Sunday, June 21, 2009

Historical West Linn Village Skate


6.21 The road off Blankenship led to a road down to the village of West Linn. The road had a couple of nice features. One was that it had recently been paved and was super smooth, riding more like a concrete skatepark floor than an asphalt road. The pavement was so dark that when a car came up behind me I pulled all the way off and watched it go by, because I didn't think I'd be very visible, between the tree shadows of the late afternoon and the black surface. It was so easy to skate this stretch that I could pump it to accelerate or go deeper into the rail to slow down, with almost the same arc radius. Pretty cool.

Another thing I noticed were the reflectors that protruded from the center line. I thought they might hang me up, but I didn't ride over one to find out.

In the village I skated an area of sidewalk no more than fifty feet long that had a bunch of features. There was a funny rounded curb, which was almost a little bank, but pretty hard to just ride up on a longboard. I hit it at an angle up and down.

Next was a curvy section that wove through a handicapped access ramp bound by a rail and then around a tight almost hairpin curve surrounding some decorative trees. The curved sidewalk lined up with an old general store and fish tackle place which I shot from a couple of angles. The late sun made a big hot spot on the wall, but I think I finally got it exposed right.

Across the road from the general store there were some well preserved and beautifully restored old west wooden buildings. It was a wall formed from a row of old west facades, including a saloon.

The last thing I skated was a parking area, completely curbed in from the traffic, that ran a long ways along the road. I shot the hills in the background, which were the same vineyards as in the shots from the Albertson's parking lot I posted a few days ago.



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