LONG BEACH – Warmed by sunny skies, dozens of 6-person canoes sliced the still waters of Marine Stadium on Saturday for the 2009 Kahakai Sprints.
Part of the Charter Communications Long Beach Sea Festival of summer events, the annual outrigger canoe race draws teams from about two dozen clubs from San Diego to Santa Barbara. The day-long event is hosted by Long Beach’s Kahakai Outrigger Canoe Club and consists of more than 70 races on a 500-meter straightaway course in Marine Stadium.
Coming in first for the Men’s Open division was…Â Details
Former world champion inline skater Shane Dobbin is launching an audacious bid for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next year.
The former Palmerston North resident is now based at Hoogeveen in the Netherlands to make the most of the year-round ice facilities.
“Why stop my inline career while I was pretty much still at my peak?” Dobbin said. “The answer is simple – Olympics…Â Details
In 1975, Gary Fluitt was 10 years old and cruising alone on his skateboard down the main drag in Los Osos, along California’s central coast, when a man he did not know pulled up in a 1967 green Ford Thunderbird with a white interior.
He said, “ ‘Hey, man, want to go to a skateboard race?’ †Fluitt recalled.
Fluitt acknowledged that more than 30 years ago, childhood and skateboarding were perhaps more innocent. So he climbed into the car and was taken across town, where he watched competitors boom down a street with a steep grade, weaving among cones in an attempt to post the fastest time. For Fluitt, the race had the right ingredients: speed, excitement and a little danger…Â Details & pictures
Riding a motorcycle through 114-degree heat isn’t my idea of a good time, but I was tired of waiting for the new Indian Chief, and Dante’s Inferno was the closest location I could find. The not-so-new debut from the latest incarnation of Indian Motorcycle, the Chief has been on the market since January. It just hasn’t cleared the emissions hurdles to be available for sale in California, which is why I traveled to Mesa, Ariz., this week to ride one.
Welts and heat blisters be damned. The 2009 Chief was worth it.
To be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect from the bike before I got there. Despite its 108-year legacy, the Indian brand, and the bikes that have been built in its name, have … Details