Florida - Land of the Gator Motel

Some times you get a chance and even though it seems irresponsible to take it, you have to. A few weeks ago my friend Valerie called me, she was going to Jacksonville, Florida to shoot some foto's of Ashley Fiolek for a magazine and as she doesn't drive she asked if would like to go and drive the car for her. She said she didn't need an assistant, just a friend and driver...and she knows that when it comes to travelling I'll go any where at the drop of a hat. So I worked my arse of so I could free up a few days to go with her. Also Valeries a fotographic genius, so it was amazing to see her work. (all the foto's here of me are by her, I'm a lucky guy to get to use her fotos).



I flew to New York to meet up with Valerie and got one night to tank down streets on my board ollieing drains and grinding the metal curbs with Diddler and then went for beers with him, Matt Cass and strangley the Gill and P-Tweaker were in town, so it was a good 1st night in the USA.



I got 3 hrs sleep and then we had to be at the airport really early for our flight to Florida. Where the worlds most retarded Yank Secrurity guard at the airport looked at my passport... then looked at me and said "Do you have any other I.D?"...I wasn't sure what he wanted and just replied. "Thats a passport, its the best I.D have" at which he just said "well, you're gonna have to go over there into that little area for a search then"........so I got searched, again for like the 30th time I've even flown into the states. I must look sketchy. I get I look like a bum, but that doesn't mean I'm dangerous?



Ashley Fiolek lives between Jacksonville and St Augustine, on a 10 acre block of land, with her family and rad dude mechanic C-Wolf. She's a world famous Motor Cross rider and she's really good at riding that thing. While Valerie was shooting foto's I just got to hang out with C-Wolf, play mini golf, ride mini motorcross and generally act like a dick.






This is some serious redneck action on Ashley's street, these dudes had fire in the front yard of their trailers and every now and again you'd hear gun shots from ashley's. I bet it was these dudes shooting rackoons.




Yes!! I got a redneck.....



Ashley had to fly to California on Friday so we had the weekend to make it from Jacksonville to Orlando, so we made it a road trip via a bunch of places, on the minor roads. We got to go to a load of Thrift stores, work wear stores, Walmart, Ihop, Friendlys, Gator Motels, Wizard Souvenir stores and I even got to skate the world famous Kona Skate Park. Kona is seriously rad.... its an old 70's park like Southsea or Romford, but the weather hasn't killed it, also its been looked after and loads added to it in concrete as well. Its like someone gave Rom a steroid injection. It was so fun....until a tropical storm ended play



I just wanna say thanks so much to Valerie for taking me, Ashley, C-Wolf and her family for being really cool and a massive thanks to the South, Florida in general and Walmart.