Running on empty team Volcom

Thrasher Magazine, Jan, 2004 by Scott Pommier

BEGINNING OF THE ENTROPY

JUST BEFORE LEAVING FOR THIS TRIP a friend gave me a book on CD; Stephen Hawking's The Theory of Everything. The book summarizes much of Hawking's life-long work in the field of theoretical physics, and chronicles the various models for the universe from that advanced by the ancient Greeks right on through to modern conceptions. But the most interesting bit to me was the author's explanation of the Second Law of Thermal Dynamics, which I'm sure must have been taught to me in some high school science course but failed to impress me at the time. The Second Law of Thermal Dynamics dictates that a given situation will always tend toward entropy. Hawking further elaborates that even when you attempt to organize, say, the information in a computer, even the act or organization increases the total entropy in the universe, since this will invariably involve heat as a by-product and the heat will cause molecules to bump into each other at an increased rate.

In other words, scientific proof of Murphy's Law. Hawking goes on to explain in considerable depth that this is so because the universe is expanding. Feel free to use this as a catch-all explanation. For example, if you borrow your friend's Tupac CD and accidentally scratch it, you might well say, "Sorry friend, the universe is expanding; these things are bound to happen."

There were any number of examples of quantum expansion on our trip, but somehow knowing that we were all just a small part of the great cosmic ballet made it a bit more palatable. Well, in hindsight anyways.

Tempting as it may be, I will refrain from getting into a long list of "We would have won King of the Road if only ..." But Volcom's manager, Remy Stratton, urged me to mention that we were given a late start. This was accidental of course; some mix up with an earlier draft of the itinerary being e-mailed to Volcom. Volcom joined the race at the last minute so the miscommunication was understandable--still, we probably would have won if we'd been given the right itinerary.

ABOUT SCHMIDT

THE FORD ECONOLINER is sort of the unofficial skate-tourmobile. It's pretty much a given that if the crew is larger than five dudes, you'll be in one of those huge white vans. Volcom's Remy Stratton is a lot of things, but "slave to convention" is not one of them. We rolled in a massive RV of the type seen in About Schmidt starting Jack Nicholson. The RV was certainly more spacious than a van and probably saved us from having car legs alter long drives, but RVs do have a few drawbacks, reliability not being the least of them. We broke down on the drive between Denver and Albuquerque. We had to rent two mini-vans, unpack the RV, pack the vans, drive to Albuquerque and then repack a replacement RV that lasted the remainder of the trip. This was a time-consuming burden, but probably still preferable to trying to sleep sitting up on a van bench. Not to mention the refrigerated snacks we had access to. Huge grocery shopping trips where we were more or less flee to fill the shopping cart with whatever our little hearts desired were among the highlights of the journey. Dried fruit snacks! Perrier! Dehydrated miso soup! Thanks Remy, thanks Volcom.

Remy and I picked up the RV in New Jersey and drove it up to Boston with filmer Trevor Prescott. We picked up the team and got sorted out at the hotel. The KOTR objectives were held in secrecy until the beginning of the contest, but it was recommended to Remy that it would be best if he selected a "well rounded crew" from his roster. Volcom has an impressive talent pool to say the least, and the guys we picked up were as capable a contingent as you could hope for. Underrated technician Javier Sarmiento, vert and pool powerhouse Rune Glifberg, speedy ATV Dennis Busenitz, handrail heavy-hitter Caswell Berry, and Dustin Dollin, the board-flipping lush from Down Under. I suspect that Caswell will not appreciate his little description. Forgive me Caz, but I kinda liked the alliteration. Caswell made it known that he does not enjoy that side of skating. "I only skate rails because I have to," he said. He used to like skating rails, but now it's just expected of him so he does it. He proved the extent of his versatility a number of times--in the pools, in the parks, on the ledges; he can do it all, and I suspect he ended up being the leading points earner on our trip even with very little handrail contact.

Dustin served a sort of double duty He was charged with the task of assembling all of the footage into a video, to be presented at the end of the trip. Dustin set up an editing bay in the breakfast nook. Dusty was amazingly diligent about his editing duties and spent tireless hours logging footage, a thankless and grueling task. He did not suffer in silence, mind you. He complained all the while that the footage was horrible, which it was. "It's lookin' shockin', by the way." He'd tell Trevor and whoever else was interested.

FILMER BLUES

I DON'T KNOW if I'm developing a reputation as being an especially difficult photographer to deal with. Burnett told me I come back from nearly every trip with a different video dude horror story. That's not true. Admittedly, I've used these articles of mine to stick it to a few video dudes who I didn't get along with. This is probably a bit unfair; penning the article is sort of a built-in last word. Let me state for the record that I don't have anything against my deathlens-wielding colleagues. There are filmers that I get along quite well with, on a professional and even personal level I may not understand their fascination with Nike Dunk colorways, and it may irk me when they occasionally sing the 411 theme song after firming a spectacular trick, but we're there to do a very similar job and a lot of these guys are kind, patient, intelligent people.