Don't mess with bueno!

THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT the Bueno Texas road trip. I was asked to write the article because I already work for Thrasher so they didn't have to pay somebody else to write these words. That's pretty thrifty, huh? And I was also asked to write the article because I'm rolled in pretty deep over at the Bueno camp as well. They got me drawing pictures on all of their stuff. The only downside to me writing the Bueno Texas road trip article is that I didn't really go on the trip. I was around for part of it, but I'm pretty sure I missed at least half of the program.

The trip started off in Houston at the Make A Wish Benefit. The Bueno Brigade (Shiloh Greathouse, Staey Lowery, Nate Broussard, and Mark Gutterman) flew into Houston and rented a van. I live in Austin and so it was up to me to find my own way to Houston. No free flights for Sieben. I ended up jumping in a mini-van with some dudes from Oklahoma. What I learned from the Oklahomies is that there is never an inappropriate moment to yell "Fuck You Cocksucker" at full volume. Apparently it is always a good idea. Even in front of the elderly.

SO I RODE IN A MINI-VAN with these Oklahomies (Note 1: these dudes were actual Oklahomies. I'm not using that term lightly. To prove it I'll mention the name of one of the dudes in the van. Gabe Friedman) and I'm pretty sure that they were stoked that when we got to Houston that we were going to be hanging out with Shiloh. Because ... well, he's Shiloh. So anyway, we get to Houston and I try calling Stacy so we can all meet up, but apparently Stacy didn't feel like dealing with drunk Sieben (you can drink a lot of beer in a mini-van from Austin to Houston) so he wasn't picking up. I ended up sleeping on the floor of a hotel room with a bunch of dudes I'd just met. So far the Bueno road trip was going pretty awesome.

The next day I woke up feeling shitty. Kind of like how you feel when you're in your 30s and you wake up hung over on the floor of a crusty hotel room with a bunch of guys in their late teens and early 20s. You know, it's kind of one of those "what the luck am I doing with my life" kind of moments. I think that's called alcohol depression. So I called Stacy and he told me that his phone wasn't getting a signal the night before (at the bowling alley that he and the guys were hanging out at). It seemed like a pretty weak excuse but Stacy's much bigger than I am so I don't argue with him. I just told him I'd see him at the skatepark later on.

SO LATER ON at the skatepark I finally got to meet all of the guys on the Bueno team. It was pretty cool to shake hands with the dudes that I'm working with. Although I kind of wished I had brought another t-shirt with me other than the one with the huge kitty on the front with the American flag bandana around its neck. I like the shirt and all, but I just thought maybe it kind of made a weird first impression.

Anyway, I say hello to the dudes and then they have to make the rounds and go skate and shit and I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing so I'm just kind of walking around hoping that I run into somebody that I know. Luckily I saw my friend Dahveed from San Antonio and he told me that he had an ice chest full of beer in his car. That's pretty much what I did the rest of the day. Stacy called me later in the evening and told me that he and the dudes went back to their hotel. I took the hint and tracked down the Oklahomies and told them that I'd probably be sleeping on their floor again, and they were like, "Thanks for introducing us to Shiloh, dude." And I was like, "I barely met him myself, dudes." And they were like, "Are you drunk?" And I was like, "Yeah, pretty much." And they're like, "We are too. Get your ass in the mini-van."

(Note 2: mini-van driver : not drunk.)

I CALLED STACY LATER that night to see if he and the other guys wanted to drink beer in a dirty hotel room with me and the Oklahomies, but he told me that they were just going to eat dinner and chill so that they could get up early and go street skating the next morning. I told him I'd probably just see him in Austin (which was the next stop on their trip) because the chances of me getting up early and going street skating were pretty much nonexistent. So I slept on a filthy floor again and rode back to Austin the next day and waited for the Bueno dudes to arrive.

