Kapaa New Park

my wife and i are having a baby boy in december; so this summer my wife wanted one last chance to wear bikinis on a warm, sandy beach. thus, we took a babymoon to kaua’i. when i heard that kaua’i has a skate park in kapa’a, i was so stoked cos the condo we rented at the resortquest/​aston islander on the beach complex was in kapa’a, not too far from the kapa’a skate park. woohoo! i finally had the chance to be one of those guys that you see in the aeroport with a skateboard strapped to his back.
even though i skated a bit as a kid, i only recently picked it back up after a decade and a half of being just a snowboarder. actually, it was probably my last trip to hawai’i (before this one) that inspired me to return to skateboarding. in kona, i tried surfing for the first time, while my wife worked as a chiropractor at the ironman triathlon. i had the idea of someday becoming a boardsports triathlete: snow, surf, and skate! well, i still have only surfed once. i skate everyday but am not all that great at it. after snowboarding like every other weekend for the past like fifteen years, i guess i’m okay at _​that_​. well… i can only dream of being that boardsports triathlete, right? or else push those dreams upon my future son? gee, i hope i won’t be overbearing. anyway, it’s really interesting to me that if it wasn’t for my trip to kona, i might not have ended up at the kapa’a skate park in kaua’i. one thing leads to another.
well, my home skate park is the sunnyvale skate park. i’m used to riding nice, smooth bowls with steel coping. i try not to be too pigeonholed though. i _​try_​to be more diverse. besides hitting the bowls, i try to skate on the streets every morning, but that just involves curbs; no handrails or twenty sets for me. having seen picture of the kapa’a skate park before my trip to kaua’i, i tried to train for this differing terrain by skating at the lakewood skate park and sticking to the pyramid at the sunnyvale skate park. from the pictures, i thought the kapa’a skate park was all about pyramids and banks. well, actually, it has a couple of decent quarterpipes. one of the quarterpipes is a mini. ramp style quarter pipe. the other one is a 90 degree curved one. that one has a very steep transition as they made it hit vert even though it’s so short. maybe this is sort of what it’s like to ride those freeway dividers that you see the pros skate on magazine covers.
from pictures, i guess people tend to drop in on the mini. ramp quarterpipe or the bank in the opposite corner and catch air off the pyramids. i dunno. is it that i’m too heavy at 156 lbs? i couldn’t get any good speed to get any good air off of them. maybe you have to be a light kid to do it. i’m not sure.
well, even though this terrain was different from what i was used to, i definitely still had a great time. 1) there are kaua’i roosters there. 2) the red dirt turns your white wheels orange. 3) as i had heard from one dude on youtube, the park is not crowded. (i was the only guy there when i was there.)
i really like kaua’i chickens. i saw that the meyvn skate shop in the kukui grove center in lihue sells all sorts of cool kaua’i chicken gear (t.shirts are $ 22, and they also sell coffee mugs.) i asked the dude there about skate parks in the area. i told him i already knew about the kapa’a skate park, but he mentioned a park called graceland on the south shore (maybe in poipu?). it’s located at a church.