Cariboo Brewing

Wow, remind me to get all my work done for Attack of Danger Bay by January, before I start flying all over the world to announce races! My God this was a challenge. Thank God for my laptop and hard working crew back home or we would be up Riskie Creek with a bunch of Cariboos without a weapon.

Mount Kierra downhill challenge was a really good first annual event for the auzzies! It had everything a good grass roots racing community needs to keep it real! They had facilities. Who needs porta potties when you have a nice clean bathroom every corner you walk around? They had showers, a party hall, a dinner hall, a loud ass bell to wake you up everyday! Bunk beds in brick cabins, an outdoor pool and so much grass to tent on there is no way you would get a bad spot.

The race hill was deadly. Guard rails and steep cliffs but of course no bad crashes. Hay bails stacked perfectly in all the major corners the ASRA crew ran line throughout the track for a great working timing system. The heats were stacked and the music was loud! So glad I was able to be apart of this first annual event.

Talk about the party’s! The Auzzies know how to light it up big-time! Rowdy bunch! I don’t normally black out when I drink but it seems like this when I drink what they call Goon in Australia. Its simply boxed wine. Four liters of it. You rip it out of the box and drag it around with you all night giving everyone shots of wine. when your done with the bag you blow it up and use the bag as a pillow. Every booze hounds dream. Hard bar is very expensive down under and beer isn’t cheap either so if you’re a broke travele,r four liters of good will only cost ya $9.99 baby! Your set! You bet!

Coming form Canada and after ten years of attack of danger bay I’ve paid my dues but I haven’t paid my dues in Australia until I heard a voice call me out as I walked by the Saturday night for the party. “Hey Strike, beer bong?” well I stopped in my tracks and thought of all the poor people I punished at Danger Bay all these years calling them out and calling them sissys if they can pound out of the Danger Bay cup without finishing it. I thought about them all as I turned around and said, “What did you call me?” as I did that this young grom is standing on a ten foot rock the happens to be right in the middle of the yard and he’s holding big clear gas jug. Like a huge sucka! His buddy gives me the hose from hell. Four meters long with a bloody spider in it!

I step up and then of course the crowd forms. Beer then wines then port and beer and more wine. Really enough to make a man spew in a pew! So now I couldn’t back down and the crowd was huge by now and I’m not the best at beer bongs but I hit this bitch like a champ and I tasted every drop including the spider!

I dropped to me knees and everyone cheered I never puked but headed straight into the hall and grabbed the mic and that’s when everything went downhill. I’m known a free style rapper down under cutting rhymes like bakery’s cut bread! I went off for a good fifteen minutes but only felt like two minutes. The next day suckas dug it. Then I ran outside and yelled “Everyone in the pool!” I guess I led the whole party to the pool where I ripped off my clothes and started it all with a giant canon ball! All I remember from here on in all the splashes and someone yelling snake! This is where I blacked out! And I’ll blame the Goon and the beer bong for this. I was the last one in the pool scaling around the walls. Everyone was gone and almost forgot about me. Coasties Tony Graves and James Kelly remembered I was in there and tried to get me out. I wouldn’t get out so hours later I finally left the pool after falling back in and like a school boy drunk on dads wine they led me to bed. I never drank till Newton’s!

I woke up and it was race day! And what a wonderful day it was! Mischo started his day with a crash off the push. Boy he sure beats himself up over this kind of stuff but he knows he can win so he takes losing harder than others. The day ended great the news papers called the race a success so you know the boys are up to something great there! We pulled it off!

Good ol’ mate Jason Write took me under his wing for the next four days! All I did was again work on Attack of Danger Bay not hitting the beach not taking a break. We drove to steak and kidney after a couple days up north to the hop shop! The hot shop is the shop of all shops in Australia! They had a Sector 9 video viewing and an autograph session with all the worlds’ best riders attending. Groms and there yummy moms filled the sidewalk for blocks! It was out of had! Biggest autograph session I’ve ever seen in stand up. We got there a little late but the kids were still keen and I scraped my name into a pile of kid’s boards. Nice, they still recognize this old Landyachtz rippin beast after all these years!

This was also the night were supposed to show the Highway Gospel but the boys blew it by getting everyone amped and then pulling the plug on the whole thing. It was a real lunch bag let down and everybody lost because of it!

