Poaching the Novato Skatepark
Kevin "Chipper" Huffman kicking fat style over the hip at the Novato skatepark.

The Novato skate park is pretty sweet. Like most Cali parks, there is no love for bikes. If the cops come by, you're looking at a ticket that is close to two hundred bucks. Pretty lame.

All said, this park is a lot of fun to ride. I haven't ridden that many parks on my mountain bike, as I usually ride my 20" when I ride park. At this point, I've decided to just get used to my mt bike, and learn how to ride transition with it. The larger wheels and wheelbase make it difficult to do tricks that come naturally with smaller size bikes. I can do somewhat decent fastplants on my bmx bike. Not on the mountain bike. Still, you've got to try. This weekend we did a lot of hard tail riding, and I felt a new level of comfort on my hard tail I haven't felt for a while. For me, that is what it comes down to. Progression. Although these days, I'm just trying to recover from a lack of progression. (what a year of riding XC by yourself does to you) But I digress.

Back to the park report. This park is a lot of fun on a bike. The layout flows, has a lot of lines for the experienced park rider. I could session it all day. I'm bummed it's not bike friendly. The transitions are smooth, not to tight. Kevin was riding the park almost like it was his local trails.

Riding parks in California is best done when the parks have low traffic, and better with friends. We had a good session for a bit, until more skaters showed up. When the more advanced skaters use the whole park in their runs,(like us on our bikes) it becomes difficult to get runs in without a lot of near misses. At this point, it's better to go, as we're unwanted guests at this point. (of course, we're unwanted anyway, as a lot of skaters tend to be selfish regarding use of their parks.)

I have been really happy with the results I've been getting with my new camera lately. I'm still learning how to use it, but that isn't stopping me from getting great looking photos from it. I really just need to walk around San Francisco for a few days with my camera and the instruction manual. I used to shoot with a fully manual film slr back in the day; I've become spoiled with all the pre-set modes on the current crop of digital cameras. Kevin was killing it at the park; I think I was documenting that fairly well. The light definitely helped with that.

Fastplant and table by Kevin, while a local skater rips his local park.

On to the dirt: