Hey everyone, this thread will be about our experience at CarvePDX 2026! We wanted to do a journal of sorts to keep a record of our trip and possibly encourage more posts like this in the future.
Who are we?
We are “The Briansexuals” a group of broke college students that formed from UCPEV. The roster:
Tyler (@Tyy ):
I just be skating. Many of you may have met me at esk8con or other skating trips I’ve taken such at Heartland, New York, and now PDX. I started the crew in Urbana, Illinois, but I come from the ChiPEV group.
Nathan (@sad_juice ):
@Tyy got me to spend copious amounts of money on this hobby over the past year and a half.
Brian (@bliang1397 ):
I like to build stupid stuff. I ride a banana board. I am a member of the Urbana-Champaign crew and the NYC crew (I actually live in NYC unlike half the group).
Leo (@leopirsal ):
I fell like 17 times on this trip my hand is all fucked up
Mr. Wang (@rhty_2k on instagram):
Dylan left early so he doesn’t get to write his own intro. He’s like the group mom, and rice man.
Wednesday 6/24 - The Beginning
Brian - Being a broke college student that recently graduated, I bought the cheapest flight money could buy which was a connecting flight from LGA to Dallas to PDX. Little did I know, my initial flight sat on the runway for an hour due to the lightest amount of rain and my connecting flight was delayed an entire 2 hours. The take off time was originally 10:30PM but was eventually pushed back to 12:30AM. Nathan eventually picked me up at 2:30AM and we slept at 5AM.
Nathan - As the the PDX local I offered to host "The Briansexuals” at my house. After picking Brian up from the airport, both of us got about 4 hours of sleep. Wednesday morning, we went for a short ride around my neighborhood, with Brian riding Pumpkin (Tyler’s board; he’ll make a post about it soon) since Brian’s wouldn’t arrive until Thursday afternoon. After a relatively short ride I asked if Brian wanted to continue, to which he said yes. After another 200 feet, my board promptly died and had to be towed up the hill back home.
(Brian towing my board up a hill)
We got some pong pong chicken (whatever that is) for lunch, got Brian to try a smoothie for the first time, and then picked Tyler and Leo up from the airport (Dylan was driving down from Seattle).
Tyler - Once Leo and I landed, we immediately got burgers and a vape for me. Need me that nicotine on vacation. We unpacked our boards and all of our belongings.
I was itching to ride since by board has been out of my grasp for over a week and it blew up it’s motors only a week before shipping so I couldn’t ride at all til PDX.
Nathan was so gracious to take us on a beautiful ride around his neighborhood and up some great streets for carving and I took a cute photo of my boys when we were at a stop.
Then on the way home, cops found us.
Thankfully broski was chill with us and just wanted us to run lights that we did not bring on this particular ride as we did not expect to ride past sunset. It was funny tho that he kept trying to see how fast we can go and even asked “who’s the most likely to run/get away?”
Only a minute after the cop left, Leo fell and busted his hand open, jammed his pinky, and scraped his elbow lightly. The rest of the ride was chill and we ended up wrapping him up in some gauze and ointment back at the house. Dylan wanted in n out so burgers and fries to end the night.
Thursday 6/25 - The pregame to the real game
Nathan - Leo and Tyler started the day off by drinking a mimosa and bloody mary with their fancy avocado toast like some bougie bitches (gotta pregame early). Then chaos ensued. The New York Crew (all of whom are from New Jersey and DC) arrived in a U-Haul van and pulled out like they were gonna SWAT us. They turned my garage into a makeshift workshop and starting working boards for like 2.5 hrs. Brian’s board was scheduled to be delivered later that day, but he had a tracker in his box so he knew exactly where it was. Fed up with waiting (and with nothing to do besides watching the NY guys work on their boards), Brian, Leo, and Dylan left to track down the poor UPS driver.
