Chad Caruso is a Long Island native, and he’s guilty of skate vlogging. Normally, we would openly roast any kind of YouTube skate personalities, but we’re giving him a pass because he is on the brink of pulling off a pretty ridiculous feat: driving through all 50 states in 50 days and learning at least one new trick in each stop.

When we talked to him, Chad had just driven into California on day 44 of his trip. My first and probably most important question was, why is he even doing this to himself?

“Last year on my YouTube channel I did a new trick every day for a month, and that was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. A year later this idea popped in my head and I was like, ‘Wait, I think that’s possible.’”

After driving through the lower 48 states, starting in Maine and ending in Washington, Chad plans to leave his car in Seattle and fly to Alaska to get his 49th trick.

From there, he’ll fly to Hawaii and get his final trick, and presumably collapse onto a sandy beach with a pineapple drink in hand shortly after. When it’s all said and done, Chad will have spent almost three months on the road by himself.

To document his 50 state one-man demo, and prove that he actually landed a new trick in each state within that time frame, Chad has been filming and editing 5 – 12 minute long videos every single day. Each day he spent roughly 7 hours skating, 7 hours driving, and 5 hours editing.

The first few days he was only sleeping about two or three hours a night in his car. As the trip progressed he got more comfortable and found a better system for editing his daily videos, which allowed him to get a *whopping* four to five hours of rest a night.

“The big battle is the trip, then there are even more mini battles than just getting the trick,” he said. “Like internal battles with myself, if I don’t want to put up a video because I don’t like the trick or it’s not the best I could do. But the video has to go up, so just keep moving forward. That’s a life lesson I learned, sometimes you can’t be perfect and you just have to move forward.”

Chad has been funding this trip with help from friends and randoms through a GoFundMe. “That’s been huge because I quit my job for this. They ended up being pretty understanding, but I was all in no matter what. I had already bought the tickets. I went all in with all the money I had.”

People have been meeting up with Chad along the way, giving him extra decks, cases of water, food, and even cash. “I was telling my story to some random guy on the street in North Carolina and he gave me $100 cash. It’s been filled with moments like that this whole trip.”

Most people would lose their mind on a solo cross country drive, but Chad says he thrives on the solitude. “I thought I would be listening to a lot of podcasts to pass the time, but I stopped. I have so much going on every day, I have to think about how to shape each video and edit all the stuff. I felt like listening to other people talk was getting in the way of my own ideas. So I’ve been driving in almost silence with some music here and there. It’s hard for people to be by themselves but I think it’s incredibly valuable because you learn a lot about yourself. It almost made me love skating more.”

[Editor’s Note: We asked Chad how many states he jacked off in along the way, and he said he doesn’t really jack off. We can’t confirm that’s a lie, but it’s a lie.]

Also, check out some of Chad’s personal standout tricks from his trip here:
1. BS Smith to fakie over a spine – Kentucky
2. Kickflip blunt, kickflip out – South Carolina
3. Kickflip BS Nosepick – North Carolina
4. FS feeble to FS tailslide – Pennsylvania
5. Switch 270 to SSBSTS – Michigan
6. SS FS flip disaster revert – Texas
7. Nollie bigflip to 5-0 – Arizona
8. Half cab blunt, bigspin out – North Dakota
9. Fakie bigflip FS Nosepick – New Hampshire
10. Alley oop bs lipslide – California

Words by: Larry Lanza
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