At 15” in width, the El Cochino deck takes most people by surprise the first time they see it. After all, it is monstrously wide. But as you can see in this photo, it’s quite possible to do frontside airs with the El Cochino. Many years ago, boards were 5” to 7” in width. Wes Humpston and Jim Muir started tinkering with deck sizes and skateboarding wound up with 10” and 12” decks. For vert skaters in the 70’s, the wider boards were just more functional to ride. As many of you know, decks haven’t just changed in width, they have also changed in length. The resurgence of longboarding has meant not only an influx of new riders but a return by many folks who left skateboarding. Wheels have gotten quite a bit larger than the 39mm from the early 90’s. The demand for wider trucks has also increased.

We knew Oregon gets too hot in the summer and too damn rainy in the winter—so fall it was. I don’t recall the three in the morning wake up call was not on the itinerary. I woke up in Fresno and took over the wheel to Weed. The wheel was steering the Gravity Team to the concrete art recently labored in Oregon. The Team included, Jesse Parker, Roger Mihalko, Dustin “Ddog” Taylor, Ed Latus, Paul Santilli, myself and Breamo, who organized the expedition and brought a bunch of camera bags. We chose to enter the beaver state from the East and head North to Klamath Falls.

Imagine what it woiuld feel like if you went out longboarding and ove 200 other skaters joined in. That is what is happening in British Columbia right now.

Marcus Vorwaller is the creator and webmaster of Silverfishlongboarding.com (SF). If you don’t know about SF already, it’s a website that offers longboard forums, reviews, and articles. Marcus may be better known to the riding community by his online username, zzzMarcus. Since inception five years ago, SF has seen dramatic growth and currently gets about sixty thousand unique visits a month. No marketing, no advertising – just strong word of mouth.

The single engine Cesna was in obvious trouble as it buzzed the race course. Racers watched the plane lose elevation as it tried to sputter over Vail Pass, headed for the big digger. Theplane flew around a bend in the valley and went out of view. One minute later, the highway patrol and firefighters that were on hand for the Timeship Racing Vail Pass Downhill were off to a more urgent plane crash rescue. And with that bit of drama...