Kite Surfing at a place called Bedsheets in Brazil

Hannah Whiteley and friend kitesurfing lakes and sand dunes in northern Brazil, a spot known as Bedsheets.  

And now for something completely different.  OK, sure, these two women are hot, and they're in thongs, and you may think that's why I'm sharing this video.  But they freakin rip, it's a really beautiful sand dune and lake spot they're at, and they're hot.  Plus I like to add things besides BMX and skateboarding in this blog now and then.  It's a really cool video of kite surfing, under 5 minutes, check it out.  

This area they're at is officially known as Parque Nacional dos Lencois Maranhenses.  It's around 1,400 miles straight north of Rio de Janeiro, on the northern coast of Brazil.  It's a huge area, if you've got a moment, look it up on GoogleMaps/Earth, it's a cool spot, and much different than most of our ideas of Brazil, which I think of as the Amazon river, jungle, anacondas, indigenous tribes who eat tarantulas, and caimans.  

As a taxi driver in Huntington Beach, California in the early 2000's, I would pick up kite surfers in my cab once in a while.  Sunset Beach, just north of H.B., was big in the early days of kite surfing, and groups of them would kitesurf north, 3-4-5 miles, and pull out north of the H.B. pier.  They'd break down their equpiment, pile it in my trunk, and I'd drive them back to Sunset Beach.  They were all pretty cool, and other than leaving sand on the floor of the back seat and in the trunk, were fine passengers.  I've never really been drawn to try kite surfing, but I have sat on the beach and watched them launch off waves plenty of times.  I've never seen some of the moves Hannah and her friend are doing in this video, and like all action sports, progression is always happening.  Another unusual spot found, courtesy of the YouTube algorithm.   

Philadelphia skateboarding: Independent Trucks Rip Ride Rally 2022

Indy's own edit of the Independent Trucks Rip Ride Rally jams in Philly this year.  

As a blogger who has been mostly telling my own weird stories, of moments I rode and witnessed in BMX and skateboarding back in the day, for 14 years, this blog has led me into a lot of new ground.  With The Spot Finder blog, I wanted to dive into the stories of epic bike and skate spots, and that leads to the scenes behind those spots.  Post by post, I started with places I had either been to ride many years ago, or spots I've heard of.  Nearly all the posts have turned me on to videos and footage that's completely new to me.  And I love that.  

I knew of Love Park from skate videos, and hearing skaters talk about it, years ago, the place  was legendary.  After that post, I realized the TED Talk in the last post was also from Philly, which led to a skatepark there.  I was working towards a post about FDR, the DIY skatepark that's now as famous as Burnside, in Oregon, the original under-the-bridge, DIY skatepark.  As I dug into the Philly skate scene, I learned it's a much bigger, and a much more hardcore scene that I thought.  

Then my laptop decided to konk out for a couple of weeks, which gave me time away from blogging, whether I wanted it or not.  Since I was so focused on content creating, it really bummed me out at first.  But it turned into a cool reset, a hiatus away from the things I've been doing daily for so long, while stuck offline for two weeks, except for Twitter.  

My laptop came back to life today, basically on its own, much to my surprise.  The list of blog posts in my head two weeks ago faded away.  I decided to dig through YouTube, see other videos there were about the Philadelphia skate scene, and FDR.  I wanted to find a solid video of real skateboarding there.  I found one.  Rather than diving back into the FDR post right away, I decided to embed this video, which is a ton of epic skateboarding in Philly this year, sponsored by Independent Trucks.  Indy's Rip Ride Rally is a bunch of serious, hardcore skating, at several spots in Philly, including FDR.  So pop open a cold whatever and check this video out, it's 20-some minutes of serious skating, without any filler.  The FDR post will be coming soon.