Rural Skate Adventures- Empty Inn Pool

(y'all really don't need to read all this shit if you don't want to. clip at bottom)

Yo Skate Hive. This is my first post in the community here. I am super excited that there is a Hive skate community. Years ago, I was fairly active on the Steemit blockchain; and I left the blockchain(not by choice; both my keys and my computer got stolen by my old landlord(long fucking story)) shortly before the skate community started to appear.

Growing up in rural ass Vermont I have always been much more of a snowboarder than a skateboarder. Here, the communities kind of go hand in hand. I skated first; but I fucking sucked. And my friends I met through skateboarding helped me get some old snowboard gear and get my tall ass up to the mountain. Snowboarding always just was easier for me, and all my friends were really good at skating; so I started filming skating and kept my efforts to snowboarding.

the pool house. found some Budweiser cans and some dead rats.

The only reason I mention all this is because most of my posts here are going to be shots of my friends I think- I rarely try to go out and get any clips of myself skating. It's more entertaining to film my friends. I also mention all of this because the SkateHive community is also inspiring me to start a similar one for snowboarding. If that already exists- please let me know!

Anyways, I grew up on dirt roads with no pavement for miles. As a teenager I transitioned to the city; which made skating a lot more fun. But recently, I've moved back out into the woods and finding skate spots is extremely rare. We are in the process(10+ year process) of building a DIY park that is actually starting to be really great and attracting some outside attention. My next post will probably be a spotlight on said park.

In addition to my full-time job I also work part-time at a local Thai restaurant. The restaurant is located on the bottom floor of an inn that is operated by the local ski resort(who I also work for). I was getting out of my car a few days ago to go into work and I thought I heard a skateboard. I wasn't sure though- it seemed odd- it was coming from a fenced off abandoned area on a hill above the inn. It's hard to explain why but looking at the area one would never fucking expect there to be anything up there.

The noises stopped. I waited a few seconds, then decided to walk into work. I'm trippin I thought to myself.

I went back to my car after clocking in to "get something". Now that I think of it, I don't think I needed anything. I think I was still curious about if I did hear skateboarding or not. I did. People were definitely skating- even though I couldn't see them. I pulled out my phone to text my friend Sean to ask if he knew about what was up the hill. Literally, as I opened our conversation to text him; I noticed that the Nissan truck parked in the lot had one of my friend's company's stickers on it. Only then did I realize that it was actually Sean's truck(the one I was in the process of texting). I didn't recognize it as he had a cap on the bed since he had bought it and it looked weirdly smaller without the cap.

I didn't have time to head up the hill as COVID has made our restaurant fucking crazy busy- because we do take out and there are only a handful of restaurants around here. Add in the crazy amount of tourism that occurs here for rich people to "get away" from neighboring states and the weekends become pretty crazy. But I texted Sean about it and he sent me a photo of a terrifying looking pool. We made plans to go back the next day.

We skated the DIY park in the morning and then parted ways to do errands and other "adult shit". Sean got in touch with our friend Ashley who is an amazing photographer to come shoot a photo of him at the pool. He didn't know what he wanted to do yet; and I hadn't even seen the thing. But, as I said before, I can't skate for shit and this was definitely a shot for Sean. He is an incredibly talented skateboarder and we skate together very frequently- I'd imagine he will be involved with most, if not all, of my skate posts here.

My fiancee and I arrived shortly after Sean and Ashley had. Sean had already bucketed out the water the day before and had brought a broom for all the leaves and the crumbling cement. This thing is old as fuck and just putting your hand near the coping causes debris to fall into the flat bottom. Sean was gearing up to do a frontside ollie over the light fixture hole when I got there.

I'm not sure if the pictures really do it justice- but this thing is like 6 feet of vert with 3-4 feet of transition. It's fucking pretty gnarly even to get up to that hole; at least for someone like me. Sean had no problem with the ollie though.

After I had gone round the corners a few times and did some kick turns I started looking around the pool house. I have an obsession with abandoned places. When I returned(after stabbing myself with a rusty nail) Sean was trying to decide what to do for a photo. After a kickturn scarily high to the coping, he asked me what I thought. I said "I mean, you're pretty close up there". I wasn't really implying he should go for coping- just throwing the idea out there. Again, this thing is fucking gnarly.

My pathetic attempt at skating this thing.

He took it as encouragement though. Next thing I knew, he was sizing up his back truck on it- kicking out and dropping all the way to flat. Over and over. I was fucking nervous about him hurting himself just kicking out; let alone the commitment.

Eventually he sent it though. And landed it. 4 times in a row. Ashley kept saying "another one" trying to get the shot she wanted. His nerves started to get the best of him and he started kicking out a bunch again- but eventually his confidence came back and he landed it another 3 times when Ashley was finally settled with her shot.

I'm not going to post Ashley's photo here; especially not without her permission. But there's a story about finding skate spots in the woods and some photos and a video taken by myself and my fiancee.

Thanks to anyone who read all that nonsense. I used to be a writer and it's a hard habit to break. I'm not going to pretend im able to tell a short story. So there's way too many words than you need. Again, I'm super stoked about the @skatehive community!