Say cheese. All photos: Max Duff

Wow. What a crazy, crazy month that's just gone! I found out in July that I received an invite to ride in the open qualifier at the Dew Tour in Portland, Oregon. So with a few weeks to spare, I rushed and booked a ticket over to the states with no real plan except to get to the Dew Tour and ride as much as possible!

I landed in LA just as the X Games were finishing up and met up with some mates from back home in Aus and we all decided to hire a family van and punch it out to Vegas so the guys could spend at least one night there!

After a night in Vegas the guys punched it back to LA and left me to get some riding done! I was lucky enough to have good mate Brakeless Billy let me stay at his place for the week that I was there. Most days we hit up Lav's yard and had some pretty heavy hitting sessions trying to get ourselves ready for the Dew Tour.

Cam W is on his first season back after his knee injury and to be riding in the yard again was dope. He was throwing down like nothing was a problem to him.

After all the gnarly crashes last year TJ has implemented a full face helmet rule in his yard. At first, I thought I would struggle a little bit with it, but after the first session I found it was easier. I actually felt a lot more confident on my bike as I wasn't worried about smashing my head.

Cam laying a one-handed 360 Table over the resy jump at TJ Lavin's yard.

I ended up using the full face on dirt the whole time while I was over there. It only seems to make sense if we are jumping big stuff like we are now, it only takes one fall to ruin your brain! Another thing I learned from Vegas is not to hire a car! Even the smallest one might seem cheap but once you return it, they hit you up with all sorts of crap fees and taxes!

Portland Dew Tour was the next week and after a week of riding with Cam, Billy and the rest of the crew, I felt like I was in good shape to be heading over to the contest. I got in a few days early to help TJ, Aloise, Nate and the rest of the crew build the course.

Once I got there, the guys had already got the first half of the course going and it looked sick! I can't get over how dialled the set up looks after just two days! Amazing!

By the time the contest had come around, I had already smashed myself up really good a few times on the set, so I wasn't too worried to try and send a bit of stuff. I had my run worked out and had done all my tricks that I wanted in practice. I was hoping to front flip no hander the first, then 3 whip the second and then 720 the last.

But come crunch time I screwed up my first run, and on the second run I didn't get my hands off on the first set, then I completely cheesed on the second, but still pulled a 720 on the last. Unfortunately, I didn't make it through and i'm not really sure where I came but I was still stoked with how I rode!


Roadtripping with Kiwi bro Paul Langlands.

After Portland is where the real fun started! I never bothered to book travel back anywhere as I was hoping to run into some mates and see what everyone was doing, then just book a flight to wherever. Turns out some mates of mine from NZ (George, Paul, Fraser and Luke) had bought a van from Canada and were travelling down the entire west coast of the country.

They asked if I would like to join in on the trip as I was kinda planning on getting down to Cali too, so I could catch up with Jed, Nick and Mini. I'm pretty sure they only wanted me to come along because I had an iPhone with Google maps on it, hahah jokes.

Cam shows off his skills on his new fixie.

Anyways, we spent the next week or so travelling down the coast, checking out all the sites and trying to find skateparks to ride - which actually becomes a bit of a problem once you hit Cali because parks out there ban bikes, which is a horrible idea. I don't think I know of one park in Aus that bans bikes so we definitely have it a lot better!

Knowing that finding spots to ride was going to be a bit of a hassle, I called up Nasty to see if we could ride at his yard. Sure enough, Nasty was stoked on the idea so we headed out there and ended up staying a few days there with him so we could get some riding done! He even managed to take all the guys out to Woodward East to check it out, so that was a bit of a surprise too!

After a few days out at Nasty's yard, we headed in to Riverside to hit up "Da Compound" (old Real Ride skatepark). They have recently undergone a bit of a facelift with their trails out back so we spent a good eight hours that day just shredding and having a blast out there.

It was such a fun spot to ride with mates because there are so many lines and transfers and it's not super hard! We ended up chilling around that area for the next day or two before we had to drop most of the guys off at the airport. We did get to spend some time down at Huntington beach and do all the tourist-like things down there though.

Once we dropped the guys off, myself and Paul headed out to Luke Parslow's house to stay out there with Jed, Nick and Mini. So my last week was spent having the time of my life in Luke's backyard riding with everyone and just pulling back everywhere!

Besides getting stranded at the airport for one day on the way home, my trip turned out amazing. Of course there are more stories but I could fill 100 pages.

Thanks to everyone that helped out, rode with us, gave us directions, or just in general are rad - I appreciate it!

Cheers

Cam Pianta

• By Simon M