For those into skateboarding, Finland’s Arto Saari is known for his big, aggressive skating style…and his iron-man ability to recovery from some seriously brutal spills. What you might not know is that Saari is also an avid motorcyclist. He’s been riding around Helsinki for years, and, more recently, he’s been rolling through his new home turf of Southern California.
When we started kicking around the idea of partnering with Vice’s VBS.TV to document a crew of skaters as they rode from San Diego to Baja, Mexico, we knew we had to invite Arto. Dude is not only sick as hell on his board, but he’s also a total good vibe. (Plus he can chop wood and build fires, too, which we knew would come in handy.)
Awesomely, he was up for the adventure. So we outfitted him with a new Nightster Sporty, pointed him in the direction of the rest of the boys—including Heath Kirchart, Keegan Sauder and Patrick O’Dell, friends Harvey Foster, Kynan Tait and Hime Hu, and guide Bill Bryant—and sent a film crew along to document the journey. Check out the epic results that make up Doin’ It Baja here.
Since we’ve been posting the videos, the response has been crazy. People have been writing us wanting to get the story behind the story. What couldn’t be shown in the clips? How can I do this ride? How pissed were the locals at you for skating their town square? So we decided to catch up with Arto to dig in deeper about his experience taking part in Doin’ it Baja. Read on to find out why Arto’s gun-buying idea got nixed, how a Sporty performs off-road and how this trip rekindled Arto’s desire to ride from Northern Europe to Africa.
Click here to read the rest of the interview on the VBS blog.
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