Freddy's

Steve Alba slowed the car and pulled to the side. Gravel crunched under the tires and he switched the engine off. He pointed to a small wooden house that sat on the west side of the street. “If this one is empty, it is going to be insane. The shape of it resembles the letter ‘P’ and the satellite image is rad.” My eyes scanned the nearby houses. Quiet. Rundown. We got out and saw the disrepair of the structure and fences. I smiled. Looking through a window, I could barely see the pool behind the house,  I could see plaster and tiles. It certainly wasn’t a swimmer! We pushed through a small wooden gate and approached the pool. I felt me heart drop momentarily as I spotted a huge love seat that seemed to take up half of the pool. On closer inspection, the pool looked amazing. It was huge and had fantastic transitions throughout.  Since there was barely any water, Salba and I prepared to drain it the next day.

We came back and I recall Lance coming with us. We crept in and kept pretty quiet. We took a few runs but we were a bit nervous. Lance stated that he didn’t like ten minute barge pools. It wasn’t his style. We heard a car door and I looked through the fence. I quickly told them we had to go. There was what appeared to be an unmarked police cruiser out front. We stood by the fence and listened. The guy walked up to the neighbor’s house and knocked. It turned out to be a truancy officer from a nearby school checking up on a kid. We laughed for a long while after… We had a session or two in the following weeks and Salba was the first to get the love seat. He did it frontside. It was a very long carve to get over that thing!

The pool was soon lost to us as people had moved in. Another family. More children. Over-population. Life. Every time I drove past, I saw numerous cars and children’s toys scattered on the grass out front. One day, I was in the area and drove over to check the neighborhood. As I drove by, I saw a young guy out front. He was wearing Vans and had an Independent shirt on! I thought, “Who knows…?” I pulled over and spoke with him and his parents. The young man’s name was Freddy. I eventually got the pool going as a permission for a short time. They said that they were going to fill it for summer. Freddy and his parents let me drain the three feet of black water out of it that very first day. One day shortly after, Arto Saari, Lance Mountain, Greyson Fletcher, MRZ, Ben Nordberg, Al Brunelle and Rune Glifberg all gathered for a pool mission. We stopped over at Freddy’s. It would prove to be interesting.

This crew was pretty all-time. Heavies. I had watched Salba and Lance completely dominate backyard pools for a long time and I was interested to see what guys like Rune and Greyson would do with this pool. They didn’t disappoint and neither did Al Brunelle. Lance stepped into awesome mode. He launched inverts and frontside airs, did the deathbox both ways and raised the bar on the session immediately. Rune rolled in hot. He threw down rock-n-rolls and a backside lipslide over the deathbox that had us yelling! Ben Nordberg pulled backside disasters with ease, Greyson floated huge ollies and Al pulled some gnarly heelamonsters. It was a pool rider’s dream session.

 

Towards the end of the session, Rune really wanted to get over the love seat. He gave it several good attempts, made adjustments and quickly found the line over. Everyone was stoked. Al Brunelle decided to raise the bar a bit. He pushed in and made a frontside air over the entire love seat!  Sunset. The sky bled and darkened. We gathered our things and talked excitedly about what we had done and seen. It was a day of days…Sometimes, I see things and they defy words and explanations. This was one of those. A day of days. Thanks to MRZ and Arto Saari for the images. Skate-  Ozzie