Flying away from the snow, Jordan, Erik, and Dylan arrived at Ralphs house. Well, Erik ended up missing his flight but the crew picked him up the next morning at the airport. Alex Steadman drove up from Arizona. It was a warm day and without a care in the world, they zoomed out of Ralph’s neighborhood. As they accelerated on the freeway ramp they were met with a gridlocked highway, it was official, they were in LA. They quickly realized their next ten days were going to be sitting in a car. This wasn’t there only problem. They arrived on a Friday and were heading out ten days later on a Monday. This allowed four weekend days and six weekdays. Regardless of the city, riding street on weekdays is tough. People are working, walking, driving, and sitting on all the spots you are trying to ride. You also cant forget other riders. Jordan ended up posting a spot on instagram and before they knew it, 20 riders were there to hang out. This is cool and all but it always ends in a quick bust or too many people riding the same spot which is hard for filming. With that said, they thought of spots that simply didn’t have anybody there at anytime. The most common types of spots like this are ditches, DIY’s, abandoned businesses, and businesses after hours.

When you want to go to a spot in Los Angeles there are a lot of factors that dictate if you should go to it other than the desire. The major issue being if the spot stills exists. There has been many times when the team thinks they are in the wrong place, but the spot is wiped from the earth because they would rather demolish it instead of cap it. If they go to a well-known spot on a weekend, it is almost guaranteed there are multiple skate crews filming for their top-secret ground breaking video part. Spring break for schools is never a consistent time country wide like Christmas break so the team would search online to see if they were on break before going to a school. Erik and Ralph were in need of the most footage to finish their parts so the priority was on them. Everyday the team left the house at 11am and didn’t get back until 11pm. It was an intense trip with the non stop driving and riding all over Southern California. They all emerged with some more clips to put on the timeline, and photos to add to this article. This was the last official filming trip for Tilt 2 so what was filmed is the final material that will go into the film. The trip was successful because through all the setbacks that occur navigating the real world as a street rider, they managed to focus on the goal of finishing the video.

Day three in San Francisco was the filming of the Tilt 2 intro. We ghetto rigged the back door to stay open while Chris held onto the camera/tripod and filmed while Collin drove. If you have ever been in the van with Collin you know thats gnarly and we even had to blow a stop sign going about 20mph to get it. Once we split up for the day it went great for the Tilt van getting some good action but for the rental car it went way south. Lots of driving around and spot bust so they ended up checking out the golden gate bridge. They did scope out a killer school for after sunset sesh. We all met at the school that night which was in a neighborhood. Lighting it up was going to be risky but we felt like it was worth it. A lot of people were either watching us ride through their windows or hanging out on the street corners confused but intrigued. A couple cleaning people went into the school while we had the lights up and they seemed concerned but didn’t want to confront us. We hopped the fence in the back and lit up a 17 stair. Issac got the clip 1st try and the whole team started yelling in excitement. Tom started lining up for his trick but some lady drove by and said she called the cops and one of the cleaning guys came out and said we had to go. I have never seen a set up get torn down so quickly and packed in the van. We are talking lights, light stands, generator, gas can, extension cords, two HVX’s, 7D and flash all over a 10ft fence in about 90 seconds. The next day we drove around together hitting the same spots and getting portraits of the team for the website. We did a quick stop at Wallenberg just to peep it. There were a bunch of kids practicing basketball and a random yoga group but before we knew it, Issac was throwing himself down the set. Re-opened his hand again but in the end he landed the trick. Three times might I add but they weren’t as clean the first two times.

After Wallenberg we hit up Twin Peaks to check it out and see the sunset and take some photos. Mostly everyone still wanted to ride so we drove around for a bit and ended up at a ledge/mani pad. The main reason was for Jordan to get a clip but everyone else ended up getting something but he couldn’t pull through. We went back to the hotel, ate some pizza and went over the 2015 spring/summer apparel drop. By time we finished up it was close to 2am. Since this was our last night and tomorrow we had a long van ride so some of us decided to stay up all night and go out riding. Ralph didn’t even change out of his pajamas as we hit the streets. It was pretty interesting and fun but holy crap were we tired when that sun came up. On our way back to LA we stopped at Big Sur. Jona was pretty much asleep for the whole thing until we took one of the sketchiest roads up some mountains with vertical drops that would keep us rolling all the way to the ocean if we went off. Jona was not about that life at all. As part of the crew split off at Ralph’s house to hangout and film the other part drove the van back to Chicago with stops in Vegas, Canyonlands National Park, Breckenridge ski resort, Denver and from there we drove straight to the Tilt House. Some things that need to be noted is Collin peeing on people’s houses, actually Collin just peeing where ever he wants. Tom K going through a red light in front of a cop and the cop not doing anything. Going to a school while in session and getting kicked out because Ralph was smoking. The teacher then realized we were riding the spot and then got kicked out for scootering. Blaring Taylor Swift in the van and the whole vehicle rocking back and forth. Erik and Tom both having birthdays during the trip. The team battling to charge their phone inside the van and one hell of a time in the bay.