Brian - Since I shipped my board out later than everyone else, it was supposed to show up sometime before 9 PM, but the group ride was at 2:30. Luckily, I had thrown a Samsung tracker inside my board like a responsible eboard owner, so while everyone from the NYC crew was busy unboxing, I checked the location and saw it was only about 10 minutes away. That was all it took. Instead of waiting like normal people, Dylan, Leo, and I decided to go full detective mode and hunt down the UPS truck, even though the tracker only updated every 15 minutes. We pulled up to the first location and drove around, but after chasing a few updates and wasting another 20 minutes, we somehow actually spotted the truck out of the corner of our eyes. We rolled up behind it and started pleading our case to the driver. We thought we had it in the bag since I had my ID matching the sender and had Nathan’s ID for the recipient, but apparently none of that matters because the only thing they care about is having an ID with the exact delivery address. And of course, Nathan had just moved, so his ID was useless. With this unfortunate news, we drove back in despair, unable to obtain my precious banana board :(. I was to ride Dylan’s extra Exway Atlas on these massive mountains instead.
Nathan - As soon as the NY crew put their boards together, we packed the car and left for a pre CarvePDX ride.
(i paid for the whole trunk i’m gonna use the whole trunk)
As soon as we set off on the ride and left downtown Portland, heading up the hills west of the city, Leo’s motors overheated, pulling power so much he couldn’t make it up the hill. After reducing his phase amps and increasing the temp limit, we continued on the ride without much issue, until Brian’s board (which at this point was Dylan’s Exway Atlas on Mad 125s) starting dying well before the planned charge point.
Leo - Gotta say, being the only person who’s board overheated felt like bit of a wake up call. Need to lay off the mimosas and avocado toast. I blame Nathan for driving us there.
Nathan - We stopped at a cemetery to charge up, tripped a breaker, and had to go on a small search for more outlets. At this point we decided we would just head back to the car after charging up, since Brian’s board had been delivered and the Atlas wasn’t exactly thrilling to ride. Also, Leo accidently took a nap on a dead person.
Leo - I Sorry
(lineup of boards at the cemetery)
(on the way back to the car)
(28 miles)
Tyler - I got stung by a fricken wasp. Shit hurt so much and not only that but on my neck and my finger when I went to grab it and throw it off me.
Nathan - We got back to the car with no major issues, got some Vietnamese food, then headed back to OMSI, the start point for the planned Thursday night ride, mostly just to say hi to everyone since the weather wasn’t exactly looking good. As we sat there chatting, it started raining harder, and the ride was cancelled. Taking this as a sign for the weather over the next couple days, we spent some time waterproofing our boards Thursday night, before heading to bed.
(my cat Kiki sleeping on Tyler)
Friday 6/26 - Heat death of the universe
Tyler - We ran a little late on meeting at train stop because we got these delishoes pastries near Nathan’s house. Because we big backed too hard we had to jump on the train after the main crews train. goober mistake. Thankfully everyone waited for us to arrive before beginning the ride.
The first portion of the ride was heavy on the trails and very enjoyable but there were some crosswalks that we had to pickup our boards which was a little unfortunate but everything in between was fun.
(some of the winding bike paths we rode up)
Then Dylan realized he didn’t fully charge his board about 15 miles in before the huge zigzag path up this hill side so he had to boogie off with Brian to a charge spot and charge there while we continued on the ride to the food plaza/EV charger. I had to tow Leo a bit because his motors were overheating and @Evwan was a great fella and jumped into VESC at the EV chargers to change his motor temp parameters to allow a little more heat.
(getting ready to roll out from charge stop)
Met back up with Dylan, Brian, and all the other riders and we continued the ride through Portland on some trails then onto the street. I can’t remember their name, but someone ended up eating shit so the group split to those who stayed back with the crashee and those who continued up ahead to a good stop point. @BenjaminF got some papa john’s for the group and like vultures, it was gone in seconds. The wiff of pizza was a meal i swear.
The crashee got an uber home as his remote was geeking out and the rest of us continued through the streets and ended the route to OMSI.
The homediggitydogs wanted food and so we got ramen at this peak spot. might gatekeep this spot hehe unless Nathan drops the ball knowledge. Then met the homies at the Hostel house. The charging was nuts inside that house. I charged in Titus’s room. and the guys in the kitchen popped the breaker.
We ended up leaving and getting some awesome photos together and we’ll share those below. Not much else happened besides us fiending for some ice cream.
(Steel bridge at night)
(Tilikum Crossing lights)
(full route)
Saturday - There’s water in heaven
rain. Rain. RAIN. RAIN!!!
