All trucks free of dead raccoons.

MY FRIEND AARON HAS WARNED ME several times about making contact with the legends--the skaters I idolized as a child and now have the opportunity to meet, man to man, as an adult working in the extreme sports world.

"No one needs that kind of disappointment," he's said, alluding to the fact that, despite the grandeur of their rocket airs or magic of their kickflip Casper slides, it's almost impossible for a pro skater to live up to whatever expectations you may have had when the 15-year-old you was taping his photos to the wall or reciting his clever video sound bites to an unimpressed girl.

"You almost shack-wadded your dillet all over the place!" you'd say.

"I want to go home," she'd respond.

"You didn't talk to him, did you?" Aaron asked, when I told him I'd seen Neil Blender several times at a local skatepark.

Hell no, I didn't. What's the point? Best case scenario: we become skate pals and meet each other for the occasional sesh. Worst case: he says something along the lines of, "Fuck off, fat ass! I'm not down with your scene!"

I don't need to take those kind of chances. Not this late in the game. Either way, meeting him now could never be as good as my memories as a kid--standing in the crowd watching him torque out straight-legged handplants, then having him draw one of his cool dogs on the back of my T-shirt. Childhood nostalgia always outshines adult reality.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND: if you came of age between 1986 and 1991, Lance Mountain was pretty much one of your favorite skaters. Starting with the landmark Bones Brigade Video Show (1984) and continuing with Future Primitive and The Search for Animal Chin, Lance became the first personality of the video age. Hawk may have had the contest victories and Cab the stylish suspenders, but it was Mr Mountain who brought the message of skateboarding = fun to the masses with his loose style and gift for physical comedy. He was, for many, the archetype for what it meant to be a skater--a ripper but not a jock, an artist but not "artsy," someone who looked like he was always having a blast on the board. Lance inspired a generation of kids, the straggling, growed-up tail-end of which surrounded him at every demo or shop appearance we went to-lined up with little anecdotes to share or pieces of memorabilia for him to sign.

"You came to my ramp in '87 and my mom made you a chicken salad sandwich!" a dude would announce proudly.

"Oh yeah?" Lance would answer.

"I met you at the Skunk ditch in '85 and you gave me your bearings!" another would say.

"Cool," Lance would answer.

He was happy and receptive to every tale, regardless of if he remembered any of it or not.

"You signed my sweatpants in 1989!" they'd say.

"Rad" he'd respond.

No one left feeling ignored or slighted. Sometimes the entire team would be in the van while Lance held court with a pack of grown men for hours. He brought so much happiness to whoever came up to him--it was like he was Muhammad Ali or something.

Though there were no huge, unsettling surprises (no white power or Prince tattoos or anything), he wasn't exactly the guy I thought I knew from all those videos. There's really no way that he could have been. What? Is he supposed to run and do a backflip off the wall for every fan he meets?

"Nice to meet you. Wanna go play fingerboards in the sink?"

"Do I? That'd be rad!"

No, Lance is a very normal person. He's not especially wacky nor is he eager to reminisce over or analyze his place in the rich tapestry of modern skate history-not that I didn't try and force him.

"Why did you use PVC coping on the Chin ramp?"

"Did Powell acknowledge that Bonite[TM] was a scam?"

"How many back-to-back McTwists did you ever do?"

"What was Mike McGill really like?"

I hassled him for hours. In all honesty, the only difference between me and the dudes in the huddle with him after the demos was that I was around long enough for the magic to kind of wear off.

There was plenty of time for Q&A on this demo tour. We covered a lot of ground between stops and often drove until four in the morning to stay on schedule. The whole team came, except for Rodrigo, who was recovering from knee surgery and The Scorpion, who was sorely missed. Bob also took off after a couple of days due to some contest obligations, but I did get to see him tear up the legendary Kona park.

There were two vans--a big one and a little one. I was in the little one the whole time with video man Kurt Hayashi and some combination of Lance, Jani, Weiger or Jon Humphries. The little van was pretty tame, with Lance's Clash-heavy I-pod or mine which is pretty much full of stuff that only I like. The big van had a much more festive atmosphere with 50 Cent and Sean Paul in heavy rotation and Javier setting up some sort of gypsy camp in the back seats. At one point I looked in to see him hanging his socks on a makeshift clothesline. Lance reckons he might have even been cooking back there:

Newer skaters who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about are invited to take this time to reflect on their own fond memories--411 #33 or whatever.