San Francisco was a mission, getting up at 8am and riding till 9pm if not later. The entire team was crammed in a van with everyones luggage from LA to Oakland. After our Denny’s experience we for sure thought we were getting a hotel with cockroaches but it turned out pretty swanky. The next morning we went over how the crews were going to split up. Half the team went in the Tilt van and the other half rolled around in style with the rental car. The first day doing this, everyone was hyped to be in the bay. Half the team had never been to San Francisco and the other half had been to the bay 7+ times. We hit some of the more famous spots to give the rookies their taste of what San Fran has to offer. The crews didn’t meet back up till night time to light up a bank to jersey barrier which almost everybody got a clip at. By the end of the day, one crew alone got 15 clips. That was pretty heavy and we for sure thought the rest of the trip was going to go that way, but it didn’t. We split the crews up a little differently the second day and some of us ended up hitting the same spot twice. Like the flower shop, I think we passed that place 8 times in the 4 days we were in the bay. The first spot the rental car hit was along the water and so many people were constantly in the way.

There was this one lady that ran into a friend and they started small talking and her little white dog that was off the leash was just barking at Jona as he stood there and waited for the lady to move. She was oblivious to what was going on so Jordan rode up to her and started circling her. Her dogs were barking like crazy and she couldn’t even hear her friend talk so finally she realized what was going on and continued to keep walking so Josh could hit the spot. Thank you Jordan, you were a hero that day. Again the crews didn’t meet up till later that night to sesh the same spot which was a DIY bank spot. Turned out to be a lot of fun and a bunch of tricks went down including a pretty sizable gap that Dylan hit twice to get a line. The funny part is half way through Dylan trying the trick, a mini van was parked by the landing which made the trick that much harder. Some of us split off to eat some dinner at a random taco food truck which turned out to be some of the best food on the trip and a famous San Francisco grub spot. Once back to the hotel, some of us got together and rode over to the Hella Grip house to watch some skate movies while the others either stayed up and went through footage or just went to bed.

Pretty much everyone knows what SD9 is, but what most people don’t know is its one big filming trip for Tilt. Half of the team got picked up along the drive in the Tilt Van coming from Chicago. The other half flew in to San Diego. Once everyone was in San Diego, it was all smiles and high fives. Straight out of the airport, a couple homies randomly spotted us while we were splitting up gear, and they were down to show us some spots that were close. We threw them in the van and started driving. The first spot we got the boot in 10 minutes. We drove down a couple blocks and started to hit a college and again within 10 minutes we got kicked. We then found a cool rail hop that Erik hit 1st try. Night came quick, so we went to the hotel to chill in the hot tub and get some grub. The next couple of days we hit Home Ave ditch, came across a sweet mellow rail to trick in and out of, and checked out a school with a double rail hop. We got yelled at by locals because we were in a ditch out back making their dogs bark and found out that if the cops would of caught us it was a $380 fine. We booked out of there and ended up passing the cops in the van as we were leaving. After jumping so many fences it was nice to know that tomorrow was the SD event. Our total bust vs rideable spots was 4 out of 8.

At SD the crew mainly chilled, hung out with all the homies, devoured 3 pizza’s in minutes, watched some of the contest and got yelled at again by angry moms that couldn't see over us. Oh and Issac got sticker slapped. After the event we still had some daylight, so we went to 3 spots and lit them up. For only having half a day to film we ended up getting 11 clips. The next morning we packed the van to the ceiling and headed to San Francisco. Half way into the drive Collin pulled off on some road and the entire team got out to piss. Tom ended up winning longest trail. A little bit further in the drive we randomly pulled off and drove down some dirt roads. We got a nice portrait of the team and some B-roll for TILT2. Sleeping in the van is probably one of the hardest things to do. You have two options, you either put your head on the seat in front of you or you lean up against the window and have your head rattle off. Either one you do, you have a sore back by the end of the 7 hour drive. That drive actually turned into 14 hours on the road. Once we finally got to Oakland we hit up a Denny’s where we got the worst Denny’s experience to ever be had in the entire world. Service and food were so bad that it was funny. Everyone had wrong orders, forgotten items, missing silverware and the whole experience took forever. Good times for sure.