STEVIDS
WASHED
53 parks in 19 days
Where Were You?
So, there I am sitting on an all-night 14-hour flight. The movie is
some garbage about love or something. The person next to me really
ought to have paid for two seats, being so rotund, but I guess they
couldn't afford it and that's why they're back in the torture chamber
with me. And I'm thinking there's no way I'm going to go the whole
flight with my shoes on, then I'm thinking "Oh, fuck it," "cause the
movie sucks, and Gantor is breathing up all the air anyway.
So, off they come, exhumed from their leather crypts of the last months.
A month spent skating everything in our paths up and down 8,000 kilo-
meters of Australian road. The smell is of the stinkiest of European
cheeses and ammonia (like the time in biology class I dropped the class jar
or formaldehyde and they had to evacuate two classrooms).
Quick and heavy, first porky looks at me, then my feet, and says some-
thing, I tell him to move up to first class. He buzzes the stewardess. People
all around are mumbling their discomfort. The sleepers are awaking. I look
across the aisle to my travelling companion and can see he has his shirt
over his nose. He's looking down at the white shadows of my feet with
watery eyes and laughing. I leaned back, gave my toes a wiggle, and
thought back-back to the beginning and the force of will that made it all
happen. The cause and effect. That these feet wouldn't stink, that these
people's noses wouldn't be in pain, that this shitty movie wouldn't be in
jeopardy of being stopped if a little under three months ago Snakie and
myself hadn't been sitting in a neighborhood bar on a rainy night think-
ing. Where to now?... What next?...
So, there we all were: Bob, John, Jake and I. John and I picked up a five-
fingered ride off a friend of a friend 1,000 K up the coast the night
before. We got right in it and started driving with just enough time to pull
an all-nighter and meet these guys at 8 the next morning. We were twen-
54 THUVER
ty minutes late. We bummed around Sydney (Gateway to Australia) for a
few hours, skated the only two spots we knew of, were unable to con-
nect with anybody in the know, got bored, and decided the time was now.
To begin South, we had 21 days from that day and a rough idea of
about 19,000 kilometers to cover. One of the main ideas that comes
across when you're out to discover what's going on, what you have inside.
or what's out there is not to take the easy road. Be open to all possibilities
even that there may be nothing, but do not accept any of it. If things
seem limited, and those around you are accepting of it, walk away, free
your mind from the limitations of the moment, and the world will open up
to you. Show itself to you with new eyes.
And off we were. Having heard good things about a new park in
Wollongong, that's where we headed. We got there and it was sick. Fairy
Meadow they called it. It was our first taste of the new style skatepark that
city councils across Australia are pouring daily. Something like a lot of typ-
ical indoor park "street" courses are designed except with one or two
things that can only be done in cement like a big lumpy spanking moon
hip or other such cement convexcaved body shaped parts. We had been
skating for a while when this one Hessian mondoflipper named Shane
invited us to stay at his house. We took him up on it. Later on, after a six-
pack, five issues of 411, and 300 skatemag question and answer questions,
we were crashing out in a spare back room. The shoes were coming off,
and Jake was about to open a window when I said he probably shouldn't
'cause we'd get eaten by mosquitoes. "Stung or stunk?" he asked. "Stunk,
any day." I said, and we left the windows closed. It was pretty tough
waking up in the morning with four people in a room having breathed up
all the air and asphyxiating on foot stench for the last few hours of sleep. I
barely did and stumbled for the door with one eye still crusted shut. I
opened it to the onshore ocean wind, and within a minute (like a science
experiment) everyone was awake. We went for a morning sesh at the park.
said later to everyone, and headed for Canberra, the predesigned city that's
layout makes me think of a compass at right angle.
Half a day later we were in the city and driving sort of lost when we see
a truck ahead with a Thrasher sticker on its back window. We pull up to it
and ask the guy where the skatepark is. Our accents and loaded ride tell
the whole story immediately and the guy says. "Follow me." So, there we
are skating the new Civic park right in sleepy downtown Canberra, and up
skates Mike Donovan, the skate techno guru hippy we'd stayed with on our
trip through two years before, and it was at his house sometime during a
night of drunken corroborie that someone had snaked a few boards from
us. We chalk it up to road tax just as they'd better when they come out
here. Mike's cool and says we're welcome to crash at his place again, which
we do, and the next day go on a five skatepark skate that leaves us in var-
ious states of exhaustion and delirium. The rasta dub was getting to me,
and I crashed behind a rack of clothes with a vacuum for a pillow. Jake and
Bob were going with the flow, and John fell asleep with his eyes open as
usual out on the front porch. Mosquito bait. The next morning while every-
one's still kind of finding their footing. John pulls me aside and tells me that
during the night he saw Mike D trying to break into our car, but that
when he saw John awake he stopped and walked up the porch saying
something like, "Hey, what's up? Great day, huh? All right, check you in the
morning" and went in the house. John crashed again and said it was all
sort of dreamy, but he knew what he saw. "What should we do? Should I
say something?" he asked. "He didn't get anything, right? Let's just get
another day of skating in before anything." I said. Later that day when we
had a chance to tell Jake, he mulled it over and said, "The guy's a skaterat,
that's just what he is." So, none of us ever said anything, because while yes
I do think he tried to rip us off, he was also a generous host and guide. It
Clockwise from left: John Cardiel on the Sydney
Harbor ferry to Bondi Beach. Astro-Skater on the
wall at the Sailyards in Melbourne. Drinking and
skating don't mix. Down the line at the West
Hobart snakerun, Tasmania.
didn't matter. After skating everything we could, we melted out the hottest
part of the day and loaded it back up and took off for Melbourne.
Canberra to Melbourne Drive Sleeping bag Prose
All night crossing city limit predawn lost. Just driving us through till we
hit beach with the moon setting, and you know you've only got half an
hour before the sun comes up even though the birds haven't started in
yet. So, we stumble out directly and throw down our bags not too close
to the couple doing their do. And lay down a deep breath and a prone
sigh of relief. A minute passes, and that first drop of rain splats smack
in the center of your forehead. And it feels all sadness and then funny
because you're so tired and one minute into deep slumber delirious. And
thinking it will be a little quick sprinkle, and it's not at all cold out you lay
out, but the drops come faster everywhere, and you can hear it on the
water, so you get up while it still means anything, bag over shoulder, and
start to walk toward a pier, past the couple disengaging pulling clothes
over, and duck under the low narrow fishing pier and lay down your
bag and try it again. Pulling the bag around your head to block out the
smell of shit and the flies buzzing and landing and walking everywhere
on everything. The rain coming through the gaps in the wooden walkway
of the old pier. But the tired so powerful that sleep is bliss no matter
where. Just for those few hours of ignorance and rest. And you fall deep
for not long enough before the sun is already high beating down on your
tortured waking. The flies buzzing into your ears and around your face.
Landing here and there. And you think vaguely of commercials showing
starving people in Africa and why don't they shoo away the flies in their
eyes and up their noses. The others are already up. Get up.
After skating the only two spots we knew of, we found a cheap old hotel.
We dumped our stuff, cleaned up, and went out on the streets to check the
action. It was later on still out bird watching and talking shit that out of
all the cities in Australia and all the streets in that city that we run into