RTS #4: A little taste of heaven

Hey fellow rollerbladers, First of all I need to apologize for the lack of updates and the "long" delay of the RTS #4 report! I didn't bring my notebook to Canada, and above all, I was traveling in some places where a notebook is completely meaningless! The pictures were taken by Angelika Sawlewicz

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Further pictures are ready to get RTS #4 took place on the 21st of August in Ontario's biggest skatepark "Iceland," which is located in Mississauga, just outside of Toronto. "Iceland" is a skatepark which is perfect for a big session: The park is big and multifunctional, it is lit until 11pm and it has a perfect location (close to a Highway) for all the rollerbladers from southern Ontario. Besides that we had a wicked weather and good temperature with 25 degrees! Welcome to the Canadian dream. The session was scheduled to begin at 7pm. Pierre Kuehnhold, Dave Ghent and I arrived at Iceland around 6:30pm and the park was already packed with so many rollerbladers; It was an incredible scene. Rollerbladers infected the park like a virus! I couldn't wait to put on my skates and rip the park with all the cool guys. All the rollerbladers that I knew from last year came out for the rollTogether session. A lot of people spared no expense to join our session: Rollerbladers came from Guelph, Hamilton, and Simcoe - which is a long drive! I saw a lot of young rollerbladers and I was surprised at their level of skating. It seems like that the scene in Toronto is progressing. I guess my good friend Aj DeLong can take the credit for that. Throughout the summer he organized the famous "Thursday Night Sessions". Unfortunately Aj moved to western Canada, to Vancouver. But I am sure someone will continue to organize events on a regular basis in Toronto. Sessions like the TNS are important for every scene! AJ is not the only one making a contribution to the growth of a skate-scene. My good friend Dave organized two very successful competitions in Brampton, Ontario - the last one was also featured on the TV. Nick D'Amico, the person in charge of the website www.canadianroll.ca, invests two or three hours a day to give not only Canadian Rollers, but Rollerbladers all around the world the latest rollerblading news. When I talked to my good friend Blair Loughead, I found out that everyone of us can do something for our sport. The idea is very easy, and so effective. What did he do? Blair started to bring all of his old rollerblading magazines (Daily Bread, Be-Mags, One) in doctor's practices and dental offices. In the states it is already very common to find skateboard magazines in doctor's practices. Kids that need to visit a doctor can now find the hottest shit in the waiting room of a family doctor. We all agree that those kids should also get the chance to see some sweet rollerblading stuff. To all readers: Take this as a call to follow Blair's concept. Instead of trashing your old rollerblading magazines bring them to a family doctors and show people the world of rollerblading. Back to the session: More and more rollerbladers came to Iceland Skatepark. Around 9pm we had the peak of the session: I personally have never seen so many rollerbladers at Iceland! At this time I saw some crazy skating and didn't know what to watch. People laced hammers everywhere. After I brought my bag of sponsorship goods it got worse. Everyone skated hard as hell! Aj and Dave went to the sweet up- flat-down ledge to hand out prizes for good tricks! I remember Daniel Davidson-Pilon lacing a disaster negative miszou, truespin rough miszou and some other crazy stuff! Andrew Boyle killed this spot as well: He is the one who grinded the whole ledge with full speed and wonderful style! This guy is definitely the counterevidence of the movie "White man can't jump". He can jump over my shoulder if he wants to! I can't forget Mike David's show on this ledge: 360 sweatstance, 360 acid - ridiculous and then just for fun a disaster 360 soul. I didn't see all the stuff that went down there - sorry for the ones I forgot to mention. I couldn't watch what was happening on the ledge all the time because hammers went down everywhere in the park. Erik Foster Burrow, for example, skated with full speed from one side of the park to the other side to lace a massive 360 transfer! Newcomer Warren Hutton from Guelph, Ontario skated amazing lines and jumped the big gap with a stylish 540. He won a Be-Mag subscription for his constant good skating. After some freestyle-skating we started to organize a game of "SKATE" on a ledge, the game was free to enter for everybody. 50 people joined this small competition, it was very chaotic but fun to watch. One guy started with a trick and 50 people copied his trick within a few minutes. It was very hard to look at the big picture - however we had three winners: Andrew Boyle, Blair Loughead and Aaron McInnis who were all equipped with hot stuff by Chimera and Grindhouse. After the Game of “Skate" we started the "Chimera Stunt Time": The biggest stunt within the next 30 minutes will win a big "Chimera-Prize-Pack" consisting of a sweet Chimera Hoodie, Shirt, and Wheels. Everybody tried hard to win the prize - especially Neil Turner and Mike David who both tried to jump the biggest gap in the skatepark. Mike won the "Chimera Stunt Reward" because he landed it first try. You can see his trick in the edit below. In the end, everybody was skating something and had a nice chill-out session! I couldn't stop watching Guy Crawford's little show on the down ledge. Great Britain's finest, and latest, import to Canada showed us 20 different hard tricks on a ledge within a few minutes. Thanks Crawford! I need to thank especially my good friends AJ and Dave who helped me to organize and promote the event. I need to thank Jonathan Craig from MobbMedia for putting together such a sweet and good looking edit! Roll Together Session #4 from Jonathan Craig on Vimeo. Thank you Nick for promoting the event and revise this report! I need to thank every rollerblader that came to rolltogether's first non-european event! Thank you for a day filled with high-level skating from Canada's finest rollerbladers! Thanks to GRINDHOUSE, BE-MAG and CHIMERA for giving us the chance to hold an event in Canada! - Cheers rollTogether