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Arrrrghhh, Me Hearty's! With all issues finished, we are out
gathering content for next season. A regular feature you will
see is the swashbuckling antics of the Pirates! We thought it
only fair for you to see a log of their daring antics!
LATEST STORY - LOG#6
Kamchatka
Our old friend and new PiRATE Mitja Fresenko was the one who’s responsible for all this. He told us many times that Kamchatka, this big (almost) island, which is placed between Japan and Alaska, is a place with a lot of potential. This place is famous for volcanoes, the population of bears and military base of the Russian army.
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It has only been 2 years, when the first not Russian habitants could enter this place. Before that it was only for military use, with secret spots everywhere.
We hadn’t done a big trip this year and this adventure seemed to be a big challenge for everyone. So we decided to give it a go and put the crew together.
It was Basti Balser, Hannes Metzler, Wolle Beer, Lucki Draxl, Björn Hartweger, Mitja plus Flo and me for keeping it in frame.
The 22nd of April we entered the Aeroflot to Russia. Mitja and Mary showed us around in Moscow, where we enjoyed ourselves sightseeing, shopping digi equipment and collecting first impressions of
this totally different working country.
One night we spent time in a secret nightclub placed at the backside of a fucked up factory, where you get in with a code and pay with a fingerprint. After hitting some woditsch and smoking the shisha we were cruising around and got busted
by the police for pissing next to the road.
We almost got big trouble, the police took Basti’s passport and wanted big cash, but Mitja solved it with his Russian knowledge of pimping it up. He gave them posters with his signature plus some rubles and the deal was done. He later said: „If you have money in Russia, you are the king!“ apparently you can kill someone, pay the right people and get away with it...Russian styles.
After a few days in Moscow we left for Kamchatka. On this 9 ours flight we were lucky to fly in a almost empty plane, so we could make ourselves comfortable and bend over the backside of the chairs to have almost beds. The wine was super good and super cheap, so we could pump our
motivation and make the time fly by.
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We arrived at the airport Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky where a big crowd was waiting for their friends and family members, everyone looking at us strangely. From that time on we had to get use to being aliens in a crazy place. Our guide and major man Maros, who is a really good local rider, who’s organizing helitrips in Kamchatka, picked us up. As we were buddies of Mitja, he was helping us surviving. No one, except young people who are studying, speaks English so we had to communicate with our hands, or Mitja had to translate.
Petropavlovsk Kamtchatsky is the only city on this big island with the size of Germany, with 350.000 mostly Russian habitants. We got divided in two apartments that were both superoldschool. Lucki, Basti, Flo and me had a hard time without a HERD, no hot water and just 1 working docking station for our electrical equipment. It was a good experience for us spoilt western European kids to get use to this environment. There was dirt everywhere, huge holes in the street and fucked up houses
that no one looked after.
Because of being so close to Japan, all the cars are from there. The funny thing is that the driver sits on the right side, but the traffic is the same than in Europe (except Britain, of course!). It’s not the
only thing similar than the neighbour country, because the landscape with its volcanoes everywhere and the typical trees let’s you always think you are in Japan.
Almost everyday we rented a bus plus a driver, to get around and check out the area. Around the city it is pretty flat, so no chance for building kickers, but there were a lot of big rails around. Nobody from
our crew wanted to risk something on metal before seeing a helicopter, the reason we came to Kamchatka.
We heard about a volcano, where you could ride in and a run to the beach from the Pacific.
In the end Mitja was the only one who throw him down a double kink rail, which was 3 minutes walk next to our apartment. Instead of snow in the landing, there were a few crashed glass bottles. We tried to clear it, but Mitja didn’t want any snow. Instead he said: “do you want a good picture, or a bad picture?“...Russian styles. |
Mitja killing it on the double kink rail
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One day we went to a lonely beach, where a huge ship got stranded a few days earlier. The wind was blowing like hell and there were some good- looking waves, but our mane object was the boat. Lucki and Hannes helped our monkeyboy Björn to climb up from the backside, where normally dead
whales get pulled in. we did some funny shot and searched the beach for stranded treasure.
We spent some time in a cabine, that used to be a military base in the middle of nowhere…it was a big house with supershady rooms, with bads that almost broke your back while sleeping. We also had to get used to the food, it seemed to be some old army mangies.
There we had sleds with drivers (!!) who pulled us to the mountains, what took us about 2 hours in wakeboarding posission. At this area we found a lot of tree jibs and kicker spots. We also built one nice step up over a river, where Wolle was the most outstanding rider, by clearing it with a bs 180 before slamming into the water…luckily Björn was the Baywatching!
There was this other day, where we all built this huge kicker (4,5 m) over a massive gap. The only one hitting that monster was Hannes, clearing it straight plus with a bs 180.
But we were all waiting for this 1 day…
…and it came. -To be continued-
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Björn Hartweger
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Björn Hartweger |
Hannes Metzler-first hit
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Hannes fs7 stale
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Maros_fs7
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Pampa
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Wolle the tanker
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Wolle gapo
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Text and all pics by Ludschi |
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