Learning to Slide

While at camp a bit of a skate crew started to emerge! Sparked through the find off a sweet oldschool banana board and the purchase of some gnarly hard sliding wheels, we started to hunger our days off as they finally had a purpose! The first initial slide session was with Shaunpaul and our main man Mel from Canada, held in the small town of Crofton, BC. We found the steepest hill with the smoothest surface that we could and took to it. The first sensation of ‘sliding’ was the coolest feeling as we had been used to just bombing a hill as fast as you can and hope to not get the speed wobbles (too gnarly!). So to actually start sliding on your board was super sik times! The three of us were all ecstatic, learning and teaching each other the ways of the slide. As we got better and braver the slides got faster and bigger and we started to mix it up. 180s, backside, frontside, corners, carparks, one hand, two hands 20 feet, 30 feet, 50 feet! We made our own gloves to slide with, made with chopping board cut and glued onto gardening gloves. This was necessary to ensure a safe and smooth ride. Through-out the summer on our days off from camp, we would do little missions to the nearby towns and cities on Vancouver Island to find what they had to offer in terms of hills, carparks and ruckas! We were joined by a few others on our little skate escapades and would try document it as much of it as we could. Having the skate crew at camp made the summer just that much freakin cooler! These were easily some of the best times at camp! Thanks lads.

The Three Shnapadees "Admired By You"

An original hit by The Three Shnapadees, filmed and recorded in Crofton, B.C, Canada by Heine Records Inc. What happens when a girl who already has a boyfriend starts to like you? The Three Shnapadees explain, as a friend of theirs struggled with this problem at camp. Wierd, I know.

Vancouver Aquarium

Right in the middle of our time at camp we had 3 days off. So Shaunpaul left the Vancouver Island and checked out a bit of what Vancouver had to offer. Vancouver is a beautiful city located on the waters edge with outstanding mountains surrounding its presence. After having a look downtown, biking around stanley park, and watching one of the worlds best fireworks competitions Shaunpaul thought they'd hit up the Vancouver Aquarium. Their good friend Aaron from New Zealand happened to be in town at the time, so it was a good chance to catch up and chill with our main man. This aquarium was mint! Stoked on it.

Little Escapades

Wallmart. A freakin HUGE big store that has everything you want!, everthing you need!, you can get it all at wall mart! Theres lots of crazy stuff that happens in this store! Its like NZ's version of the Warehouse but suped-up on steroids. Everything is super not expensive and the sizings are huge! It has Supermarkets, Workshops for your car, gardening sections, massive entertainment sections and even sit down resturants like Starbucks and McDonalds in them! We played hide and go seek in this place it is so big! You get tired walking in this place. Dude.

The old classic...see how far you can get into a hotel without being caught. This Hotel was called the Empress, and was a real nice older style pad that overlooked the harbor in Victoria, located on Vancouver Island, B.C, Canada. Good mates=good times.

Half Ass

Some pretty big gags that are pulled in this vid. Watch out.

Skating up some Ruckas

One of our main spots to skate were the many hills and carparks offered in Victoria, only an hour away from camp. The crew would throw their boards in the boot of Mels Beamer and he’d boost us out in search of some hidden treasure ready to be ripped. After finding a couple of 5 to 6 storied jems that we wanted to skate down, the problem was dodging and dealing with security that would wait in unmarked or hidden cars in the carparks. We would sneak up the stairs after going around the backside of the parkade, making as little sound possible until we were all at the top. Bombing these carparks was so fun!! Carving round the curling bends and never ending slopes was a great sensation. 6 levels of smooth concrete met with a bunch of good mates laughing, yahooing and tearing down them, was killer times!! The security dudes however could obviously hear, if not see us and soon came to spoil our fun. We encountered several security guards all who were very unique individuals, with fairly soft standings that by playing a bit of the naïve New Zealand card we managed to get away unscathed. Ha. After exploring most of the carparks in the area we decided to mix things up and try something out there and new. Some of the things on the list were sketching anything we could get our hands on (Sketching: Skating behind while holding onto a moving object). This included things like cars, tour buses, kabuki cab bike rider dudes etc. This was rad! We had heaps of fun on our long boards checking out Victoria, skated a lot of places and caused a lot of harmless ruckas! Good times!

Little Gags

With Shaunpauls unique blend and mix of characters it was always inevitable that some stupid, weird little gags would evolve from somewhere. Camp was full of new experiences for Shaunpaul, so everything was a little more exciting to them than most people.

There were bunch of rad Brazilians who would often pronounce words in English slightly different than most. This was cool, and we had many fun times mixing our words and playing with different cultures and things. One of the coolest things about camp was the fact that there were so many people from different countries that you got to meet, find out about and get to know.

Friendly Animals

There was also heaps of different animals that were fresh for us. Like raccoons, friendly chill deer, bears, squirrels, cougars and snakes.

