Outer Banks, NC Tour Recap

I got back from my tour in Brazil for FestivAlma 2010 on Monday,July 5th and the very next day, I re-packed my bags and we headed off to the Outer Banks (OBX) of North Carolina for our next tour.

Let me take a step back for a moment. Last year’s OBX solo-art show at The Pit was such a big success that we really wanted to step things up this year and bring in some close friends. Thus, this year’s S.A.M. Jam tour (Skate-Art-Music) was born.

Joining us as collaborators and house-mates on this tour were our close friends from Original Skateboards who are about to release a line of Jay Alders Art Longboard Skateboards. Also on tour with us were our friends and musical talents Quincy Mumford Band, Gabe Gomez and The Movement.

The first couple days consisted of partying. silliness and much needed relaxation.  All of us have been working so hard this year, it was awesome to just kick back and enjoy each other’s company.  There were a lot of memorable moments and conversations ranging from adolescent humor to debates between me, the hippie-vegan and our good friend Joel, the woodsman-hunter. We had guitar jams, flung water bottles at each other and raided the beaches for late night swims.

We logged in lots of water time…Here’s some of the pics from our aquatic adventures!

Of course it wasn’t all playtime before the main event took place, Scott Imbrie (Co-Owner of Original Skateboards), Brian Bishop (Pro-Team Rider) and myself had a really fun two hour guest spot on 99.1FM The Sound’s morning show with Matt. Once the coffee kicked in, it was a lot of fun, with a few adult-inuendo’s waking everyone up.

We decided to include a ‘Skate for SurfAid’ as a main part of our tour with the proceeds going to Surf Aid International, for which I am an Official Ambassador.  Ben from The Pithelped us set this up and we had a great local turn out, raised awareness and had a lot of fun raising some dough for a great humanitarian organization.

On this practice run through (below) the day before our big event, we decided to take a detour through a skatepark. I busted an air and then the cement pool got me.  I landed super hard on my heel and it swelled up like crazy.  I figured it might have been broken, but I surfed on it the next couple days anyway.

(After the skatepark had it’s way with me…Ouch)

We found some time to be corny tourists too. The Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk, NC was up the street from us where the first flight took place.

It felt like about 5 million degrees that day and when we got to the top of the hill to the Memorial, we snapped this shot (below) commemorating our greatness…haha.

In addition to our dream-team of bands, staff and entrepreneurs, we were really pleased to have close friends and family join us from places such as Florida, Virginia, California and NJ.  We were also so happy to catch up with our friends Ben and Steve who own The Pit as well as their professional and courteous staff.

The vibe all week was that of appreciation, dedication and camaraderie .  Some people just are meant to be together and our eclectic mix of travelers was the perfect example of that.  I feel very fortunate to have a career that allows me to create memories like this with genuine friends.