If you ask anyone in Austin
about this ditch, they will likely
say, "It's weird." Jon Comer
enjoys it with this frontside ollie.
grand finale: Steve-O climbed up
a three-story building, lit his
arms on fire, jumped off, blew a
fireball in mid-air, and landed in
five feet of water. Whatever. For
all you non-believers out there,
here's how he does these things
without breaking his legs: He
hits the water at an angle and
slides across the bottom of the
pool. Easy, right?
Among the many good spots in
Albuquerque was an empty swim-
ming pool at an old folks home.
Almost every day that we were in
town, we would go there.
And every time after
about ten minutes, a
man would come
On our last day in Albuquerque.
Dick and I went back for one last
visit. After about five minutes, a
out and tell us to leave. "Go away, Dallas, Texas. We stayed with two
he would say.
guys named Jon and Dan. Jon
and Dan are good skate-
boarders. No, I don't just say
that about everyone we
stayed with. It's just one of
those ko-inkidinks. They are
for realls. Anyway, we mostly
rode skateboards at a park that
should be called The Jeff Phillips
Memorial Skateboard Park. It was
pretty fun. The coping on the
vert ramp makes a neat
sound when you grind it.
One day we got to meet
and ride skateboards with
one of our favorite skate-
boarders of all time. His
name is Craig Johnson, and he
woman came out and said, "Go
away. But then, as we were walk-
ing away, she said, "Come back."
She said that if we would help her
in the kitchen for a while, we
I could skate the pool for as long as
we wanted. So, we helped make
lunch for all the old folks, and then
everyone from the kitchen came
out and watched us ride our skate-
boards in the empty swimming
pool. What do ya know? People
are nice sometimes.
The next stop on our trip was
4. Speaking of nice people, the young girl sitting next to
me on the bus has just told me that her favorite song from
the Wizard Of Oz is the cowardly lion's song. I told her
that my favorite is the scarecrow's song.
Ryan Simonetti definitely had the
eye of the tiger on this frontside
grind at the Indian School ditch in
Albuquerque, New Mexico
On the morning we left, we went and played in a junk- Albuquerque. Shhhhl Don't tell anyone.
yard on the side of a hill. There was
some neat junk there.
Our next stop was
3. I have
Auquerque, New Mexico. just changed
We'd heard lots of
While we were there we met a guy named Steve-O.
Steve-O wants to be a stuntman. He does crazy stuff.
He liked us because we had cameras. Here are some
of the crazy stuff he did in front of our cameras: He
climbed up on the roofs of motels and did different
good things about buses in Nashville, kinds of flips into swimming pools that were very
Albuquerque and
planned on
staying for a
while, which we
ended up doing.
shallow (mostly about five feet deep). The motels
were all two-stories high. It was funny to
watch the people who worked at the motels
when they figured out what was going on.
Tennessee. My new
seatmate is a young black
girl. She smells much nicer "Go away," they would say.
than the old white man
the skatepark there, from the last bus. She
We stayed with a
guy named Ryan
skateboarder. The
Ryan is a very good has pretty beads in
her hair.
skatepark is small, but really
good. It's called Evolve. You
could go fast there. Around the skatepark there are lots
of men who dress up like women, who walk around
waiting for men who dress like men to pick them up.
There are lots of really good stuff to ride skateboards on in
Another thing Steve-O likes to do in
front of cameras is light his hair on fire. He
puts "the juice" in it so that it really goes up.
This was an old trick for him, though, so he
wanted to add something new for us. So this
was the new twist: He showed Dick how to take a
mouth full of the juice and blow a "fireball," as he called
it. (By the way, kids, do not ever try any of these things
in any way. They are not only dangerous, but very
stupid.) Anyway, Steve-O lit his hair on fire, and Dick
blew a fireball off of his head.
Okay, so, as if that weren't enough, here's the