Santa Cruz: DJ & Skatepark mission
posted 1/2/06

The Post Office jumps in Aptos, near Santa Cruz have been featured in a number of bike videos. I've wanted to check them out for some time now, and get a feel for the scene just south of the Bay Area.

Last Saturday, I finally had my chance to see the jumps for myself. I heard they were pretty big, and was looking forward to testing my mettle. With this wet weather bumming all of us out, we were looking forward to getting in the dirt and finally doing some dirt jumping. Our local jumps are coming along, but with the recent rains weren't quite ready for a session yet.

The crew consisted of Drew Powers, Tyler "the Fronj" McCracken, and myself. Drew and I rarely have the same days off, but whenever we've managed to coordinate and head out, he always shows me some rad new spot I haven't even heard of before. And I was looking forward to checking out more of the dirt jumping outside of the Bay Area.

We planned an early start, and got to SC around 9ish, leaving us with 8 hours of riding light.

Our first stop was a wood skatepark near the board walk called the Fun Spot. It isn't exactly bike friendly, but we headed on in anyway. The boys went straight to the mini half pipe and began blasting some airs. I wasn't sure how long it would last, so I pulled out my camera and worked on getting some shots.

the fronj

Drew

The place seemed pretty fun, and the parents didn't give us any grief, but after a short session we called it good and moved on to the next spot: Derby Park. Known as the first skatepark in Santa Cruz, it was basically an old school concrete snake run ending in a mellow bowl.

It wasn't anything too special, but we had a good time playing around on our bikes. The bowl was fun to launch 180s and 360 tire taps out of, and I managed an abbubaca on the coping to rollback to 180 out on my second try that I was pretty happy with. Drew did a maual to 180 into the bowl, and the Fronj had some good manuals to crank flips.

After a bit, we stopped by and checked out some neighborhood dirt jumps.

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