The Tropic of Capricorn

May 01, 2007 @ 12:54 PM

SOMETIME LAST SPRING Ricky Sandström from WE got in touch with the idea to go sniffing around the Spanish islands a little bit. It was all somewhat vague, and I couldn’t hear much of what he was saying because of the wind, and there was a dog barking in the background, but it seemed like he wanted to take his riders to Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Ibiza. WE were working on a travel guide at the time and he was going to bring some people along to get stuff for that as well as it being a skate trip. He brought Pelle, who arrived a few days late. And it all took off from there like a careless Katyusha, as we followed his lead and succumbed to each and every temptation the Spanish nights have to offer.

Gran Canaria was in full swing, when Pelle got off the plane. It’s worth noting that the sun shines on average 360 days a year in Gran Canaria, whereas it shines 30 days in Sweden. Pelle spends most of his time in Sweden, so it’s no surprise that the sun made him a bit soft in the head. The first night there, Pelle took everyone out for dinner and drank himself silly. Martin, the editor of the Swedish skate mag Giftorm and a very agreeable fellow in every way imaginable, had accompanied Pelle to write the text for the travel guide they were doing. That night, the two picked a fight with some old German tourists, whose apartment was below ours. I think the Germans might have been called Nazis at some point and some bottles were possibly hurled back and forth. Martin and Pelle passed out when the sun came up and they were both burned and swollen beyond recognition. That didn’t seem to bother anyone. All in all it was a very positive and inspiring time for us all. In the aftermath, when it dawned to me that the nature of the trip had taken a sharp turn towards the murkier backwaters of human existence, I turned to Martin as the last resort to stand up and be counted as the journalist on the trip. Would he take on the task of submitting to print what we’d been through? He couldn’t do it, the cockroach, because he wasn’t on the trip, he said. And this is a guy who wrote a whole book out of thin air on the subject of street horsing. Surely he wasn’t there either? Besides, I could have sworn he really did briefly appear in Gran Canaria during those fearsome nights that were the start of this strange and terrible saga, which set the We team loose in the Spanish islands In varying compositions and degrees of decay. So as a slight change of Ricky’s original master plan, We did not go to Grand Canaria, Ibiza and Mallorca. Some of them went to Canaries, others went to Mallorca, no one made it to Ibiza and a couple of them never left their house or left it for entirely different reasons unknown to me at this point. In attendance in Gran Canaria were Mika Edin, Love Eneroth and Ricky Sandström plus the aforementioned Martin and Pelle. It’s been said before, but let it be said again: Gran Canaria is a skate destination with everything under the sun to be shredded on. Ricky’s brilliant plan for the first leg of the trip was to not have a plan at all. It worked out perfect. Instead of a working holiday where everyone has to get two stills and a sequence, we played it by ear and did whatever felt right at the time. If there was a curb next to where they fell asleep the night before, then that’s what got sessioned the following morning. If the food was good where they had lunch, they didn’t hesitate to stay for dinner. It’s a shame they decided to shelve the travel guide thing, because there’s a thing or two these guys could teach to the masses of skate tourists who arrive in town with their ABD check lists, generators and big plans. Drifting through twilight and dusk, occasionally stopping for a trick or two, and before we knew it that was Gran Canaria done. Baines was busy working on his Blueprint video part and couldn’t make it to Spain, so Ricky hatched a plan to go meet him at his place in Sheffield. Mark had done a good job gathering the troops. When we met at his shop, Story, there wasn’t really any room for a single skater to squeeze in there. Five minutes later the session was on at a newly fixed flat bank. That set the pace for the rest of the day, with close to 20 of us cruising down the streets, skating this and that until the sun went down. Which is exactly how a late summer’s day should go. It rained the next day, but rain in Sheffield is not a problem, if you’re staying with Mark Baines.

His house has a spare bedroom and wireless internet, plus his DVD collection is pretty extensive. Episodes of Lost were mentioned in passing, but the trail of that conversation pretty soon disappeared under the quiet drumming of rain against the windows. Dozing off on Marks couch,thoughts turned to this rapidly unravelling round- up. Somewhere in between times Ibiza was mentioned less and less frequently, until it got binned off and swept under the carpet completely. Mallorca took over a few months later, when Benny Fairfax, Clint Peterson, Tony Silva and Tuukka Korhonen had secured the flat behind Tolo Carbonell’s restaurant for a little get-together. Tolo has an amazing bar –slash- restaurant right on the beach in Mallorca. Behind the establishment he’s got his house that doubles as holiday homes. It couldn’t really be any better: On your way for a morning swim in the sea you can stop for a coffee and a chat at the bar. Tolo built the whole thing with his own two hands and now runs it during the holiday season, which leaves him free to roam and skate all winter, when the island is half empty. Ivan Rodriguez, the Spanish We team manager, organised a car and it was on. A lot of the spots in Mallorca are in front of hotels that are empty in the winter, so you get to skate most of them with no hassle at all. If you go in the winter. We went in September. Clint and Benny have a great gift of making things happen however, and even though the weather and the season might not have been the best ones possible, there was no shortage of shredboarding in Mallorca. They’re the sort of people who won’t worry about a bit of wind and weather or the odd bust here and there. When one session comes to an abrupt end, it’s just an opportunity for them to get a new one going somewhere else. They won’t be left decomposing in the kitchen either, when the skies take a dump. Clint got us in the car more than once dodging heavy showers cursing under our breath to find sun shine waiting only an hour’s drive away.

Sitting in a car with Clint is first class entertainment as well. He’s one of the most observant characters out there and he’s quick to jump into amusing conclusions. As we’re chasing the sun one time he rolls down his window on the back seat and when it stops about an inch short of completely open, he wonders out loud: “Like has that one inch of window ever saved a child from flying out of the car?” He then proceeds into a story about some guy who’s wondering how many pretzels he can eat on one sitting. He doesn’t know. He has to know. Turns out he can eat four thousand pretzels. Not Clint; the dude in the story. When we’re passing a remote shack by the side of the road that has motel written on the wall, Clint’s already asking: “That’s a motel? And when you’re there, what do you do? Eat pretzels?” While We were in Mallorca, both Tolo and Clint had their birthdays one day apart. The night before Tolo’s birthday there was a huge storm. We sat on his porch looking at the night sky over the Mediterranean lighting up like a hotwired Datsun. Too bad we can’t skate tomorrow, I thought. Too bad I can’t do any work, cause we can’t skate. Too bad all I can do is drink whisky. Glassy eyed, I scribbled something in my notebook. “What’s that you’re writing, you taking notes on the trip?” Tuukka asked. That’s right, no one’s safe, I barked at him and turned my back on the frightened expression on his face. Later that night the storm flooded the sewers underneath our basement flat behind the bar. We were too out of it to notice anything until the morning, and by that point Tuukka’s stuff was a foot deep in piss. The stench was something beyond the ability of modern man to describe. You could hear Tony mumbling something in the background, Tuukka was staring at his bag with a blank expression on his face. His iPod and digital camera were floating around in the bag. He wasn’t worried about them though, he said. He got them cheap off someone anyway. Clint rolled over in his bed and said: “Why don’t you burn some incense?”