THE COVER | ISSUE 9.2 | DILLON OJO

“Saw this spot on our first day in Germany, across the street from the McDonald’s we were having lunch at. The build was pretty mellow because the landing was already packed up due the snow plow. The annoying thing was trying to get snow to stay on top of the ledge to build a kicker. It took me about three or four tries to land my first one, and a few more to clean it up. The tricky part was landing switch and instantly sliding across a three-lane street. It was kind of like the early days of street boarding when they wouldn’t put much snow down. To celebrate, we went back to the McDonald’s across the street for nuggets and a beer. I’m pretty juiced on how the photo turned out. I didn’t know how crazy that kicker looked until now. ‘Taco’ (a.k.a. Cole Martin) killed it as always.” —Dillon Ojo

“The spot was on the main road in downtown Chemnitz, Germany. Dillon scoped this one out. It was funny, several times during the trip, Dillon would be like, ‘Yeah, I’m down to get up on this sign spot, we pass it every day, you guys all know it.’ But I don’t think anyone did. Then Dillon showed us pictures. The landing went right into the street. What no one will know from the video or photo is that there was a 10-metre drop on the backside of the brick ledge right to a plowed parking lot. Dillon seemed confident in the spot. His confidence made us all confident.

We built the landing at night and got there early in the morning. It was hectic. Danimals [Dan Liedahl] and Benny Urban were on traffic patrol. They were standing at both intersections near the rail and pressing the pedestrian walk button so the traffic would stop. Cole Navin was on spot maintenance duty, as well as the last resort car blocker if a car slipped through our initial perimeter.

There was no real way to test the spot out. Dillon had to gun for it right off the bat, but that’s what he does best. There was no snow on the road to ride out on. We called this a ‘kingpin rideout.’ A few attempts later, Dillon rides victoriously across three lanes of bare tar.

Little did we know, throughout the session, we got some special media attention. Somebody from a nearby building took a video of Dillon hitting the spot. Our German homie Jacob, who was native to Chemnitz, hit us up saying we made the news. The video was labeled, Crazy Snowboarder Jumps off Building Onto Street.” — Cole Martin @coletaco