Dead last

Thrasher Magazine, Dec, 2004 by Jasin Phares

LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW of my hotel room in Miami, Florida, our starting point for this year's King of the Road, watching the palm trees nearly fall over from 90 mile-per-hour winds, I realized this was the first time I've been in a hurricane. Finally. I mean, I've seen plenty of natural and unnatural disasters in my time, but no hurricane. I wanted to run outside and see if the wind was strong enough to help me catch flight. That would be sweet, getting whipped about by a hurricane. Then I remembered I could hardly even walk.

You see, several weeks prior to starting this King of the Road race I had been touring around the Deep South in jeans in August. I might be old fashion, or maybe I emulate the Fonz too much; nevertheless, I don't wear shorts and I don't dance. This is all fine and dandy when I'm back home in 70-degree weather all year and I don't go to clubs. When I get in 95- degree and 408-percent humidity weather, jeans get wet and never dry. I now know what they are talking about in all those Vietnam movies when they say "jungle rot," only that they are usually referring to their feet. My feet were doing just fine. I had a different problem--something your mom might like to call "diaper rash." I haven't worn diapers in years.

This was a perfect way to start a 3,500-mile race across America. I mean, how can one go wrong with a hurricane and diaper rash?

MIAMI

SOMEHOW everyone's flight was on time. Surprising, because of the hurricane that was getting weird outside. This was to be our second run at this King of the Road race. This year the crew was assembled of all Real riders, except Tony Trujillo, who was a part of last year's race. The rest of the line-up was as follows: Ernie Tortes, Dennis Busenitz, Darrell Stanton, and Peter Ramondetta. The media crew was Gabe Morford and Dan Vellucci. And I was the team manager/driver with diaper rash. We opened our first envelope at 11:59pm on Friday the 13th in Miami. The challenges seemed simple enough, except for one of them. That seems to be the way it goes with this race, and life in general. It's easy, more or less ... mostly less.

The one challenge that seemed impossible, or at least it should have been, mined out to not be so hard. The challenge was for one of us to get a piggyback ride from a gay man on South Beach. Luckily our hotel was on South Beach, and T remembered seeing some rainbow flags flying earlier that day. The rainbow flag is a clear marker for a gay zone. Now we just needed someone to man up. Did that sound weird? Anyway, that special soldier was Dennis. He volunteered right away. I was surprised it was that easy to get one of the guys to do this one. Now all we had to find was a gay man who wanted Dennis on his back for a while.

The first group of guys we saw wearing Speedos and hanging out near a rainbow flag seemed to be as gay as gay can be. When we laid out the challenge we had before us they were more than happy to help. Remember when I said it was 95 degrees and humid as hell? Well, that meant no one was wearing very much clothing. So when Dennis climbed onto the back of the eager, nearly nude gay dude, he was nearly nude himself. Skin on skin. Now that is just sick. I don't like to think of it, but I can't help thinking of the fact that sweat was exchanged. Dennis really took one for the team.

The other challenges consisted of doing doubles at the harsh banks and going clubbing with Joel Meinholz. That was much more fun. We got to skate a rad spot, then we had to party. It's a rough job, but someone has to do it.

After we finished our challenges in Miami we were off to our next stop: Alabama. We were just in Birmingham on a Real tour but it rained. Because of the rain we didn't get to skate much, so this was a second chance for us to see what Birmingham had to offer.

TEAM REAL MIAMI, FL CHALLENGES

Go clubbing with Meinholz

Do doubles routine at the harsh bank to curb spot

Someone get a piggy-back ride from a gay man in South Beach

BIRMINGHAM

UPON ARRIVING after another long hall in the van, we opened our envelope. This is always my favorite part. We get to break the seal made of goat's blood and wax stamped with the true bible seal: Thrasher. In this envelope we had three challenges that were as follows: 50-50 something with Ben Gilley, kickflip the crooked double set that Mike Carroll 360 flipped, and everyone had to crailtap the ghetto banks. Finally nothing gay!

We got fight to work and hooked up with long-time friend of the family, Brian, from Ride skateshop. First he took us to the banks. I had never seen these before in photos or any video that I could remember, so I had no idea what to expect. Turns out it's one of my new favorite spots. The banks themselves are at the end of a dead-end street fight in the middle of the projects, a perfect place to pull out $25,000 worth of camera gear. 1 skated with one eye on the bank and the other on those beautiful brick estates surrounding us.

Once we all did the crailtap and had a good time laying 'er down we were off to our next spot. We met up with Ben Gilley, who was gracious enough to take us to the crooked double set and to his local shop where we 50-50'd the flat bar in front, which was about as good as the 50-50 was going to get being that Ben had a broken toe.