This photo was taken about 4 years ago when I was 53.
I was practicing early grab backside airs in this bowl - and this bowl was PERFECT for this.
(Early-grab is when you ride up the transition already tucked - not quite as cool looking as late-grab, but I'll take it!!)
This bowl was at Vans Skatepark in Huntington Beach, CA. (sadly, they bulldozed this bowl and the amazing Clover bowl to make way for a "competition skatepark course"...)
Anyway, on this day, I was really wanting to get a high air out of the bowl, so I kept going for it, little by little, higher and higher.
It started with airs under the coping, then I got them at coping level and then I started pumping more as I went up the transition.
As I got more and more comfortable with getting higher, I really went for it on this one.
I got an extra hard pump on the face wall and then just compressed and kinda bounced on the way up this wall.
With one big pump, suddenly I was higher than I'd ever been and now the trick was to land it.
This photo shows the highest I got.
My friend Joe, used the burst mode on the camera and he got a great sequence out of it.
Here's the video of the sequence:
I was pretty psyched that I was able to get a backside air out of the bowl for the first time in decades... (even if it was an early grab... LOL!)
I really thought my backside air days were way behind me, but this was the perfect setting and setup for it and I'm still stoked about this photo.
