The Trailer Park: “Atlanta’s Favourite Mountainboard Park”

This past weekend we had the pleasure to have a gaggle of 5 year olds at the Trailer Park. Does 3 constitute a gaggle? Damn right it does.

It was pretty cool. Kids being kids, they really didn’t need “dirtboards” to have a good time. And yeah, they call them “dirtboards”. Disney, you’ve tainted the youth with your Johnny Kapahala movie. (Should we have showed some clips of all the people who have ridden the Trailer Park that are in the movie? )

But we did have dirtboards and the kiddies did ride the heck out of em. We had Trey and Hunter Smith along with their cousin Jasper, a yankee but a good kid none-the-less. Both Hunter and Trey had ridden before so were eager to hop on a board again. Jasper, not to be left out, also took a couple runs.

We started them out on the littlest roll-in we have, the kind of gap between two of the last of the dirt jumps, about a foot tall. Trey managed that with aplomb and soon moved on up a step to roll the landing of the last dirt jump, about 2.5ft high. Both Hunter or Jasper fell on the first attempt, so stuck to butt-boarding after that and had a real good time getting dirty!

Soon Papa Smith, aka Tim, followed in the footsteps of his offspring and hopped on a board, rolling in on the same hills. He got board with that and worked his way up to rolling in on the landing of the main dirt landing and the side, wooden mini-roll-in. Atta boy Tim! His old school skate style showed through, as did a bit of his skin after a couple falls. Nice.

Trey was inspired, I think, by his dad’s courage and started rolling in on the second dirt landing, which is about 5 ft high and rolls either into a dirt jump or between the gap they started on. After a couple tries he was rolling the gap clean every time! Way to go Trey! He really stepped it up.

The quote of the day comes from Jasper. He had been really supportive of the other boys and encouraged them with such sage advice as “You just have to believe in yourself!”. I used this motivation on him to get him to try riding the board standing up again, to which he responded “Every time I believe in myself I fall down!!!”. LOL. And he DID try it again. And, well, yeah he fell again. But good on him for trying!