Leo - Alllrighty, where to begin? So, Saturday wasn’t actually a day of too much skating, rain was pouring down in both Portland and Camas (where we stayed). I don’t really remember who brought up the idea, but one of the boys suggested we go see some landmarks in Oregon, so off we went to find cool views and stuff.
That we did:
Tyler - I got aura here
Leo - Absolutely stunning. Seeing all of these waterfalls was definitely a bucket list item for me. I know some of the people around here will probably roll their eyes reading that, but it truly was special to be surrounded by nature. I’m from Illinois, so the most nature we have are corn fields. Anyways, all that is to say that I get why settlers decided to get dysentery and crap themselves to death to come see this.
Side Note: Where we parked at the waterfall there were guards who said we couldn’t go in to see the waterfall unless whoever parked had a pass (with the earliest available one to purchase being two hours after we arrived) I questioned if I was allowed to go in since technically Nathan drove us there, and the security said technically yes since I just got dropped off. I walked through after chatting long enough to let the rest of the guys go towards the exit ramp, which they promptly then used to enter. I have now laid out the method to allow you to successfully sneak in, just say you got dropped off. You’re welcome.
Tyler - After we saw some of the most beautiful nature sites I’ve ever been to, we went and got some oysters. I been dying to have some here and I ate only like a dozen with another bloody mary. The place was chill and it was like $2 oysters so gimme gimme gimme. I also liked how spicy the mary was.
(Leo and Dylan’s Oysters)
(My bloooody mary)
After the sidequest for oysters, we went and got seafood boil and the boys feasted on some crabs and clams.
And around this time it was getting late, Dylan had to pickup something from best buy and leave only shortly after. We rushed to get home after and pack the car up as there was a ride scheduled around 9pm. We said our goodbyes to Dylan and rushed to the ride. Unfortunately, it began raining early during the ride and the trails we were taking were quite wet so the boys and I skedaddled back to the car to wipe our boards down and get some more ice cream. mmmmm salt n straw mmmmm.
Once we had our yummy yummy ice cream we went home and cleaned our boards some more. I redid my gaff tape a little as well. and nighty night time.
Honorable mention: I caught a frog
frog (unnamed)
Sunday 6/28 - I bid thee farewell
Nathan - Sunday we woke up to an announcement about a 12pm ride so we immediately started packing and left for OMSI again. Fitting four boards and people into one car was… interesting.
Thankfully @BenjaminF was kind enough to move up the second ride of the day so that we wouldn’t have to stay out too late (Leo was flying out at 7 the next morning). Sunday was, in my opinion, the best ride of the whole event so far. Since we’re all used to riding around Illinois (no hills, flat roads), we weren’t too used to the narrow bike paths that much of the other routes included. This ride, however, was pretty much entirely on roads or wider, smooth bike paths.
(Tyler tried filling up his board) (Tyler - I needed it, i swear)
(I almost ate shit filming this video)
After this beautiful ride we hung at at OMSI for an hour, charged up the boards and waited for the second ride to start. The second ride of the day was to PIttock Mansion and Mt. Tabor, which both have amazing views of the city. I particularly wanted to see Pittock Mansion, and since we were running a little late at this point, we decided to break off from the group before they continued to Mt. Tabor.
(the view from Pittock)
After seeing the city one last time, we headed down the mountain with the crew to the Moda Center.
(crossing the Broadway Bridge)
(full route from both rides)
At this point we were all pooped from a full weekend of eskate so we just headed home, packed Leo’s board (since he was leaving first), got dinner, and went to bed, thus ending out CarvePDX adventures.
Monday 6/29 - The final goodbye
Nathan - Well here we are, currently writing this on Monday waiting for Brian and Tyler’s flights tonight. Today is simply just packing and shipping boards, and honestly, after a healthy 167 miles ridden this week, I’m alright with that.
(I’m sad juice)
Huge thanks to @BenjaminF for putting on such an amazing event and getting as much riding in as possible despite the constant threat of rain and our group always being late to the rides. Also thank you @patrickcleary and @nclayton for keeping the group together, helping anyone who broke down, and blocking traffic! And also a big thank you to everyone who showed up! Loved seeing tons of people from Seattle, New York (Brian), New Jersey (the rest of the NYC crew), DC, and of course Chicago.
That’s it from us, until next time, toodles~~~
-The Briansexuals
