Jumbo: Barcelona, Day 1 (Episode 24) - PLAY

After Winterclash 2024, me and the boys traveled to Barcelona for a week to skate. This was day 1. It was rough. No tour guide, no real plan, just stumbling into spots. But, luckily we’re not spoiled with spots, so anything is pretty fun.

I feel like you always see a lot of the same spots when people film in Barcelona, so I was excited to maybe look at some old spots with a fresh take on it. Pretty sure the first building we skated was skated by Danny Beer, so the escalator was off limits. But I’m pretty sure the gap to gutter is untapped… I dunno. It’s a safe assumption to assume that everything we touched has been thoroughly destroyed. Who knows. The next spot was basically a skatepark, which I think is a first for one of our “4 the streets” things, but that’s ok. It was a good warm up day. - PLAY.

Jumbo: Barcelona, Day 2 (Episode 25) - PLAY

Texas is a big state. A lot of things here are very spread out. Not a lot of cities have good public transportation so you have to drive to most places if you want to get anything done. That’s what we do when we skate, we drive from spot to spot. That is NOT what people do in Barcelona and we were ill prepared for it. The first day, we took it at our own pace, just bopped around the neighborhood and skated whatever we saw.

The second day, we met up with dudes from all over the place. And we skated… and skated. and skated. I clocked as many miles on skates as I was doing when I was 14 before I had a car. Which was great, an amazing way to view the city and honestly really fun. Buuuuut… Incredibly taxing if you’re not accustomed to it. Somehow we survived and still had the energy to skate the spots. First spot was absolute ice. Not sure what that ground was made out of, but it was impossibly slick. It was also a skatepark, which is rare for us to skate. We left quickly.

Nick Lomax took us to the second spot expecting us to skate these line ledges, but as things happen we found a trampoline, a couple of gutter spots and a broken down ol’ bench to skate. I dunno, the whole day was good. Eating fresh oranges out of the tree. Taking a side quest to see the ocean. Getting lost and dodging the rain. Thank you Immony Men for helping me film from time to time.

If anyone hear has heard of Orange Wheel Company, that’s his. The dudes cool and I’ve got nothing but respect. So if you see those wheels, it’s always a good idea to support our real ones. That’s enough ranting. Another day down. - PLAY.

Jumbo: Barcelona, Day 3 (Episode 26) - PLAY

Day 3! We’ve made it to the final half of the trip and we’re on our own again. We’re meandering around without tour guides again. Warming up on aluminum downrails and finding the trash spots of BCN. - PLAY.

Update: added “Jumbo Mic’d up at Winterclash 2024” by Ricardo Lino to the post.
Quoting Cody Sanders:

I’ve always wanted to go to a Winterclash. For as long as it’s been happening, I remember there’s some old video where Jon Elliott says “If you haven’t been to Winterclash, you’re not even rollerblading”, or something like that. Definitely not an exact quote, but you get the gist. You have to see it to understand it.

I came in knowing this was the worlds biggest contest. Professionally run. The highest level… Two things stuck out to me though. The skating was great, but it was the attendees that brought the energy. Even if I was upstairs, away from the contest, I didn’t feel like I was missing it. No matter where you are or who you’re with, you’re in it. It’s truly unlike any contest in the rollerblading world. Incredibly professional… Which is great… unless you’re trying to show up, unofficial and make an edit of the weekend… Which is what I tried to do.

So as it turns out, this isn’t a contest put on by “one of the homies.” Oh no, no no. You can’t just know a guy and get onto the course to film a couple of clips for your instagram, there was legit processes and procedures you had to go through to get the badge, the jacket, etc… Basically, credentials I didn’t have, haha. But that’s ok! We’re going to find a way to do it. Mick was supposed to skate in the pro comp (he didn’t because he got hurt during warm-ups… we all did). By luck, I just so happened to have a friend who should not be named that procured me a media badge (probably an old one) that was going to allow me to get in early. To maybe be able to actually film the contest well and make a proper edit…

We show up Friday morning ready to warm up. As it turns out, if you don’t practice skating 10 foot high wood ramps, you’re not very good at it. We were off to a bad start. Mick was slipping around a bit, so I thought I’d put the camera down for a while and check out the skatepark. After all, it’s my first Winterclash, I’ve wanted to skate this place for years. I put my skates on, do one royale in the bowl and fall on my face (literally). One tricks, skates off, never skated the rest of the weekend. Shout out to the medical staff on site (yet another perk of the professionalism of the event).

So after a couple of hours of shaking off a mild concussion, the park opened for everyone and it was chaos. Everyone in Europe is good at skating. That’s intimidating. Since I was still rocked from the earlier fall, I was hanging back a little bit. I was missing some of the event, sure, but I got to witness what I’m coining “Stairclash.” I feel like whenever you’re watching a contest edit, you’re always expecting to see “the big hurricane,” “the dangerous disaster,” etc… But you never get to see these super talented people just skate like normal. Stairclash was what I was looking for the whole time. Some of the best, my favorites, just making use of a 6 stair at the largest event at the world. I’m laughing as I type this. I’ll never explain it as well as I’d like.

