By Peter Madsen

You can quit ruining all your buddy’s sessions by making him film for your umpteenth sponsor-me video—the dates and locations of the 2009 Gatorade Free Flow Tour has just been announced—the first being in at Talent Skatepark in Burlington, Vermont, May 16th. What we recommend you do is start in Burlington and travel along with the Tour until you finally stomp that double-kickflip-backside-tailslide-really-big-spin-out and gain berth to the Final. We’re kidding about that, but if you’re itchin’ to register you can do that here.

Now, there are 53 Gatorade Free Flow Tour stops in 33 areas. Let’s break that down like this: there are 28 stops for Skate Park, five for Skate Vert, 16 for BMX Park, and BMX Vert get four stops. What that amounts to are pretty decent odds that there’ll be a tour stop nearby wherever your parents forced you to move to in the sixth grade. Just stick it out just a little bit longer because soon enough you’ll totally dominate your stop of the Gatorade Free Flow Tour. After that happens—why wouldn’t it?—you be flown far away (we’ll cover it) to the Final at the Toyota Challenge in Salt Lake City, Utah. There, despite a ripped shoelace and squeaky bearings, you win—handily.

Hyped? Now you’ll get flow down to the PlayStation Pro in Orlando, Florida, where you knock out Ryan Sheckler, Paul Rodriguez, and Greg Lutzka for Dew Tour hardware! Your image on live TV! 2010 Dew Tour Invite! Fawning members of a gender you find preferable! These things can be all yours, thanks to the Gatorade Free Flow Tour. You know those Gatorade commercials? You’ll be dousing yourself with the stuff you’ll be so grateful—and thirsty—after you win first-place for 360 tabletop nose-bonking the cap off your favorite variety of the G. It sounds like a pipedream but in two seasons Dew Cup-holder Chaz Ortiz did exactly that.

We were talking to Chaz the other day and he said that while Zoo York had been keeping him in boards, he couldn’t imagine how else he would have gained such exposure from the Gatorade Free Flow Tour. “Thank God I never had to send out a sponsor-me tape in my life,” he said.

Other skateboarders whose lives have become infinitely more enjoyable—if not publically more visible—include 2008 winners Paul-Luc Ronchetti and Timmy Knuth. Having qualified at Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville, Florida, this Cocoa Beach ripper had a whole crew of family and friends in the stands of the nearby PlayStation Pro in Orlando. There the 17-year-old stomped a kickflip crooked grind down a hubba to take fourth-place behind Chaz, P-Rod, and Greg Lutzka. On the Skate Vert-end of things, English kid Paul-Luc Ronchetti qualified at the Pennsylvania Camp Woodward stop before winning the Final. At the PlayStation Pro, Paul-Luc skated well in the Vert Preliminary, yet he barely missed the Final with a tenth place finish. This year Paul-Luc and Timmy will compete tour-wide in the Pro division. Do you think a Dew Cup win is in them?

Onto the BMX side of things, where Vert rider Tyler Chamberlain and Park rider Glen Salyers took top 2008 honors. Chamberlain, who’s from Herrick, Illinois, won the Gatorade Free Flow Tour stop at Woodward West. Born and raised in Kokomo, Indiana, Salyers killed the competition at the 6th Avenue stop in Nashville, Tennessee. Salyers said he’s since learned 360 double whips on a box and alley oop flares on a quarter-pipe. You got those? Check out Salyers’s at the Nike 6.0 Open, taking place at Chicago’s Grant Park, June 26-27.

Another Gatorade Free Flow Tour champ who’s gone on to become a top BMX rider include Nike 6.0 pro Mike Spinner, who not only put out a banging part last year in the Nike 6.0 Writing on the Wall film, but has become a dominant Dew Tour rider. Since Spinner’s non-Final-qualifying 12th place finish at the 2006 PlayStation Pro BMX Park Preliminary, Spinner has since finished second overall in Tour standings in 2007 and 2008—a true example of a rider going Flow to Pro.

New stops to the Gatorade Free Flow Tour include M.I.A. in Miami, Florida, Chaz Ortiz’s home park Warp in Chicago, and Epic in Rocklin, California. The Tour will return to Ecke YMCA in Encinitas and Claramont’s Mission Valley YMCA.

Oh, we do need to tell all 30-year-old barnies to not get their hopes up because only skateboarders 18-and-under and BMX-riders 21-and-under are allowed to register.