We finally arrived at a small cement skatepark called Major Taylor. The place was a public park and cost nothing. Nina, Stacey, and Kari were MIA... they were still in Ohio somewhere. I saw Sam do a really long manual and saw this racer girl pedaling around (who later showed up at the WOF jam the next day as well). Kim actually rode too. A bunch of us decided to check out the race track right beside it. Kim told me about how she had raced three years and thought it was pretty lame and how she no longer jumps at all. And I've never raced before. So... we decided to race. I won hehe. I didn't jump anything though. And then I rode the little park which was kinda boring... not many things to be done there. But apparently no one around that area had witnessed a girl riding bmx, and actually landing stuff. And I was the only one riding around it at the time... so the guys were paying way too much attention to me. Then everyone warned me that we were about to leave, so I took off all my pads. When I got back to the parking lot, no one knew what the hell was going on. The rest of the crew showed up around that time (nina stacey kari) and they padded up to ride the park... and then it rained. No one cared much. About 20 more of the Indiana locals showed up (Kim's friends). The original plan was to have a backyard party at this girl's house named Shonda, but she wasn't expecting that many people... and this girl named Britney said the camp out could happen at her house as long as no rowdy driving, alcohol, loud people, or drugs were involved... but half the people there wanted to drink. And lots of others wanted to go to the Go Kart tracks. Kim was the basic organizer of everything from the start, and people kept on coming up to her and ask her what was going on and she had no fucking clue.... and soon enough she started breaking down and got way stressed out. A lot of things had gone wrong for her during the trip (including Section 8 getting closed down) and she had been driving all day and didn't even know how to get to where she was going. It was all pretty bad. That's when the joyful Saori turned to me and muttered "This was the worst day of the trip".
Half of the people left to check out the campfire place. The rest of us decided to go hit up the Go Karts... and that ended the night on a great note. I had never driven them before and I LOVED it. The Japan girls were freaking out after their run.. I think it might have been there first time too. They may have been poor at English, but their faces were all lit up and they were jumping around yelling CRASH CRASH CRASH!!! We had fun watching the boys afterward that had bought much more passes than us. That seemed to lighten up the evening. We checked out Shonda's backyard... with about ten tents and a bonfire and all... everyone was standing around talking, bored, complaining... and then Jon and I started complaining about the bugs, our soaked sleeping bags, the weather, and how dirty we felt (and there was no bathrooms for us..) we just wanted to go to a hotel. Kim and some other people wanted to leave too. A guy named Jesse decided to take us under his wing for the night since we were in the middle of nowhere and didn't know the area at all. We used his dryer, took showers, and slept on some comfy couches. Jesse was a cool fellow, although quiet and everyone thought he was shady.
The 3rd WOF Jam
We slept in until 1:30 in the afternoon, and we needed it after our lack of sleep the night before. We arrived at Blindside in Indianapolis just as the jam was starting, and I was the first girl to sign in. The park wasn't very big and didn't have much to work with. I spent most of my time in the street section. After working for a long while, I nailed this really weird wallride that had a super mellow bank.. even Nina had problems with it. So I probably have most wallrides down now if I could do something that weird. I loved how Nina would encourage me to do it and say stuff like "Yeah you have the idea, you got that shit". We just sat there and cheered eachother on until we both nailed it. My other favorite part of that park was the 9 foot "mini ramp"... more like a vert mini hybrid. Without much effort, I started airing a foot above the coping... and I never cased or got squirrely and I usually have problems with that. I also dropped in on it and got over my fear of dropping into vert. Nina got a picture of me airing out too. I think this was the day when most girls just brought everything out and really started to shine.. and some crazy shit went down. Sumiko did crankflip fakies on a bank, and 180 crankflips on the bank. Stacey started looking up this really tall sub box. Christine was in the rhythm area still trying to jump. Jill was trying 360 flyouts out of a small quarter. I saw the third Japan girl flow over a coping to coping spine. Saori was doing long 5050s everywhere. Nina went feebled down this small stair ledge and started looking to do the larger one. Then we were all called out by Kim to get some free stuff from the companies sponsoring the jam... Inopia, Grind Clothing, Eleventeen, and Infantry. Kim had these little buttons that said "WOF JAM 2003" and some Inopia pins with a piece of bread on it (nina's personal design for Inopia... Nina and Stacey are both sponsored by Inopia), lots of WOF and Inopia stickers, and I also picked up a neat Inopia shirt and belt, and a Grind shirt, and an extra large Infantry shirt (pajamas). I showed Nina how ravaged the bottom of my shoe was from being brakeless and she took some digital pictures to send into Inopia... I'll be getting a free pair of shoes soon. Then from about 8:15 to 9:00, the guys were asked to clear out so that the girls could have the park to themselves. This is when the crazy shit really started to happen. Out came all the photographers and video cameras. Stacey landed that huge ass sub box, and attempted to do a transfer from a quarter to a disaster on the top of the vert wall and tried countless times to icepick the vert or the quarter and she kept on falling... but I think she did get that icepick on the 6 foot or 7 foot quarter. Nina did that huge ledge down the stairs and started trying this really tall rail. She flipped over her bars and crashed pretty hard the one time, but she did nail it for the video cameras haha. Kari was airing out of the big vert wall to no footers over a pyramid, and Anita was jumping that same pyramid and trying to double peg grind over a smaller quarter poking out of the middle of a bigger quarter. I had been avoiding the cameras for the most part but I laid down some feebles and smiths on some mellow quarters for two different people... but I was too tired to go for the wallride again. It was pretty exciting and it was a great jam, all of us killing it for a crowd. Our energy eventually fizzled out and we took our group shot... all sweaty and dirty. We sat around and chatted with people. This is kinda top secret, but there's a teensy possibility that Inopia might begin a girl's team besides the team of riders they already have, and Nina and Stacey will be in charge. We all said our tortured farewells and everyone went home. Except for Jon and I. We still had two more days in which we wanted to ride The Flow and Chenga 2. Columbus was much closer to Indianapolis than Cleveland was, so we drove the 3.5 hours to Columbus that night so we could ride The Flow on Sunday. We arrived at the hotel at 4:30 in the morning, and they let us stay that "night" for free. It was at the Red Roof Inn, and it was the best hotel by far. All the best restaurants were 2 seconds away.
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