Arizona Filming Trip

The Crew: Seamus, Wiz and Eric

Here is Da Manglers account of what went down in Arizona...

The idea was, go to a nice southwestern state with a climate better than our own. LA? Done did dat. Texas? Everyone goes there. Arizona? Ok, lets do this thang! So Seamus, Eric and wiz got the text, "wanna go to phoenix?” and there we have it, ingredients of a good trip. It started out with Eric, Seamus and myself (Da Mangler) almost missing our flight out of charlotte. But we narrowly made it. Only to sit on the plane for an hour and half while they changed some light bulbs and a generator. We then met up with wiz in Houston followed by Seamus barf partying in the garbage can in front of customer service. Yup, its gonna be a good trip.

We eventually got into phoenix late and picked up the rental, a sweet 4runner. Kinda chilled that night and met the house we were staying at, KC Badger, Sam, Billy, Charleton the dog and Ashley. Very gracious hosts and we can never thank them enough! They lived in Tempe right by Arizona State, which later proved to be a bust, but we got a couple of things done. The next day included getting shown around by Shadow's Caleb Quanbek who has been staying in Arizona to escape the Portland winters. Dude has got some front wheel trickery on lock! After riding some street spots we eventually wore out the daylight, so we then headed to the chandler bike park. That place is sweet! and bonus points, nasty was there stunt'n for some Myspace broads he met. We all did trains and Seamus did abubacus and nose wheelie 180's over the box.

The next day we posse'd up with Kyle Carlson and Josh Betley. We hit up a sweet burrito spot and got to stunt'n. We rode the famous wedge spot, looked for Ratboy and some other hot spots. We ended that evening with Seamus scoping out a curved wall ride that he ended up head casing after sliding out in the grass. But alas, no vomiting or sleepiness. He was good to go. After figuring out he wasn't too injured Seamus called out that the next day was his comeback day.

And it was. After getting some much-needed rest and a stop at the burrito shop again, we were off. We hit up some hot spots, which included a sweet ledge with coping, some curved walls, schools, etc. Phoenix has so many awesome things to ride, we just couldn’t stop. That night we went to reed skatepark, which I guess is in the Mexican 'hood. 13 year olds were smoking cigs and other "stuff" while doing no footers and nose-casing stunt jumps over a bike. It was great. As soon as I rolled up some random dude with a big sprocket hucks a flair. Then Caleb, josh and myself fired out some tech single wheel trains, Eric was stuck in kickflp to footjams and the rest of the dudes chilled. We chilled hard that night since we knew the next day was our last to film.

We awoke fairly early and did not go to burrito spot. However josh, Kyle and our new friend Shane did go to burrito spot. We kept it localized with some sonic. We rode some more awesome spots that day. And all day. KC took us to a sweet curved wall for Seamus to stunt, but to out surprise a bum had called that his room for the night. We gave him some breakfast money and he headed out to McDonalds. Seamus, KC and Shane proceeded to shred the gnar on the curved wall, most of which you'll have to wait for the video to see (I gotta tease you some how!). After that we hit up some stuff, tried to ride ASU but got the boot. After that we chilled for a bit. Eric had plans for a spot outside the city that night. So we got our generator and headed out to the desert. Eric got down with the sickness into the wee hours of the night. After taking quite a few beatings we headed back to the house to pack up out bikes to fly out in a couple of hours. No point in going to sleep when your flight leaves at 5 am. And timing had been planned out perfect. Rental car back, Wiz departed to his terminal, we said our goodbyes and fell asleep before we even took off.
-Da Mangler