Desolation angels: things to do in Australia when you're dead

Thrasher Magazine, April, 2005 by Jake Phelps

I'M SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE who are a lot smarter than me. I'm the last of my breed; I can't shoot photos, I can't write. Hell, I can't even skate. But here I am "in charge" of the last bastion of skateboard gnarlitude in the world, Thrasher magazine. I can't complain; I just have to think of ways to entertain my madness and disguise it as productivity. When my brain really gets to cookin' there's no telling what I'm gonna think up and try to execute. My friends are all grown up or gone, and still I try to go on trips to far away lands under the guise of "research." But in reality, it's about falling off the radar for a spell. Let me tell you about my last brainstorm, and tell me what you think.

MY CONCEPT WAS SIMPLE: new-wave missionaries spreading the gospel of stoke. Three dudes dressed up like priests giving skateboards to the less fortunate skateboarders down in the mystical land of Oz. Simple, yet complex. What makes it more bizarre is that I wanted to drive from Perth to Ayers Rock to Brisbane to Sydney, and drop the car off in Melbourne. Perth is on the west coast of Australia, approximately 3,000 miles across Desolation Alley from Brisbane. More people die in Australia from car accidents than anything, except smoking. Compounded by shitty roads, endless straight drives made sleepy by white line fever, and add to that I'm one of the worst drivers (so they tell me) known to man. All the pieces were in place. On with the fabulous disaster.

We spent three days in Perth skating crazy shit, nine-foot spines and small parks, but to be honest I was all hyped to get on the road. At the crypt one night I asked who else was in. Brother Monk and Brother Busenitz were both called to a higher power and were happy to comply. I rented a Pulsar and the rockin' Vicars were rollin'. The first spot was Fremantle Cemetery, interment spot for the legendary bad boy Bon Scott, the only frontman of the most primal rock-of-ages band, AC/DC. We got lost and the 20-minute detour took three hours. "It ain't easy, livin' free ... season ticket on a one-way ride."

I REMEMBER BEING SO JACKED UP about the task at hand that I was pounding on the steering wheel screaming "Yeah-ha-ha-ha-ha ..." on the way out of town. I was on the edge of something new and was looking forward into the abyss. Brother Hubbard took to driving and we soon found ourselves in small town after small town, clickin' away at the odometer on our way to Judgment Day. I'd never really considered the fact that religion is inside of everybody. It's just that my religion is my business. The idea to dress as priests came to me as a way of skirting customs. "I'm a missionary, Sir, giving skateboards to Aboriginal children." They bought it. You can get away with murder rocking the Vicar. Seriously, I was laughing at the looks I was getting. "I am Jesus of Nazareth. I need no passport."

Two days out and we awoke in Podunk Nowhere. At night the stars were so close it was like a Hollywood set; more bright lights than humanly countable. Off radar I wanted, off radar I got. The Pulsar was off and running at 180 km (110 mph)--we had a date with the Grim Reaper this morning, and we were right on time. Brother Hubbard sat shotgun. Brother Busenitz in the back, and Brother Phelps at the wheel. On a long flat stretch of nothing, things went haywire. "Damn. It Feels Good To Be a Gangster" was playing. I was spacing, so Brother Hubbard nudged the wheel back toward the center of the road. I lost control. At 9:06am, December 6, 2004, we died. The car flipped over and over until we came to a rest upside down in between three trees a fourth of a mile away from the point of Helter Skelter. I took a head count, upside down and strapped in. "Hubbs?"

"Yep."

"Dennis?"

"Present."

"Let's get out of here."

We climbed out and surveyed the damage. No bumpers, no hood. no trunk. My life had just hit spin cycle and was thrown out like a crackhead's yard sale. We all wandered around in a daze covered in dirt and blood. Eventually cars and mobile homes pulled over to peep the show: a total of five cars stopped and the ants got to milling around our death trap. An elderly couple in a mobile home set up a portable table and made tea for us.

"Here Father, sit down. You have been in a horrific accident. Do you know where you are?"

The police took over an hour and a half to get to our remote crash site, so if anybody had been seriously hurt they would have died on the scene. The scavengers found everything in the time it took the cops to get there.

"I got glasses!"

"I got a camera!"

I just sat at my folded card table while flies festered at the leaking spots on my head ... my crown of flies, not thorns. They threw everything from the accident into a big pile and stood with their hands on their hips, "You must have angels looking out for you. Lucky, very lucky indeed."

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways."

Long story short: three battered missionaries, no wheels, hot cuts, 30 skateboards, a thousand miles from mutherfuckin' nowhere.