With all that being said, I don’t want to take anything away from the actual event. It was MADNESS (as expected). I don’t think I captured it as well I would have liked, but that’s part of the beauty I guess. The massive sea of people, the energy from it, there are moments where it feels like everyones in the same rhythm. I dunno.. I just stayed up all night editing this, so as usual, I’m just going to tap out on the writing bit. As I always say… I think only 3 people read these anyway, lol. Good times. Good good good times. I’ve always wanted to come and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the best skate-related experiences I’ve ever had. Ever. If you stopped by to say “hello,” thank you! I might have been a little loopy from a concussion or completely overwhelmed from the experience (and jet lag!!), but I was so happy to meet everyone. Just amazing. I have a thousand little stories to tell but I guess that’s for another time. Love y’all. - Cody Sanders.

Bonus: Best Tricks @ Winterclash 2024 - PLAY ; a compilation by Ivan Higgins.

Episode 23 - Austin VS Dallas - PLAY - February 2024

Battle my crew 6: Austin vs Dallas was in full effect. I better go ahead and say “im kidding” before Videogroove hits me with a “cease and desist”, haha. The boys from all over visited this weekend. Every weekend this past month has been crazy. We had Stefan Brandow in town, BFree was here the next weekend and now we have Mick, Troy and Jordan from Colorado. If that wasn’t enough, about 15 people from Dallas came down to skate as well. I’d say it was a good Saturday. A bit of a cluster finding street spots that can cater to everyone and also not be a bust, but we survived. I have so much to say, but as usual, I’m finishing this late at night and I’m at my wits end so… Cutting this one short. No one reads these anyway I’m sure. Love everyone. - Cody Sanders.

Episode 22 - ‘Petite Session’ - PLAY January 2023

This was a smaller session than normal. A majority of the crew was invited to a wedding, so there was only a few of us left for the Saturday session. Since it was just the few of us, we stuck to our neighborhood. Usually on the weekends, someone has a specific area we all car pool too. It’s a chance to try and escape from the normal spots we’ve all been going to for the past decade or two. I know what you’re thinking, “man that wood ledge looks perfect, I’d destroy that spot! Why’d they just do a soul grind ?” It’s so much harder than it looks… - Cody Sanders.

I won’t lie to y’all, I spent the first half of the day filming the Inspin & Outspin Tutorial Video, so this one is going to be a little shorter than normal. But! We hit two spots and it was really fun. Well… One of them was really fun, the first one was scary.

Denny showed up to the handicap rail we were at and first try, no warm up did a fishbrain. It’s not a chill spot and you can get pretty hurt on it… as you’ll see, haha. All in all, a fun one. They’re all fun, even when they’re not. - Cody Sanders.

If you followed my channel before it was called Jumbo, you’ll know one of the things I was interested in doing was making how-to videos. I always felt like there was way more to skating than was being shown to beginners and I wanted to try and give those ideas a home. I was only able to get through about 5 of the instructional videos before an old lingering knee injury took me out of the game for a couple of years. A blessing in disguise I guess, because being hurt inspired me to create Jumbo. But Now that I can skate again, I want to keep the idea alive.

When I get interested in something, I’ll spend waaay too much time learning about. Learning about all the little technical differences in this or that. I’m that way with most of my hobbies outside of skating. I know I’m not the only one that thinks that way and since there are so many newcomers to skating lately, I think it’s important to clearly define what we’re doing.

It might have been documented somewhere a long time ago, in an old magazine or VHS tape that’s in someones closet collecting dust. So I think it’s worthwhile to put these ideas on the internet so we can actually talk about them. Anywho, I do a lot of this off the top of my head. So if you’re watching it and thinking “ah, he should have mentioned ’this/that’”, you’re probably right. Like I say at the end, thank you to everyone that supports Jumbo. You’re all cool as hell. More to come. - Cody Sanders.

Content: 0:00 Intro, 0:50 What is inspin & outspin, 1:38 Inspin, 1:54 Outspin, 2:07 Why are these terms important, 4:04 Skating, 4:29 Here’s how you do it, 5:58 Learn to skate backwards both ways, 6:40 How to inspin soul, 7:37 How to outspin soul, 8:52 Spinning into other tricks, 9:57 360 grinds weren’t happening, 10:32 Spinning out of grinds, rewind & regular, 11:32 Outro.

Julien Cudot was in town and working on something with Anthony Medina. I warned them all week, “I’m still going to come out and film on Saturday.” I’m surprised we all got as much done as we did.

A few of the tricks in this were obviously left out because I don’t want to spoil what they’re working on. But in-between the tiny rail spot and the bank to curb spot, we witnessed some really crazy skating. For a day when I thought we’d be mostly side-lined and spectating, we actually all got quite a bit done. - Cody Sanders.

Episode 19 (December 2023) with Special Guest: Julien Cudot.

Episode 18 (November 2023)

I’m genuinely surprised we had a session this weekend. We woke up to rain and blazing humidity. But we decided to roll the dice and go to the meetup spot anyway hoping for a chance that it would dry. The ground was shockingly slippery, as were the ledges after some rain.

