Playa Players Vol. 2

As if it there weren’t already enough bladers around in this small Mexican beach town, a whole other crew was about to visit. Phil Gripper flew in from the United States and his friends Chaylee and Craig, who were travelling from Brazil, joined us as well.

Phil is one of the nicest humans I’ve met, such great attitude, highly motivated, always smiling and as old as I am but still skating like he was a 15 year old kid, no fucks given. The crew got quite big and motivation was there as well. Frai was juiced to film, Phil juiced to skate as well as all the other heads. We spent a great two weeks, but sadly the spots in Playa weren’t as world class as our team. They were to be found but not that great, which was a bit of a bummer… all that effort and that, combined with the raising heat… it wasn’t easy. We should’ve visited Cancun more often, but only made two trips and got to skate a few pretty sick spots. One of them turned out to be a stadium with a couple of stair-sets, rails and ledges in front. We had to pay the security guard about 20 pesos each to skate for a couple of hours. The trip turned out great, everybody clipped up, even Joe, who, as a working professional, kept it rather low key in session-situations and only did big stuff when he could see it might help him with his bigger picture. He got a sick pic on some absolutely crazy full pipe to wallride with literally a 4m drop from the lowest point, clearly the move of the trip. That’s what makes a professional, they see what helps and chill the rest of the time.

Another highlight was the roller-soccer match we played in one of Playas basketball courts. We visited the courts a few times as they had some of the better ledges in town and they mostly came with a roof and were nicely painted. The match turned out hilarious, everybody was stumbling around, falling over, sliding, kicking, but mostly stumbling rather than striding.

Even the soccer-locals around the basketball court thought it was fun but started to be impatient once they realised we were taking ages as they wanted to have their own match. Sadly Joe didn’t understand that he as our Ronaldo was playing with the disabled kids on anti-rocker setups and went full ham. The man is highly competitive even in rather relaxed, all smiles situations. That ruined the fun a bit as it kinda turned to be dangerous, Joe cannonballing towards anyone was not a pleasant feeling. Needless to say team Joe won, but we came closer than expected.

The days passed quickly with such a big crew, something to do everyday. Other great things we did besides skating were visiting the Tulum ruins (before most of the seaweed came in) and a day trip to Sian Ka’an with the whole crew. This place was exactly what I expected from Mexican beaches, endless white sand, palm trees and no one around, located just a bit south of Tulum. The road that led into it was in terrible condition and we had to pass the infamous Tulum beach road as well, so even though it was quite close it took a while to get there. (One of my least favourite roads in the world, the Tulum beach road) We saw a crocodile, had a Nat-Geo moment when a swarm of fish circled around it, different birds, a Stingray, Barracudas, went skim boarding, Benji made guacamole on the beach and we had a few beers before we watched the sunset in a picturesque wooden hut at the end of a pier. So much for a perfect day.

Skating the brandnew p-rail Alex had just built was a great night out as well. All the homies dropped by again, a big crew skating at 11pm in the suburbs reminded me of my childhood.

Lots of beers involved and due to Alexs’ work commitments we couldn’t skate earlier and by the time 9-10pm came around I was always way to intoxicated to skate a pretty high p-rail in the dark, even though it might be one of the best p-rails out there. Nobody else cared and the session was amazing.

The weather seemed hot, but it would get a lot hotter in the following weeks. It was bearable and even skateable when Phil and the others were still around, but once they had left temperatures boosted themselves to insane levels. It was way too hot to skate and pretty much too hot to do anything. I just soaked it up and got high on one of the local beaches, that’s pretty much all I did for the next couple of weeks. We tried to skate in the mid-day heat and shoot a v-log with a “spots around the neighbourhood” theme but I failed miserably that day. My lower back was a bit sour and skating along Joe didn’t help either as too much pressure was on. I gave up right at the first spot, just out the front gate. As it is so many times, the thought of doing something is great but the execution turned out to be a whole different thing.

Activity stalled in the last weeks, routines started to kick in, hang in a coffee shop in the morning, work through to the afternoon, go to a beach, get high etc. Most of the fun things had been done, like Woodward, the clubs etc. and obviously repeating them wouldn’t have been as great as it was the first time.

Luckily the DIF skatepark opened up for the last weeks and I went there pretty much every second day for the afternoon session. That place really helped me keep sane, something to do that was fun repeating, learn to skate the bowl, steal some of Joe’s lines and hang with the locals. I really enjoyed skating the bowl. Everything slid really well, it was quite big and the community around it was nice, mostly the same heads came out to skate every day. It was only useable in the evenings from 5-6:30pm, any other time was just too hot. One day we skated Joe sadly dislocated his elbow, it was horrible to see his little arm dangling from his shoulder, just seeming to be connected by his skin and ligaments. I didn’t see what happened, just the result and I froze in shock. The poor guy was all right in the end, he managed to relocate it right in the park, but went to visit a specialised doctor that was recommended by Alex to get an opinion, some recovery and a sling. The only good thing was that it weren’t his golden legs. After that the DIF sessions kinda ended as and it was time to leave Playa anyways. Benji had just gotten a new apartment very close to our places and thankfully made sure that there was an awesome goodbye-party. It reminded me of the first party, the night after the clinic, everybody came out, showed love and had a good time. We had pizza and beers in the courtyard, Joe initiated a Wim Hof inspired “how long can you hold your breath challenge” and my favourite Latin music mix came to use in a party situation for the first time. We couldn’t have asked for a better goodbye. Thank you Playa, thank you Players.