We get to Newton’s and it was as huge as ever! This is a huge event! It was streamed live on the web with thousands of viewers taking part in the three days of racing and surviving. In the tower I had my own production crew and beside them was a crazy team of public relations word spreading nut cases! They sat there Friday and Saturday just surfing the web and pumping Newton’s Nation like none other! They ran the Facebook and Twitter pages non stop through the event website, they had this shit dialed. They even ran a contest on the web “What do you think striker does for a day job?” It was really cool to meet the production team and work with them all weekend! Team! This shit is getting pro and I love it!

Check out the Facebook page for What is Striker’s Day Job?

The first day I was stuck up top. The event was going high class and they could figure out how to get me back to the corner of the hill with a TV and a live feed like past years. The past years it was ASRA that did it! Robbo to be fair! Knowing nothing about anything the last two years he ran duct tape, cables and shoelaces to make it work. Well, now that there was a huge professional crew taking care of all this, I bitched and complained till my face turned blue and it did! I know what they needed to put on a show and I was in charge of bringing this shit to the world! Having me talk about suicide at the top of the hill dealing with crap camera angles wasn’t working. I could have made it work but I knew I had to get my way to save the show!

Then this one guy I wish I had his name was all into helping me. He was the hired production manager that ran it all! We were already denied access to the corner but this man knew what I was talking about and could hear me! Hell yeah! He said I’ll be back!

So Robbo and Hop just chillin’ at the finish line, loving life, sees this crazy Auzzie crawl outta of the bush sweating, trembling and winded. He asks, “Are you… are you Robbo?” Robbo was like, oh shit, yes, why? “Oh man I’ve been around the world and back looking for you. I need your help! We need to get Striker to the corner to announce the race for Saturday and Sunday and I hear you’re the only man that can do it!” Ahhahaahahah, he just shook his head. Striker and all the pros that the event had staffed said there was no way this would work, all the high paid sound and camera techs said no way.

Robbo agreed and it was on! My true hero! He is the man on the wire! The man that only needs a shoelace and duct tape! He eats brown snakes for dessert!

I woke up the next day and like the past years I was loud and proud and the corner of the forest elbow! The meat grinder! Sick mate! I talked the event organizers to bring me back the hilarious quick-witted local skater Blackwood to team up with me and kick some ass on the mic! Also a nice surprise for me and I don’t get to team up with him to often is the President of the IGSA Marcus Rietima. He had his laptop with all the info anyone would need on everything like times, past track records, world cup champs. He just had everything we needed to fill even more time! Sick team!

Marcus has some connections with the X-Games crew. Back when he was a racer in the nineties, he met a bunch of the guys when they were just starting out with the X-Games crew and now, years later, they are the head honchos over there and he gave me the heads up that they were listening throughout the weekend! Yeah, our sport is taking off!

The race was picture perfect, but Sunday it came down to the American dream James Kelly, Prince Dillon, and former Guinness Book of World Records holder for speed on a skateboard, Brazil’s very own and a great buddy of mine, Douglas Dalua and the current world record holder for speed on a board from Vernon, BC, Canada, Attack of Danger Bay 3 was his first race Mischo Erban!

We did the awards after the race and I came down with a flew big-time! Or something. I was getting chills, sweating, puking, very bad blood sore throat, dizzy just not feeling myself. Don’t know if I was bit by a spider, sun stroked, flu, food poisoning, dehydrated or what but I locked myself in a room while everyone partied for the awards night for the last time. I woke up said my good byes and got a ride to steak and kidney that night where I had a two hour sleep then hit the plane sicker than ever only to land in Vancouver and heard straight to work and I have called in the rest of the week bed ridden! I feel better than I did but I’m still not me at all! I have all the symptoms but not as harsh as it was.

I was invited to announce a race that’s coming up in California called the Catalina Downhill Challenge! They are going to pay for my flights and cover everything that has to do with anything, so that’s good for my baby, so that’s good for me! What an honor to be announcing a race on a little island off of California’s coast and what really makes it special, it was a downhill race back in the seventies, so this is the rebirth of an old school California race with years of history and I’m on the mic!

I gotta say all this traveling has help prove, no beer is as good as Cariboo Brewing’s beer! I miss it!

Strike Dynamite!