Santee crew (minus Robby Whitcomb) and I were on an adventure to Murrietta (which is just north of Temecula) when we hit loads of unforeseen traffic on the I-15 freeway. In order to avoid the traffic, Damien Wilson took a side road that paralleled the freeway and we looked for things to skate as we drove north.

While we were driving we all saw a big ditch that looked like it had some potential, so we decided to turn around and pull over. Jimmy Ormsby jumped out of the car and scoped out the spot with me and Nick Wood. It looked like it was not going to happen because there was a big dirt patch before flat part of the ditch that made it nearly impossible to get enough speed to make it to the other side of the bank. Luckily, Santee always comes prepared and had two large pieces of wood that we placed on the dirt. Then we were ready to go.

I was looking for the right place to take the photo from so that you could see the main danger element of the ditch, which was the very sharp landing bank. I also wanted to make sure that Jimmy was going to be in the sky so he was the main focus of the photo. After Jimmy set up and took a few practice jumps he was comfortable enough to 180 Mute Grab the ditch like it was a spine. He went over the dirt and bushes onto the other side, clearing about 10 feet and landing fakie nice and solid on the other side.

It should be noted that Jimmy Ormsby hasn’t been skating much recently but still managed to bag this shot. In fact, this was only his third time on his skates this year as he’s was just coming off a wrist injury. — Steve Steinmetz