IN KEEPING WITH ALL THE IN-VAN back-in-the-day talk, we kept bumping into '80s skate luminaries as we combed the Southeast. Though we saw neither hide nor hair of Chuck Dinkins or Fred Reeves, we ran into plenty of others including the one-time-egg-plant-challenged Donnie Griffin (now a father and mortgage broker), freestyle sensation Reggie Barnes (owner of Eastern Distribution), formerly sha-danked Ray Underhill (Eastern employee) and, most exciting, Atlanta's Tommy Kay (mustached Trashmore fan in Future Primitive who reminds his mother to "Keep the dead raccoon out of my truck, please!") We also ran into a kid claiming to be Jeff Hedges' cousin--an assertion so random it had to be true. He even looked kind of like him.

In Charleston, South Carolina a motley contingency of older skaters showed up at the rather tame street-course demo specifically to invite Lance to ride the nearby Hanger bowl. Actually, invite is kind of a mild word--more like force. They wouldn't take no for an answer.

"You're gonna come so I can show you how we skate around here!" local legend Jimmy Leaphart announced.

The Hanger is the giant, thrice-rebuilt wooden bowl that was once a feature of a skatepark but now sits in a guy named Hank's large front yard. Along with Skatopia and a few remote pockets around Florida, the Hanger represents the last of a dying tradition of ultra-hesh backyard vert riding scenes which once dominated and characterized the Southeast skate experience. These guys are fuckin' doing it!

Old, a little less old, men, women, with teeth or without--the Hanger skaters are getting busy like it's 1985 with no rat's ass given to what the rest of the skate world is doing or thinking. Jimmy Leaphart was screaming the entire time--pounding beers or strumming a little air guitar between action-packed runs which included more grinds, slides and hip transfers than most folks can handle.

"KEEP YOUR CIGARETTE AWAY FROM THAT BABY!"

A MOM SCOLDED before dropping in to a healthy indy air. She cradled the infant between runs, knee pads still in place. The Hanger is a beautiful scene like no other.

As was mentioned, in Atlanta Lance was reunited with Chin ramp builder Tommy Kay who took us to a great backyard pool at a hotel behind a titty bar.

"We're gonna get arrested, I just know it!" Lance kept saying on the way over. Here's a Mountain fun fact: despite his skate and destroy history and reputation as a backyard pool destroyer, Lance has a very healthy respect for the law.

"I'd rather sit in the car than skate somewhere I might get arrested," he explained.

I've seen it in action! One time at these full pipes in Long Beach, a security guard called the cops and the next thing you know a police helicopter was circling, telling us, "Stay where you are!" Lance just bolted. He got in his car and sped off, leaving his teenage son behind with us to deal with the fuzz.

"I'm not gonna get arrested just because he's too slow!" he later explained.

At the pool, Lance eventually relaxed enough to get some airs and grinds. Afterwards, he jumped the fence back into the strip joint parking lot where we left the van. Hiding between two parked cars, he was in the midst of changing back into his pants when he met eyes with the venue's security guard. The guard was in one of the cars Lance was hiding beside.

"I realized; here I am in a strip joint parking lot with my pants at my ankles and the security guard is looking right at me," Lance later explained. Apparently this type of behavior is par for the course at that establishment, because the security guard didn't say anything and we left without incident.

LANCE IS GONNA BE SO PISSED...

Most of the tour was demos, shop appearances and autograph sessions. We got out to street skate exactly twice. The team was really good-natured and weathered some of the boring times without a lot of the sour behavior or tantrums I've seen on similar tours. It rained, we drove, we occasionally got out of the vans to eat Cracker Barrel--everyone was cool the whole time.

I'm afraid that Lance is gonna be pissed I spent so much of this article writing about him. He's got kind of a pessimistic attitude about his continuing A fame, even though he totally deserves it. He's Lance Mountain, for Pete's sake. Dude, sometimes I can't even believe I actually know him!