| Written August 2, 2007, Day 2, at an RV Park in Rockwell Oklahoma Traveling across half the country in one day, all I can say is wow! We watched the sunrise in Albuquerque, NM at 5 am, checked out the long roads in Texas, skated up a skatepark in Amarillo, TX, and concluded the day by crashing in our car for the night in a small grassy knoll at the picnic section of RV park – all this happened within the first 24 hours on the first day of our trip … all I can say is wow, what an adventure! On July 31st at 7 pm we departed from Oak Park, CA to travel across the United States to visit skateparks, learn about the country’s skate community and immerse us in the nation’s history. We bombed straight out towards Amarillo, TX to hit up the first skatepark of our trip. On the way we passed signs calling our attention to visit the Grand Canyon, and a whole bunch of open road through the vast open space of Arizona. When we got to New Mexico on Wednesday morning, we started to get a little hunger for some grub. It was perfect timing! We hit up one of the Dairy Queen stops – which my gosh, this established is advertised almost every mile of the trip and has a location about once every 5 miles, they are the Starbucks of the Purple Heart Highway (AKA I-40). So we pull into the gravel parking area of a closed Dairy Queen and hop out. Just then, the East horizon starts presenting us with one of the most beautiful sites – the sun’s eyes started to peek over the horizon and bleed an amazing blood orange red over the New Mexico hills. Wow, is all I think! Matt, Andrew and I ate some cereal manual munchie style, which means we ate milk and cereal out of a bowl with no spoon. Matt and I hit the pavement of the parking lot with our decks and got some good 5 am morning skating – it was brilliant. On our next stop, we hit up Taco Bueno in Amarillo, TX … got some good grub, not bad. We hit up the skatepark around 2 pm and dude, the people there are awesome! Such chill laid back skaters that are open to converse with outsiders. The second we hit the park, we stood out. The first guy I met, his name is Chavez, introduced himself right off the bat. He could tell that we were a little different. Anyways, we hit up the park. These skaters were awesome … a lot of them have some mad skills. We showed them some back-footed tricks and they taught us fine art of some big wall riding and the intricacies of some technical tricks. It was great to meet this community of skaters. After the park I called my good friend Jessica to get a lock on some coordinates for a campground in Oklahoma City. She checked out the terrain and reported back with an accommodating establishment. That was awesome of her to pull up the info – THANKS Jessica! That night, we made it to Oklahoma City at 11 pm and with exhausted energy, we were thirsting for some sleep. A nice little picnic area of an RV Park housed our car, and we slept in the sticky humidity that is indigenous to the area. It was tough to sleep, but we made it work – nothing a little mental coaxing can’t convince a person to get through. And that leads me to now … it is 11:07 am CST right now in Oklahoma City and I’m sitting in the lobby area of an RV park writing this message. I’ve got to go for now, we’re planning on hitting up the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial and some more skateparks. I’ll hopefully write up another message soon. Mark |