RTS #3: Connecting rollerbladers from Belgium and Germany

This year's summer is not the greatest. But just in time for the third round of the rollTogether session in Leuven the clouds dissappeared, the sun and a positive atmosphere showed up. What else do we need for a good session? Some rollerbladers and a good spot! That should not be the problem! We started from Germany around 10 am. For our pilot Lars (rollTogether-Fotographer) it was not easy to find the way to our session because he was completely on his own. Michi and I (Olli) were sitting in his car, but completely exhausted from last night's party. We could not help him because we were sleeping, Michi even unable to speak! However we arrived in Leuven at 1pm - thanks to Lars' biogenetic navigation system. Some young kids were already skating the park. They are always the first ones on place - it is good to see their addiction. The park was not as big as the ones in Hasselt and Muenster but it was a sweet one with some nice ledges, a cool hip, a huge wall and a bigger bowl. In the beginning, Lars checked the park for some good Photograpy-Spots while Michi and I took on our skates and tried to rollerblade for a bit. After some minutes I already found out that skating is not a good option today. My bad physical condition just prevented from rollerblading. Every move felt like I was jumping the biggest gap in my life. Michi - on the other hand - is a good hangover skater and flowed through the park. I took care of some organization with Lars. The weather was fantastic and it was really hot. More and more rollerbladers showed up. Known and unknown people - young and older guys - from Belgium (Brussels, Liege, Antwerpen, Genk) came to skate with us. I did not expect so many people from germany, some of them had a really long way. Serdar (a great supporter of our session) came with four other rollerbladers from Bonn! Claudio Luz also made his way out to Leuven with some more dudes including Jo from Karlsruhe (who probably had the longest way) and his girlfriend assija who skated really hard this day! Tim Beckold aka "Sparta" came from Hildesheim. Fortunately, he brought Monte, Patrick Justin Smith and Rollo, who were all crazy about rollerblading. A lot of other guys from Aachen and from the Ruhr area also came to skate hard! So we got a good mixture of Belgium and German rollers - all in all I guess there were more than 100 rollerbladers that joined our session!

The people started to skate the sweet and long ledge. A lot of hard tricks went down here: P-J Smith, Jeremy, Bruno, Jo from Karlsruhe and our giant local Thomas Buggy dominated this session. While Jeremy and Jo focused on various combinations, Thomas Buggy did high-speed and super style negatives on the ledge! It was really worth it to have a first class view on it with the camera!

I noticed Jonas, a cool guy from Belgium, that was skating the bowl with a lot of profession and style. He did great and really quick lines through the bowl - without loosing any speed! Later on that day, Lars took a really nice picture of him: He did a massive and very high 900 corkscrew out of the hip.

There was another young kid that rocked the bowl. This small guy that looked like Paris Hilton's younger brother (because of his really blond hair) is already so good and will get even better very soon! To be honest, I had problems following this young guy with my camera! He was so quick on his skates. Later on, somebody told me that he started his rollerblading career as a speed skater! I am glad that he switched to aggressive skating! After several attempts I succeeded in filming his bowl transfer! Rodney, another crazy belgium guy, attracted interest because he did a makio on the highest point at the wall. I could not believe it when I saw him trying it the first time! This guy seems to be very addicted to rollerblading. He had a big USD-Tattoo on his back! Rene was going to film it while this guy tried to grind the peak of the wall. It was insane because everytime he tried it, he went up higher and fall deeper. After a while Rene asked me if I can continue filming because it was too much for him! I gave this guy a new Grindhouse-rollTogether Shirt and he said to me: "Now I am gonna do it, buddy". He did not lie to me because he grinded that peak almost to the end and had no chance of getting back into the vert. He did the splits and landed like this. It was crazy. When he got up again the whole skatepark acknowledged him with applause. That is rollTogether! After a while of skating I started a small competition in the bowl. The rollerblader with the longest grind and the most creative line should get some prizes. Almost all belgium entered this small competition and we had really fun. I saw a lot of good lines from Jeremy and Jo (Karlsruhe). Anthony Portier did the longest backside royale in the bowl - around three corners! Because of his constant good skating and hard stunts I gave him the really nice Chimera-Zipper!

I can't name all of the tricks that went down at the event. It was way too much! You can see a part of them in the edit. But one thing I need to mention is the fact that rollers - independent of their age and level of skating - rolled together. The young guys weren't afraid to show their tricks while the older ones busted out hammers. I saw a lot of young guys that will keep our sport alive! Besides that I was impressed by the high-level skating of our belgium friends. session3 from Rene Pressing on Vimeo. At the end of the day, we went to a nice street spot to have a chill-out session with Rollo's juicy beats and some belgium hardcore beer. Thomas Buggy (Leuven-local) told me that he skates this spot for ten years and that he fixed the ledges several times on his own. Thanks buddy!

After our chill-out session we all went to the festival which was in the city-centre. It was awesome. Thanks to Bruno and Thomas for showing us around! Thanks to Rollo for keeping me laughing all the time. Thanks to our sponsors: Thorsten from Grindhouse, Mike from Be-Mag and Benny from Chimera! And a big THANK-OUT to all rollerbladers who believe in our idea! And of course thanks to the whole rollTogether-Team!!!! - rollTogether The pictures our Photographer Lars Echterhoff took: