Me and some of the boys decided to drive up to Norman for the Oklahoma Showdown. I haven’t spent much time in Oklahoma prior to this trip and I have to say, it’s pretty sick. The weather was super nice, the streets spots are incredible (and untapped), the prices at the bar were incredibly cheap and everyone we skated with was an absolute pleasure.

When I first rolled up to the contest I was shocked to see 35 brand new pairs of Kaltik skates. For anyone that doesn’t know, Kaltik makes a very good junior sized skate. Normally at these donation/charity style contests, there’s actually very few newcomers that skates are given too. It’s normally dudes that have been skating forever, taking whatever parts they find interesting. I was pleasantly surprised to see every pair of skates get given to kids that were genuinely interested in it. Kids that actually already knew how to skate. - Cody Sanders.

Bonus Edit: Oklahoma Showdown - Random Clips, by Nate Nyman - PLAY.

“The spot is way worse in person”. We’ve all said that before. We’ve all seen a perfect spot on film and thought, “I want to go there,” just to have our dreams crushed once we arrived. You won’t think that about any of the spots in this edit. The spot selection is “feral” at best, haha.

In a world of infinite park clips, he’s skating rocks, trees and dumpsters. It’s a kind of skating that’s not common anymore. You can’t finesse a lot of these spots. No trick was given, everything was earned. I love it. I hope you do too. Much more to come. - Cody Sanders.

Jumbo Presents: Caleb Benavides: PLAY.

Heath Burley and Anthony Medina play a Game of Blade at Candyland. A Jumbo video by Cody Sanders.

Heath Burley is back and this time we’re putting our alcoholism to good use. We’re making a beer can coping ledge. You don’t have to make a ledge, you can attach the coping to any spot you want to (we discuss this as well). These things are always a work in progress. We’re not professional builders (obviously), but it’s good to share some of the knowledge we’re acquiring in real time. We also hope it’s a bit motivational for anyone that’s ever wanted to build a spot. - Cody Sanders.

Previously: Blading DIY - How to make a ledge (for cheap!) - with Heath Burley - JUMBO, 2023.

We’ll call this the “season finale”. I think that’s a little goofy, but it makes since because I’m basically going to take a seasonal break until summers over. Mick Casals is moving to Colorado and he was going to have his last session in Texas in Dallas. So me and a few others decided to make the drive from Austin to Dallas to come bid him a farewell and also skate amazing Dallas spots. Fact: Dallas has the best spots in Texas.

Massive shoutout to John Sullivan for being our tour guide and also being better than everyone at skating. Thanks John. I could spend a good amount of time writing about the day, all of the spots, describing each minor detail that I think makes the day interesting but… It’s late. My brain feels burnt. So I want to use the rest of my dwindling motivation to say THANK YOU to everyone that has watched, commented and supported Jumbo. I never thought this project would have reached so many people. […] - Cody Sanders. Support Jumbo and get some goodies on Oak City.

Me and Mick Casals finally managed to meet up to do a setups video. I had just flown back from Florida, he was in town for just a few hours and we both managed to meet up in the early hours of this hellish summer to knock it out. I wanted to add more to the title than just “Mesmers,” but I don’t know the official name of the skate yet. - Cody Sanders.

Setup: Boot - Mesmer, Souls: Stock Mesmer souls, Frames: Sola, Wheels: Bloom Mick Casals 58/90, Liners: Intuition, Bearings: Generic. Jumbo - More Goodies.

Hell on earth. It’s summer time in Texas and we forgot to wake up early for street skating. If you’re from a climate similar then you understand, you can only skate during the early morning or the evening… This session was all curbs, trees and one random square downrail. It’s a struggle. Shout out to all my homies that read the group text, don’t respond, but still show up. - Cody Sanders.

Jumbo - More Episodes.

Heads up, this is a long one. If you’ve been following any of the How to build a DIY tutorial I’ve been doing with Heath Burley, then you’ve probably seen this place before. We call it the dawg pound. We’ve worked on a few different DIY spots over the years, but this is “the one”. The one that we actually want to invest time and money into to build it out into something special.

The problem is, that building something sick is a little expensive. That’s why Heath had the idea to do a small event. A local game of “b.l.a.d.e,” to raise some funds for the next big ramps we want to install. So Heath made a flyer and it gained a little bit more traction than we expected. Soon our 15-20 person session had turned into a 75-100 person event. Which was great but… we also weren’t really prepared for that many people. How could we make it worth it for the people that wanted to visit from out of town? From out of state? Thankfully we were able to get a few local sponsors on board to help us out with the event.

Austin Beerworks was suuuuper cool to us and hooked us up with more beer than we could drink. That’s impressive to me. I can’t tell if I’m proud of my scene for drinking responsibly or if I’m disappointed that we don’t party as hard as we used to, haha. Juiceland was also a big help. Not everyone skating was 21 (surprisingly), so it was good to have some alternatives. It’s also probably just a good thing in general to have something that’s not beer. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I definitely don’t treat myself very well mid/post session. It was nice to mix it up a bit with some juice mid-day.

They also gave us some giftcards and we did side events for them. Shout out to both Sky Louviere and Mick Casals for winning the side events. It was fun though. I don’t know what everyone was expecting, but I heard “this is a lot harder than it looks” multiple times throughout the day. That was kind of funny to hear, because for several days prior to the event the boys had worked really hard at filling all the potholes and cutting out all the random metal sticking up from the ground. I’m happy most of them didn’t see how we’ve been skating it all this year, haha.

Overall, I’d say the event was a big success. We raised a ton of money for the build. It might have been an “event,” but it didn’t feel like a regular one. It didn’t feel like you were going to a normal “contest.” It just felt like a massive session. A session with purpose. I’m really proud of everyone going out of their way to come down to Austin and support rollerblading. Supporting one of the very few 100% rollerblader built DIY’s. Supporting jumbo. Thank you! Really. With all that being said, I tried my best to capture the event as well as I could, buuuttt…. It’s hard to have fun, be engaged with everyone AND film an edit all day out in the sun. Also… The edit is SO long. I did this one a little different than normal. Not a lot of text in this one, because it was just too many people. Some of the games didn’t get filmed, so if you were looking for you clips, I’m sorry if I missed them. I had to take a few breaks during the day. There’s a LOT of footage in this one, but I wanted to make sure that I tried my best to include EVERYONE that I could. I wanna show love to everyone, if I can. Love yall. - Cody Sanders.

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I took a week or two break, but we’re back at it again! This was probably the last session before the brutal heat of Texas summer sets in. The first spot was really cool. I just wish we had the time/ motivation to go back and rub-brick the whole ledge.

It looks perfect right?… Well… You’d be mistaken. The lines are really tight and weird. I think I filmed more awkward falls then I did lands. The sad part is, I didn’t even post them all. It would have been 15 minutes of very awkward falls and trips around the corners, haha. Although it might look like the easiest spot of the day, I think it may have been the hardest.

Spot 2 was… awful. I’m noticing a trend during these sessions, all of our spots are awful, haha. It was cool that Kraft and jferg showed up though. I can’t imagine showing up to a street session and the first trick you do being an alleyoop fish up and under rail… Kraft is wild. Spot 3, classic spot. A chill 6 or 7 stair downledge, so this one must not have been that bad right? Nah, no one even skated the down ledges.

They would rather try and roll up the things at high speeds… Did it work out? You’ll find out. But also, I’ll tell you. The answer is… Yes/no. Haha. Overall, another beautiful session. Dreadful falls, most of which I missed off of camera. But I’m happy everyone is ok.. I mean, they’re ok enough. Walk it off. - Cody Sanders.

Jumbo by Cody Sanders: More Episodes..

Episode 8 (April 2023)

Our original goal this weekend was to take Zachary Gutweiler to only the biggest spots. Well, one thing leads to another and the session just takes organic turns and none of the spots ended up actually being that big.Whoops. Michael Kraft confessed at the first spot that he accidentally at the wrong kind of gummies before the session. Honestly, it would make more sense if he did that every time he skates. That would explain his trick/ spot selection, haha. […]- Cody Sanders.

Episode 9 - Waco, Texas - May 2023

I’m up way too late finishing this one. I have to work in the morning. But I’m still going to try my best to describe last weekend. We drove a couple of hours away to the city of Waco, Texas. It’s a smaller town between Dallas and Austin, so a few of our friends from Dallas met us there. Mick Casals lives there as well. Mick’s about the only reason I’d visit there. - Cody Sanders.

Episode 10 - May 2023

Man. I can’t believe I made it to the tenth episode. I didn’t realize how much work this was going to be when I started this project, but I’m happy it’s getting done. This week we went to Temple, TX. It’s only about an hour away from where we live. I like skating small towns. The skate spots are generally older. There’s a lot of character to them. Temple was no exception. - Cody Sanders.

Jumbo by Cody Sanders: More Episodes.