I call New Mexico home now after being away from the rockies for over 20 years. Since my arrival here this new territory is a consistent marvel. People don’t really perceive New Mexico as an “outdoor” state but i’m here to tell you it IS. The Rockies start here so the typography might not be as aggressive as Colorado peaks, but is beautiful in a different way, ANEW way.
Taking that as a catalyst for this adventure I wanted to seek out some skaters that have a diverse skill set to adventure around this enchanted state with me. They should Skate and rock climb for this idea to work. I reached out to long time friend Luke Bender to see if he was interested. Luke enthusiastically accepted the challenges and recommended Adam Bazydlo who then recommended Mick Casals.
A “solid group of producers” said Adam after the plan was set. This was not aimed to be a “party tour” mission as we all had a lot of work to do. After all there are only a few of us, and we needed to pull out a film from only a long weekend, then back to our daily lives. We had some spots mapped out for skating but the climbing spots were very up in the air as we did not know the area all that well. The guys were actively hunting their climbing app called “Mountain Project” to find the hidden treasures fit for our climbing shots. Hmm why don’t we have an app for skating spots… maybe it’s better we don’t. The Boys arrived at the ANEW compound in Taos NM (@casadenadataos) early the day before we set off eager and happy for the adventure to start. - Sayer Danforth.
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We’ll call this the “season finale”. I think that’s a little goofy, but it makes since because I’m basically going to take a seasonal break until summers over. Mick Casals is moving to Colorado and he was going to have his last session in Texas in Dallas. So me and a few others decided to make the drive from Austin to Dallas to come bid him a farewell and also skate amazing Dallas spots. Fact: Dallas has the best spots in Texas.
Massive shoutout to John Sullivan for being our tour guide and also being better than everyone at skating. Thanks John. I could spend a good amount of time writing about the day, all of the spots, describing each minor detail that I think makes the day interesting but… It’s late. My brain feels burnt. So I want to use the rest of my dwindling motivation to say THANK YOU to everyone that has watched, commented and supported Jumbo. I never thought this project would have reached so many people. […] - Cody Sanders. Support Jumbo and get some goodies on Oak City.
Me and Mick Casals finally managed to meet up to do a setups video. I had just flown back from Florida, he was in town for just a few hours and we both managed to meet up in the early hours of this hellish summer to knock it out. I wanted to add more to the title than just “Mesmers,” but I don’t know the official name of the skate yet. - Cody Sanders.
Setup: Boot - Mesmer,
Souls: Stock Mesmer souls,
Frames: Sola,
Wheels: Bloom Mick Casals 58/90,
Liners: Intuition,
Bearings: Generic.
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Hell on earth. It’s summer time in Texas and we forgot to wake up early for street skating. If you’re from a climate similar then you understand, you can only skate during the early morning or the evening… This session was all curbs, trees and one random square downrail. It’s a struggle. Shout out to all my homies that read the group text, don’t respond, but still show up. - Cody Sanders.
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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 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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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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