El Dorado Hills, California · September 26, 2026
There are some days you plan, and there are other days you just show up and see where skateboarding takes you.
This was one of those days.
We headed out to El Dorado Hills for the 2026 King of the Hill Series #2, not really knowing what to expect. Saturday was the Hybrid Slalom event, with a long course of offset cones running down a gradual hill. Sunday we’d be back for Tight Slalom.
But I wasn’t going there to race.
I was there to support my lifelong friend Tom Norton.
My other lifelong friend Tony Plescia came along too, which made the day feel a little like stepping backward in time.
Tony was part of the crew that helped run the shop at the legendary Winchester Skatepark, a place that played a huge role in my own history with skateboarding. I was fortunate enough to ride there alongside people like Steve Caballero, Scott Foss, Rick Blackhart, Steve Olson, and many others.
Those experiences never really leave you.
Decades later, here we were again—three old friends standing around skateboards, talking about lines, equipment, riders and everything that has happened to skateboarding between then and now.
Not Knowing What to Expect
The morning started like a lot of our skateboard adventures have over the years.
We had no idea what was going to happen.
And that was part of the excitement.
When we arrived at the course, we immediately started meeting people who have been part of the slalom and skateboard community for years. There was Marty Radan, seemingly acting as the ringleader of the whole operation, along with Judi Oyama, and a collection of racers, builders and personalities who clearly shared the same obsession.
There was history everywhere.
I mostly stayed out of the way.
I set up my camera equipment right alongside the course. I wasn’t expecting to create anything extraordinary. I just wanted to document the day—to photograph the racers, the boards, the people and whatever happened in front of me.
Then Tony decided to make things interesting.
“Anybody Want to Get Sponsored?”
Tony has never had much trouble talking to people.
At some point he made his way up toward the starting area and essentially announced:
“Anybody want to get sponsored?”
I’m pretty sure he was at least half joking.
But that’s the funny thing about skateboarding. Sometimes a joke turns into something real remarkably quickly.
That’s how we met Artie.
One conversation led to another, and before long Artie was wearing a Fault shirt. We covered his entry fee and started talking about what some kind of future sponsorship with Fault might look like.
We had arrived that morning just planning to watch our friend race.
A few hours later, somebody was racing with Fault on his back.
That wasn’t part of the plan.
And maybe that’s exactly why it felt right.
Finding the Line
Meanwhile, Tom was figuring out the course.
Saturday’s event was Hybrid Slalom, which meant the cones were offset rather than arranged in the tighter rhythm we’d see the following day.
The course itself was fairly long. Riders started from a small ramp at the top before dropping into a gradual descent through the cones, followed by an easy rollout at the bottom.
Watching Tom was particularly interesting because he wasn’t simply trying to copy what everyone else was doing.
He was trying to figure out how to make his skating work on this course.
Tom has his own style and his own ideas about skateboard design, including the handmade boards he brought with him. Early runs were about feeling things out—understanding the spacing, figuring out where he could generate speed and learning where the course wanted to take it away.
Run by run, things started changing.
You could see him becoming more comfortable. Lines became clearer. The movements became more deliberate.
That’s one of the things I have always loved about skateboarding.
No matter how long you’ve been doing it, there’s always something else to figure out.
As the Temperature Went Up
By the middle of the day, Sacramento-area heat was beginning to make its presence known.
The pavement was hot. Everyone had been standing in the sun for hours. Riders kept climbing back to the top and doing it again.
But nobody seemed particularly interested in leaving.
Between runs, we talked.
And talked.
About old skateparks. Old racers. Board construction. Equipment. People we hadn’t seen in years. Where skateboarding came from and where it seems to be heading now.
There were people there whose histories stretched across completely different eras of skating, yet everybody had ended up on the same piece of pavement watching someone weave through a bunch of little plastic cones.
There’s something pretty great about that.
More Than a Contest
That’s probably what I’ll remember most about the day.
We went there for Tom.
We brought Fault along because it’s part of what we’re doing now. But somewhere along the way, the day became about something much bigger.
We made new friends. We reconnected with the history of skateboarding. We watched people who genuinely love this obscure corner of the sport push themselves harder with every run.
And completely unexpectedly, FAULT sponsored its first rider at a slalom event.
Not through a marketing plan. Not through an application. Tony walked up a hill and yelled something.
That’s skateboarding.
Tomorrow, we’re going back.
The cones will be tighter. The course will be different. Tom will have another day of experience underneath him. Artie will be there representing Fault.
And I’ll have the camera ready. After all these years, skateboarding can still surprise me.
That’s probably why I’m still here.
— Dylan
Fault Boards
Leave a Reply