Melbourne By Board

Its was way too early to be awake, but here we are at 5am in a cab on the way to Sydney Airport.
I haven’t been up this early in years.
Nick and I stashed our boards in a box, praying they didn’t get lost in a maze of multi-directional conveyor belts, and tucked to the gate. Excitement was building.

A flight, cab and train later we arrived in the heart of Melbourne to be greeted by Vault team rider and generally off-the-rails girl- Jenna Russo.

After a short introduction to the parents we dumped our gear at the Russo mansion and headed down to a local hill to begin the fun.
The road was a casual left turn into a straight away with a nearly untouched surface. It was perched at the top of a new development with a little man-made lake at the base of what was an old quarry.

The sun was setting and a full day of travel had left our stomachs empty so we piled into Jenna’s OG Merc “Bubbles” and headed to her place.

Dinner, Dinner was epic, hell I could write an entirely new blog about how good that food was. Both Nick and I were stoked – great skate, full bellies; it was definitely time for a nap.

10am rolled around and nick blasted into my room barking about wasting daylight – I was struggling for energy until we were introduced to the worlds greatest juice.
Pumped on a good breakfast we geared up and headed to a spot Jenna could see, but took us forever to find. After a few u-bolts we found the hill. A crazy steep drop into a sweeping right then left. The gradient and surface combination meant traction was a thing of the past. Nick threw down hard but the gradient got the best of him and after a few stacks and some long, long walks up we took a break for lunch.

A cheeky feed and quick review of the footage amped us up and we headed back to the quarry for some chill times and to catch a few more clips for the edit. Another day down, we loaded up on some ground breaking ratatouille and crumbed veal, smashed out the first of two sick edits and headed to the Russo band room for a jam – Jenna laid out some sweet tunes on the guitar until we were all ready to call it a night.

The day had arrived. RMIT longboardings end of year jam was only an hour away, Jenna’s wonderful mother Ida packed us a sweet lunch and we jumped into Bubbles.
The slide jam was sick, a heap of shredders threw down for one of Melbourne’s biggest events – Shout out to the RMIT boys who made it happen.

After a long day of shredding Jenna took out the girls prize and I managed 3^rd in longest stand up – not massively stoked with my performance but hey good times were had. At the end of a long day we rolled back home and relaxed with the Russo clan.

On our last full day we woke up to rain, but thanks to spastic Victorian weather, it was sunny as all hell by the time we headed into Melbourne City. Jenna had taken the day off skating to study for her last ever school exam so Nick and I cruised the CBD relaxing, throwing down some flat land and generally having a swell time.

In the late arvo we would rolled back to Jenna’s for an afternoon shred that ended up becoming one of the greatest sessions I’ve ever had – the video of said shred session can be found here –

Going on trips is always rad and this one was no different. Big thanks to The Russo’s for putting Nick and I up for the week and feeding us.

See ya next time kids, Skate Safe!

Psycho Samurai Review

Here is the Video portion of my review:

Initial feelings -

When I first got on the board I was in love.
The gas pedals or Gas Knobs as I call them are brilliant, perfect place to maximize leverage without taking back from the platform.
The concave is deep and comfortable; it’s a sweet dish style progressive concave, locking you in without a restrictive feel.

Set up – Initially I was shredding the stock complete set up Vault RKPs and CueBalls but recently I’ve been running it with Anvil trucks and Vault moon boots. Even ran it with 82a Vault boosters for a DH race.

After 2 months -

So as of now I’ve been skating this for two months, I am notoriously rough with gear and this ninja warrior has held together through rain skates, big early grabs and many curb hits.

The extra meat around the noses gives you enough leverage to do some freestyle and also acts as a first line of defence against curb hits.

I’ve experimented with Wheel base options a bit, for a time I was running the longer option on the back and the inner most option on the front – This is great for really fast runs but I still prefer to have both ends in the inner most holes (27″) as your feet and literally right there on top of the inner bolts.

Set up on the Inner bolts you can get away with a 70mm wheel on most set ups without wheel bits issues.
I had no issues at all on the Vault RKP but lower cast or precision trucks will require a little riser if you want to run 70mm wheels. Personally I’m in love with 65mm wheels (specifically the vault CueBalls), great acceleration out of slides, supper buttery feel and no wheel bite issues make for a great combo.

All in all the Samurai is a great set up, very versatile and incredibly fun to ride.

Happy Skating.

Jonny Hurn

Vault Ghetto Freeride

Hello and welcome to 2012!

So over the summer we all need a project right?

As you may know I work for Skateboard Express. In the process of designing some new wheels we came across these abominations…
http://www.skateboardexpress.com.au/VGF.html
But The Dave knew the thane was good, even  though they were hidden behind a stupidly large lip.
If you cut 11mm of the lip off you end up with a fantastic center set freeride. Check out the video bellow if you want to see how we did it.

Be safe, wear a mask cause thane dust is evil.

Enjoy

Jonny