It would dry up just enough to skate and then drizzle again. The heat/rain combo was causing my camera lens to fog up throughout the day as well. It didn’t stop us from trying. I’m an optimist. I think even when we’re being thrown curveballs, it just changes the kind of fun we’ll have.

However, that’s only the case when it comes to spots. It’s not at all the case when your car won’t start. The second spot, my car battery died. The third spot, Andrew got a flat tire. And I had to leave early in the middle of the day for a dog costume contest. Somehow, we still got something done though. Congratulations to my dog for getting 3rd place in her costume contest. - Cody Sanders.

Carriers Open - November 11, 2023. Frisco, Texas.

Wow. Where do I start? Fritz Peitzner, Carriers, the city of Frisco did such a great job putting on this event. The turn out was really massive. The park is really spread out, but even with that in mind you can tell the numbers were huge. I want to write in depth about the event, give you every detail, etc… But I’m going to leave that to whoever is handling the legit edit. This is the non-legit edit. This is the Jumbo experience… So here’s how it went from our perspective.

I’ve never ran a booth before… Hell, I didn’t even know this was going to be a company when I started it. It’s a joke that’s gotten really, really out of hand. I love it. I didn’t think about this beforehand, but running a booth, a side event, trying to skate a little AND film an edit of the experience is… A lot. Almost too much, but I still managed. Thank god for the crew helping me hold it down.

Bcam basically covered the booth and sales the whole time, Gogo and Aaron helping me film. Heath, Ant and Caleb helping me facilitate our mystery event… Oh my god, I can’t believe they let us do the mystery event, hahaha. Jumbo World Tournament. It was so stupid. No one had a clue, not even the people running the contest. I’m not sure how people actually felt about it. I can’t really remember much of it, because I was so focused on announcing. I edited the footage, but I do it all so quickly I haven’t taken the time to really grasp the crowd reaction yet… But if you ask me? I laugh every time. I laugh just thinking about it. That’s really all I want to do, just have a good time.

If we’re ever allowed to do another mystery event, it might be more focused towards skating… But I love the slapstick, pie-in-the-face, loony toons nature of it all. Without ranting for too long (because I’m sure maybe only 10 people read these descriptions anyway), I think everything about the event was a success. I love my friends. I love the rollerblading scene. I especially love EVERYONE that came by the booth and said what up. For real, I say it every time and I mean it… I’m shocked that people care. I care so much about skating and about us as a community, it’s just really great to know that there are people out there that I can resonate with. Thank you to everyone that came out, that shows love, that watches this… This is the best. Jumbo forever. - Cody Sanders.

Pro Results

1. Julien Cudot
2. Chad Hornish
3. Jeff Dalnas
4. Joe Atkinson
5. Jarrod Banning

Bladies

1. Tais Colares
2. Aarin Gates
3. Emilia Parejo
4. Becci Sotelo
5. Korina Calderon

Kids

1. Muneeb Akhtar
2. Jacques Orrenstein
3. Roman Zygmont
4. Astrid Garcia
5. Olivia Hallum

Open

1. Mario Pacia
2. Jose Arce
3. Scott Wells
4. Justin Jones
5. Caleb Benavides

Quads

1. KV
2. Kia Hawkins
3. Holly Lash
4. Missy Swain
5. Nina Hallum

Best Trick: Joe Atkinson. Photo.

Apparently we’re more productive when I’m 5 hours late, half the crew is missing and we only go to two spots… I’m a little bummed I didn’t bring my skates to this one. We’re finally skating normal spots. I don’t even like handicap rails but man… The one we went to was so perfect. Fresh out of a skate video from 2002. Needed more tap dancing. - Cody Sanders.

More Episodes of Jumbo.

They can’t all be winners. This weekend wasn’t the absolute best. Don’t get me wrong, we were out of the house, we had fun… That part of the day was a success. But a majority of the day was us driving around looking at spots that no one wanted to do. I didn’t even film some of them.

That’s ok. I’m blaming it on the eclipse I guess. As I say in the video, we really don’t know what to do for the carriers contest, so for sure feel free to give a good idea for what kind of side-event we should have at the Carriers Open on Nov 11. Zero-spin high jump contest, where the bar is in front of a set of stairs is pretty funny.

I don’t want to pick favorites but…. I think the Franky Morales Invitational is my favorite competition in the states. It’s close… It could be tied with The Blading Cup, but I also love Miami as a city. I come to Miami just to kick it.. The fact that one of the largest blade competitions in the nation is here as well is a huge plus. Heads up… I didn’t intend to make an edit of the competition. I’ll leave that to the real filmers, I just wanted to film the homies and make a fun one.

I stayed out til 5am the night before the event (bars are open that late here, it’s incredible) so I missed basically the entire beginning of the event. The park, the venue, is so incredible. Fantastic food trucks, a skateshop, they even brew their own beer for the skatepark. I want to do a long write up for this one… Honestly, for such a great event, it deserves a long write up. But I’ve once again stayed up way too late editing this and I don’t have the energy. Thank you to EVERYONE that supports Jumbo. I love you all. Always feel free to say “what up.” It was super cool meeting everyone. If you missed this years FMI, I’ll see you at the next one. - Cody Sanders.