International Wongzoning in AZ

I'm in a deep state of depression right now having just got back from another amazing Arizona trip. Having been out to AZ in January for the last 2 years, this holiday had a lot to live up to, as expected it didn't disappoint. As with last year, we'd decided to rent a house given that we were 15+ heads deep. It was a little further out of town but with a private swimming pool, hot tube and mini putting green it was an upgrade on last years house.

Arizona isn't the most interesting or cultural city but from a rollerblading perspective there aren't many better places in the world, there's a huge number of decent skateparks, the street spots are amazing and then there are the storm drains (huge concrete banks) many of which are skateable. All of this plus guaranteed good weather makes AZ the perfect place to go to get away from the English winter not to mention it's awesome catching up with some great friends. It was a pretty productive trip for me, I managed to skate every day even though we all partied pretty hard, considering how washed up my rollerblading is these days I managed to get a few tricks on film which I was happy with. I won't bore you trying to describe these, I'll bore you instead with some or the other random stuff we did on the trip aided by photos!

After one of the more heavy nights, most of us were done skating after an hour, so we decided that when we got back we'd scale a hill right by our house. As with any expedition we took supplies IE. beers.

It didn't take long to get to the top where the views were awesome. 

 So much funny stuff happened on the trip, one of the nights we ended up getting a limo back to the house. We were in the process of leaving/getting kicked out of a bar which was closing when a limo pulled up with Justin in it. Somehow he's blagged it for $75 with a free bottle of vodka, next thing the driver knows is that the limo is now full with 10+ drunk people. My last memories from the journey home are swigging from the bottle of vodka and almost throwing up. For the final night of the trip we went out to a sushi joint which we go to every year, and after consuming numerous sake (Japanese rice wine) bombs and eating a shit load or raw fish we headed out to downtown Phoenix. After struggling to find anywhere where we weren't going to get shot/stabbed/beaten up we found an Irish bar were we chilled for a bit before heading to some hipster bar we'd been told about. The place was pretty cool, the back of the bar was a mini cinema, with a live band playing to random videos projected on the wall behind them. We ended up staying here to till the end of the night. The final day of the trip was spent sorting out the house, saying good byes and drinking in a Mexican bar while a wake and beer games went on. Surreal.

It's getting on a bit now so I'll leave you with a few more photos, I may add to this tomorrow if I can be bothered.

AZ sunsets are amazing - no filter used in this photo.

Drunken sushi group shot

Me by a huge cactus

GL at the tables all.