a call came in from Jimmy Finley

So, the other day my cellphone rang and the caller ID pulled up ‘Jimmy F’ from my phonebook. “This will be interesting,” I thought as I picked up the phone. And it was. Turns out Jimmy was teamed up with a friend of mine in Portland and they were preparing to drive out to Lincoln City, OR. to help pour some concrete for a bowl in a guy’s barn. Not just any guy, though….

It was Mark “Red” Scott’s barn. I asked him how much they were going to do and Jimmy said, “Just one corner in the shallow.” Hmmm.. Seems like Red should be able to handle that one between himself and his wife. Then Jimmy explained why help was driving in from Portland. “The shallow end is 15 ft. deep. It waterfalls to an 18 ft. deep end,” he said. All told, Red’s helpers ended up pouring 9 yards of concrete in that single corner this past weekend. They slept on the floor of his living room next to a wood-burning stove sitting on a hearth edged in pool coping.

This week I’ve been sleeping in a tent next to the Tyler skatepark. I came out to lend my feeble concrete trowelling skills to Dave Reynold’s crew working on the street course. Dedicated SOBs, they are. The implementation is coming out more interesting than the design he had shown me previously. It’s heavy on flow with plenty of banks, hips, and quarterpipes. He’s also got a cool, fast-looking, shallow bowl shaped out, too. I expect that it’ll turn out to be one of the best street / flow parks in the state. John Skelton, a Tyler helicopter nurse, is the mover-and-shaker responsible for making this whole thing happen.