over the past few years of skating them. - Cody Sanders.

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I took a week or two break, but we’re back at it again! This was probably the last session before the brutal heat of Texas summer sets in. The first spot was really cool. I just wish we had the time/ motivation to go back and rub-brick the whole ledge.

It looks perfect right?… Well… You’d be mistaken. The lines are really tight and weird. I think I filmed more awkward falls then I did lands. The sad part is, I didn’t even post them all. It would have been 15 minutes of very awkward falls and trips around the corners, haha. Although it might look like the easiest spot of the day, I think it may have been the hardest.

Spot 2 was… awful. I’m noticing a trend during these sessions, all of our spots are awful, haha. It was cool that Kraft and jferg showed up though. I can’t imagine showing up to a street session and the first trick you do being an alleyoop fish up and under rail… Kraft is wild. Spot 3, classic spot. A chill 6 or 7 stair downledge, so this one must not have been that bad right? Nah, no one even skated the down ledges.

They would rather try and roll up the things at high speeds… Did it work out? You’ll find out. But also, I’ll tell you. The answer is… Yes/no. Haha. Overall, another beautiful session. Dreadful falls, most of which I missed off of camera. But I’m happy everyone is ok.. I mean, they’re ok enough. Walk it off. - Cody Sanders.

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Episode 8 (April 2023)

Our original goal this weekend was to take Zachary Gutweiler to only the biggest spots. Well, one thing leads to another and the session just takes organic turns and none of the spots ended up actually being that big.Whoops. Michael Kraft confessed at the first spot that he accidentally at the wrong kind of gummies before the session. Honestly, it would make more sense if he did that every time he skates. That would explain his trick/ spot selection, haha. […]- Cody Sanders.

Episode 9 - Waco, Texas - May 2023

I’m up way too late finishing this one. I have to work in the morning. But I’m still going to try my best to describe last weekend. We drove a couple of hours away to the city of Waco, Texas. It’s a smaller town between Dallas and Austin, so a few of our friends from Dallas met us there. Mick Casals lives there as well. Mick’s about the only reason I’d visit there. - Cody Sanders.

Episode 10 - May 2023

Man. I can’t believe I made it to the tenth episode. I didn’t realize how much work this was going to be when I started this project, but I’m happy it’s getting done. This week we went to Temple, TX. It’s only about an hour away from where we live. I like skating small towns. The skate spots are generally older. There’s a lot of character to them. Temple was no exception. - Cody Sanders.

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Episode 5 - The Short one

It turns out, it’s hard to film a full edit when you show up to the session with only 8% of battery on the camera. Is this my fault? Yes. Do I have a good excuse? Always. But this one is actually good though. I got to go to Disney World last weekend. I didn’t get back until 4am the night before the Saturday session, but I still tried my best to come out and film what we could. It was really fun, for the time I was there. That little bank to rail spot is a hidden gem.

Heath Burley died on the second spot and Andrew got a really sick clip, just playing around (as usual). Overall, not much to say about this one. It’s just skating mostly, but that’s ok. They can’t all be big hitters…. I mean… None of them are, lol. The goal was accomplished. “Wake up, make something.” - Cody Sanders.

Episode 6

Michael Kraft makes me feel like I don’t even know how to skate. I’m pretty sure he did 3 never before done tricks this weekend. Some of them aren’t in the edit (sadly), but I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I feel like I’m watching the doors open to a new era of skating. It’s like watching a new genre of music be created.

Whenever it comes to all the wheel swivel stuff, I get that some people don’t understand it. I mean hell, I barely do and I like the stuff. I can hear those “hammer-types” thinking “I don’t like all the nimbly bimbly dance skating. I feel like the invention of “glides” can change that thought process. It takes the precision movement of flat-ground skating and turns it into a maneuver that looks more umm… classically understood. It’s like a grind… Except it’s a “glide.” What’s a glide, you ask? I didn’t know til last Saturday either. Apparently that’s the genus for the wheel slide stuff:

• Grind: soul plate
• Slide: frame
• Glide: wheel

I kind of like that it takes the letters from both “Grind” and “slide” to create it’s name. Fitting. I’m really just rambling at this point. I’m not even the right guy to be writing about this kind of stuff. Anyways. Only 2 spots on this drizzly day, but they were both super fun. The best kink rail in Texas was uncapped recently. Shoutout to whoever did that. It felt like 2002, watching everyone line up at the top of a kink rail to session it as a group. Overall, amazing session. Great energy all around. Saturdays are the best. - Cody Sanders.

No one is answering in the group text. It’s Saturday, where is everyone? The first spot was a complete disaster. Getting lost, can’t find our friends, the ledges are capped, but we made the most of it.

I guess since no ones around, we can finally check out the bad spots. The spots that look great on film, but you don’t want to bring 20 people to, ya know? Filming these glorified b-roll edits is a lot of fun, but we’ve been working on “real” edits this entire time too. I just haven’t been posting the bigger tricks in the 4TS videos.

I did put a few of the bigger tricks in this one though. Zach Gutweiler is a madman and what he sessions for fun, I wouldn’t touch. This edit is a bit of a slow starter, but the ending is pretty sweet. - Cody Sanders.

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