That evening I got the call that the Bueno van was rolling into town and I gave directions to a pizza parlor that serves pitchers of Lone Star and headed out to meet the dudes. I arrived at the pizza place a little later than the Bueno Brigade and apparently some sort of altercation had taken place in the parking lot with Alex (the filmer guy who was with them) and this local dude named Cornbread. And as soon as I sat down and said hello to everybody, Alex started yelling at Cornbread from across the room and the scene had every indication that the shit was about to hit the fan.

Let me backtrack a little bit. The first time I met Cornbread was when he was almost hit by a truck in front of my friend Adam's house. He was cruising down the road on his 10 speed, drunk as hell with some headphones on and swerving all over the place and he rode right in front of some dude in a pickup truck and the dude in the truck had to slam on his brakes and he skidded about 10 feet and almost killed Cornbread. The whole thing was pretty fucking scary and crazy. And a few hours later, Cornbread comes riding back down the street and he's all, "Did y'all see me almost get run over? That shit was crazy!" And then he offered us some of his 40oz of malt liquor and proceeded to pitch us this plan he had for refinishing rich people's floors in the neighborhood and tried (unsuccessfully) to recruit my friend Adam and I to join him in his business plan because as he put it, "I need some white boys to knock on doors."

ADAM AND I were both employed full-time so we graciously declined, but we did give him our friend Cary Jackson's cell phone number because that guy never has a job.

But anyway, back to the road trip article. So here's this guy Alex about to get into a fight with Cornbread, and I was a little worried because Alex is kind of built like me (sort of a chicken leg physique) and Cornbread is fairly thick. But beyond being thick, Cornbread is just ... well ... he's just kind of crazier than a shithouse rat. And I didn't really think that Alex's first taste of Austin should be the taste of his own blood. But before I had a chance to try and calm things down, Alex got up from his chair and stormed over to where Cornbread was sitting, and confronted him. And it really looked like fists were about to start flying. But then 10 seconds later he and Cornbread were giving each other one of those manly pat-on-the-back kind of hugs as if they've been homies for life. And then Cornbread pulled his chair over to our table and kicked it with us for the rest of the night. And apparently he's given up on his floor refinishing plan because he spent most of the evening trying to convince Shiloh that he needs to star in the movie that he's writing. Cornbread is so rad.

And honestly, that first night that we hung out in Austin and the filmer almost got into a fight was the most eventful thing that happened while I was hanging out with the dudes. Other than that I just showed them some of the spots in my town and they went to work jumping down shit and jumping over shit and scooting across shit.

It was cool to bring dudes to spots that scare the shit out of me and watch them casually get rad on them. It didn't do a whole hell of a lot for my inferiority complex, but I guess if they'd shown up and we'd gone skating and I was as good as them then our company would be in a shitload of trouble. But the way things are I guess I'd have to say that Bueno will probably be about as popular as Powell Peralta was in the mid '80s. Which kind of sucks because I guess that means I'm going to have to play the McGill character. And shit, at least McGill had the McTwist. All I've got is a kickflip to fakie in a ditch and a backside G-turn. Oh well, fuck it.

So anyway, I guess I'll wrap up this article by saying some shit like, Dude, we all had such a rad time and even though we barely knew each other when the trip started ... No, that shit sucks. I'll just end this article by saying that the next time I get asked to write a road trip article I hope that "road trip" consists of something more than riding in a mini-van to Houston ... (Note 3: The Bueno Brigade also went to San Antonio on this road trip but I didn't get to go because I had to leave town on a previously planned trip. We also didn't get to skate the Banana Farm, the Death Star, or any of my favorite ditches. That being said, I made the dudes promise to come back to Austin in the near future for more of an extended stay so that I could show them why I live here. Maybe by the time they come back I'll actually have that mini-ramp built in my backyard. Yeah, I kind of doubt it too.)

(Note 4: This is the first road trip article that I've ever written and I just reread it and realized that it doesn't really have anything to do with anybody but myself. So I'll add this little part at the end so that it'll be more like the road trip articles that I've read in other magazines: Dude! Mark Gutterman totally farted in the hotel room, Nate Broussard totally skates like he has some secret hidden butterfly wings, this security guard at this one spot was just totally a dick, we all got pretty wasted, and iPod ipod iPod!)