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Builder Movie: Cam Zink - Reno - The Biggest little windy city in the world.
Something that not a lot of people know about Reno is that it is highly underrated. It features world class outdoor activities on pretty much every level from freestyle moto to mountain biking to fly fishing and everything in-between. That could be why it's residents as a whole can be classified with such titles as multi time x-game champs, multi time crankworx champs, fmb champs, legends, hero's, lunatics and all 'round bad asses'. The opportunities are vast, the landscapes are endless and the town itself?.. The town knows how to have a awfully awful good time. The trouble is, for a few weeks each year, both spring and fall, there is a windy season in Reno. It only lasts a few weeks but for those few weeks it blows out harder than Gwins tire. Having spent a good chunk of time in Reno I knew this, yet when I got the offer to shoot the stills for Cam Zink's 'Builder' movie seggy? Obvioulsy I lost all control and jumped in head first, but that mother nature...she can be a challenging mistress..
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 The Omen. |
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| Tecates. The End. Just kidding...kind of... |
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| When we arrived in Reno Cam had two locations ready for us to finish building and get filmed/shot. The first was north of Reno at a friend of his moto compound and the other was south of Reno at another friends compound. The mood was good, the sun was out, the Tecates were chillin, the wind was mild. Wind meter: 4/10 Frustration Meter: 0/10 |
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| Many machines make for light work. |
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| Mud went above and beyond to get us set up in his yard, which by the way is a full scale moto compound of champions, loaders, skid steers, water trucks, anything we needed he was down with. Much thanks to this guy for bein rad as hell. |
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| YT is about the best fit I can think of for Cams frames sponsor. They're not scared either. |
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| After getting the first set dialed it seemed like we would have a nice little window to test out the first set but, once again, the wind came up and we were stuck just staging and waiting. |
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| Before the wind came up and ruined our lives once more, Cam had a chance to test the shark fin that leads into the first jump. Stylish as always. Wind meter: 5/10 Frustration meter: 4/10 |
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| Snakes are the worst. Secco gets dangerous while I stay on high ground. |
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| The Reno most people don't know. |
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| Mikey. This dude went way too big the day before we arrived and JACKED his ankle bad! It was no shit; the size of a grapefruit. But he still worked his ass off all week and basically let us go nuts with his yard. HUGE thanks to Mikey for all of his hard work! |
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| Builders. |
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| If you fail to plan; you plan to fail. Write that down. |
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| This ladder drop isn't goin anywhere. Congrats to the next owners of Mikeys place, your yard comes with a bad ass drop. |
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| We had an all time crew for building, no one did any griping or bitching about the weather, everyone just kept on killin it all week. |
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| Little tester on the top drop! |
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| The other kind of building Cam does. Empire building. |
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| It doesn't hurt to have a two-time Crankworx champion as your building partner. Two of the guys who have shaped freeriding; shaping some jumps. |
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| The wind died down for about an hour Wednesday night and so both Cam and Paul tried to make the best of it. |
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| Paul Bas is one of those dudes who can just ride the heck out of a bike. No matter what the situation. He was blasting the hip in both directions during these test runs! |
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| The wind stayed down long enough for the boys to do a little work but it wasn't long before it came back in like a wrecking ball. Sunset table. Wind meter: ****ING WIND!!! Frustration meter: 9/10 |
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| We went back to Muds on thursday evening, buffed everything up, waited for the light to get just right, and when it did? BOOM! The wind came up in and blew our chances at bagging some media. Fortunately for us we had a really solid forecast for Friday morning which was our last day of the trip so, we were all optimistic that we'd have a great morning session! |
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| Friday morning we woke up wicked early to get down to Mikeys and capitalize on our last morning, which was now; basically our only shot to get some riding footage/photos. The drive down did not look to be living up to the good forecast.. Wind meter: 8/10 Frustration meter: 14/10 |
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| Tools of the trade. |
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| Mikey and this machine basically made this week happen. Without them we would have been in a really bad spot. |
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| Once we had everythign buffed and the morning rain broke for a few minutes Cam decided to just giv'r and see if we could at least get somethin in the bag. Session commence. Wind meter: 7/10 Frustration meter: 5/10 |
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| Second pass; why not spin the drop... |
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| Flip Nac! |
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| The previous owners of Mikeys yard basically used the yard as a landfill so all week we were diggin up some pretty interesting things. |
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| Hip-Three. |
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| Re-Build. |
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| More Whips. |
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| Extended. |
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| Despite sneaking in one semi productive session it was clear to everyone we had come up short on media for The Builder Movie. There was no doubt that we would need to return once contest season had run it's course and basically start from scratch.The frustration meter was well past broken at this point and it was easy to feel the tension filling our little part of the Nevada desert.. This week wore all of us down but Cam never really let it get to him, I guess when you've been at it as long as he has you learn to deal with the ups and downs. Opportunities come and go and our next shot will blow in like the wind, hopefully it will bring with it some calm. |
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Member since Oct 22, 2009
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