Paris

Many months ago, maybe even a year ago, Chelsea and I started talking about taking a trip to Europe.  She had never been and I had mostly been for work.  My work trips didn't leave much time for exploring and being a tourist so I was itching to do those things.  And relax on a trip.  Work trips always involved so much work.

Our first stop was Paris.  We stayed with my friend Benjamin, his wife Maria, and their son Victor.  It was awesome staying with friends because we got a real glimpse into Parisian life.  Delicious meals with delicious wine followed by amazing cheese and great conversation.  Victor was so excited to have guests that he woke us up early each morning.  That made our jet lag just a little more difficult to overcome.  But a long list of things to do and plenty of coffee got us through it.

We had a great time exploring the city.  A few more days would've been great as we were just starting to feel at home there when it was time to travel on to Berlin.

Here are my favorite shots from this part of the trip.


 

The Catacombs were amazing and humbling.  It was interesting to hear the history of how they came to be.  And staggering the amount of people buried there.  The section known as the Catacombs is just a small amount of the old quarry tunnels that stretch across Paris.

Of course we went to the Eiffel Tour.  It's a mandatory stop and rightly so.

I really enjoyed walking around the streets and just taking in another city.  This is from our walk around Le Marais.

 The Batobus was a great way to see the city from the river and to sit and rest from walking around most of the day.  It gave us some great views of landmarks like this one of Notre Dame.

On our last full day, we took the train to Montmatre to have brunch and hiked up to Sacre Couer.  The view from the top of the church was awesome.

The last sunny day of the year?

Every post I do on here I proclaim that I'm going to post more.  That I'm sorry I've been lagging on posts.  Maybe this winter it will happen.  I've been trying to look at instagram less.  It's good for me.  But I still want to share photos.  Maybe this is still a good medium for that?  That's only if anyone looks at this anymore.  Anyone?

The forecast looked shitty today.  But the skies were clearing as I ate breakfast.  There was talk of skating parking garages.  Hunting down something dry.  Then the sun started creeping out from behind the clouds.  A little patience and the ground was looking dry.  There were group texts and organizing.  Battlground gets plenty of sun and there's a lot of skatepark.  So we took it north over the state line for our shredding.  I hadn't used the old DSLR in a minute and it's been years since I shot anything on my 100mm lens.  So long that I had to exercise the aperture to make sure it wouldn't stick.  There's a reminder to use your camera gear or it may stop functioning properly!

Our route was Battleground, one of the skate spot parks in Vancouver, and a street spot Ryan knew of.  My car had me, Ryan, Derek, and Steve.  Scott and Ashley met us in Battleground and hit up the Vancouver spot with us.  So all around a good day with a good crew.

Derek and Steve had a lipslide challenge.  I think Derek won by doing his frontside lipslide first.

 Here is Steve's back lip.

 

 Ride up the bank and ollie off to the flat.

Ashley hitting the hip.

 Koerner with the frontside ollie.

Ryan seeing if it goes.

It goes.

 I'm pretty sure this dude's name was Chase.  He and his buddies were ripping and super nice.

Ryan 5-0s from the top all the way down in Vancouver.

And did the same with a tailsldie.

 Steve got in on the 5-0 fun too.

 Ryan took us to this crusty bank to curb.  Fun, but challenging.

And Ryan nailed this feeble grind.

Off Ramp Theater

There is a history of DIY under bridges in Portland.  Why not carry that on with a show under the mish mash of freeway interchanges connected to the Fremont Bridge?  That's just what happened last Saturday.

First up was Old Friend.

 

Then it was Matt's new band.  I don't remember what they're called.  They killed it at their first show.

Last up was Riled.  Fueled by Colt 45.

The Mean Jeans and The Rich Hands.

Because of my work schedule I end up missing a lot of good shows.  It's the price I pay for working nights.  The Mean Jeans finally played on a night I wasn't working and I got to see my friends play some fun songs.  The Rich Hands opened for them and they put on a great show too.  Here's what it looked like.

More skating. Not quite as long ago.

A month or so ago, there was one of those really amazing Spring-like days in Portland.  Sun shining, sky as blue as the middle of July.  So we got up early and went out to Happy Valley.  After a bit, the park filled up.  But not with the usual crowd of tweens on scooters.  It was several crews of adult skaters that had the same idea as us.  It was fun having that many people on the session but a little hectic in that tiny park.  So we cruised to a ledge spot out that way.  A good day all around.

Derek ollied.

And so did Jesse.

Jesse still has the switch tricks on lock.

Ryan getting slappy.

Derek, Jesse, and Ryan.