There was even the local 'billy the seal' who would come hang with us down the dock every now and then. That was sweet! It was cool to be living in a place with such abundant wildlife. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Skate Jam Kazam

No idea where this was going, infact its a bit 'freakin wierd' but it was good times with good mates, chillin at the skate park, having a good old jam. Skazam.

Camp

After a 14 hour flight from NZ, jumping on a ferry and 30something hours without sleep, arriving to camp was super exhausting!, but at the same time so fun! The first few days were all about getting to meet and know new people, sus out the camp property and catch up on some much needed sleep. There were around 300 or so staff that worked at this camp throughout the summer from many different parts of the world. There were people from Ireland, Australia, Brazil, America, New Zealand and obviously from all over Canada to just name a few. Shaunpaul sat in their cabin and quietly smiled and grinned at eachother, they had stretched their little NZ legs and made it to their first destination of their Canadian adventure. Camp!

Camp Qwanoes as it is called, is a Christian based camp that runs all summer long and caters for kids from the ages of like 8-18. The way it works is that a bunch of 400 or so kids in similar age brackets, pile of the buses from all over (mostly Canada) and stay a week doing loads of fun stuff, sleeping in sweet cabins with their counselors and hopefully walking away with a relationship, or knowing a lil bit more about the big dude upstairs. Then they all go home and it happens all over again week after week with new batches of kid’s right throughout the summer! The property has loads of activities for kids to do, housing and catering for its staff and is set in a mint location next to a super nice waterfront with sik scenery (lots of trees) and abundant wildlife all around. Can’t beat.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Shauns title at camp was “Events Co-ordinator” Sik title huh…sounds flashy. His job was to help organize, co-ordinate and facilitate the happenings of the camps main event games and activities, generally held on the field, down at the water or running around camp, that all the kids would participate in week in and week out. He loved it bigtime!, and it totally suited to his skills, personality and enthusiasm! He was stoked with the people that he worked with and they were stoked with him. Freakin fun and good times!

My title was “Skatepark Leader” Not as official when on your resume as ‘Events Co-ordinator’ but a much cooler job title I must admit. My job was to hang out and skate with the kids at the skatepark during the day, teach them how to skate, get the equipment and the skatepark ready for skating and make sure everybody was safe. This was a sik job! I had lots of little rippers carving up both the skatepark and me! It was a humbling experience having a 12 year old tear you to pieces but I was stoked when I had them show me a thing or too.

So this was it. Canada! Not knowing what was ahead for Shaunpaul after camp, he soaked up the Canadian summer and was quietly stoked after making his first step out of little old New Zealand. Choice as.

1st week at camp

Cabins. Beach. Dock. New. Camp.

Flight of Stoke

How cool is the feeling of leaving your home country, where you’ve lived all your life, to venture out there in the world with one of your best mates to do it with. Shaunpaul realized they were pretty fortunate to have each other on the epic voyage as experiences are totally better spent with someone else! From the day that Shaunpaul first looked into anything overseas, to the day of leaving New Zealand seemed to happen really fast!, like within a few months! As well as ourselves, a few of our friends and family were actually surprised that we were actually making this happen! Researching the possibilities, saving the coin, booking your own flight and arranging things at the other end, is a really cool feeling of independence! Shaunpaul threw a party to say goodbye to friends and family as they did not know when they would see them next. He started to get stoked as the final days in New Zealand, for the time being were nearing soon. Then BOOM!, the next thing you know your on a 14 hour plane flight to the other side of the world! We were buzzing the whole way with much anticipation of what God had installed for us! Sikness.

In The Beginning

It all started on a nice summers afternoon at 81a Cook st, Hamilton, New Zealand when Shaunpaul was chilling outside on the couch of their pad. Shaunpaul had just finished school, stoked on getting their degrees and pondered together on what opportunities and different ways of life there were to be lived out there in the big wide world. Shaunpaul wasn’t ready for a career, or the lame old job in the lame same old town that they’d grown up in… This sparked the initial vibe on what was to be something epic! Something unique, adventurous, scary, and something that has turned out to be so super freakin cool!! Something that could possibly shape the rest of there lives.

After a bit of research on the net on what was out there, Shaunpaul applied and had soon been accepted to work for three months at a summer kid’s camp on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada! SIK! So they booked a flight and took off on May 21st 08, full of enthusiasm, excitement and energy ready for camp, although unsure of what was going to happen after camp had finished, and what the future would hold! It was only on the day that Shaunpaul left New Zealand that they found out that their Canada 1 year working visas had been approved! (STOKED BIGTIME!) So an epic adventure had begun!

SHAUNPAULS' CANADIAN ADVENTURE!

This blog will be written in rememberence of all the experiences Shaunpaul had whilst being in Canada.

It goes a lil sumthing like this…