Hey everyone!
Awhile back we were trying to brainstorm on an idea for the one big summer event we were gonna do at the skate park. One idea that kind of fell into our lap was to put on a concert in the park. There is a family from Pennsylvania that comes to the island during the summers and is a part of our church. Their son is in a band called Coastal Rise that is starting getting some national recognition, and offered to perform.
One of the other ideas we had was to do a big slip n' slide party and BBQ so we decided to merge them together. The slip n' slide party was held at a house that is about 100 yards behind the skate park. The house had a grass lawn that went into a pond so we figured it would be an awesome idea to build a ramp where the grass met the pond to launch off of.
The event was held on a Saturday so on that morning I built the launch ramp, we stretched out a huge roll of painter's plastic on the lawn and lined the edges with tiki torches. It worked like a charm!!! With a little soapy assistance the bodies started launching into the pond. Some of the kids who couldn't get enough speed we used a sort of sling shot method to get them some air time! All in all it was a huge success in FUN!! We held Big Air contests, Best Trick contests, and Belly Flop contests. There were however a few injuries. One of the kids collided with a dog who didn't seem to want him sliding and got a gash over his eye. Then another kid who had just gotten home from surfing 20ft waves in Mexico slid one time and ended up fracturing his wrist on the bottom of the pond. Probably the most dramatic incident was with this man by the name of Erik who was from France and he was staying on Jerry's couch for a couple days through this website called CouchSurfing.com. He had never seen a slip n' slide before so we convinced him to give it a try, and without giving it a test run he just started barreling down the lawn. With one glance at him on the run you could see that he wasn't the most coordinated person and instantly I though to myself "Oh no! This could be bad"... As he reached the point you normally jump and slide he just kept on running on the plastic and slipped as he tried to slide. He landed really hard and awkwardly and got really bad whiplash. He got really confused as to where he was thought he had broken his neck. We helped him out of the water and had him lay down for a long time and I'm pretty sure he ended up being ok.
Then right before dark we had everybody walk over to the skate park for the concert. Once the place filled up Jerry and P.J., one of the guys living at the park with me, got on stage to introduce the band and share a little bit about what the park is and what point of the whole day and night was. Then P.J. shared a vision he got one Sunday while he was at church. He was asking himself, something to the extent of, why do I follow Jesus? Then moments later he had this vision of being trapped in this jungle type prison camp with a bunch of people that he knew. Then this man kept on walking through the camp looking like he wanted to help. Then finally P.J. called out to him asking for help, and so the man broke everybody out and then went back into the jungle but P.J. didn't follow and they all got caught in the same traps and ended up back in prison. I guess the cycle happened a few more times until P.J. finally said to himself "why don't I just follow this guy who keeps saving me. He seems to know what hes doing and and how to go through the jungle without getting caught?" Its a simple and straight to the point vision but i also think it was very powerful! Then after that the band came up and rocked house for a couple hours, and all in all it was a great day of fun!!!
