Jetset: Osiris whirlwind jaunt to japan/puerto rico.

YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF, "WHY DOES THIS DUDE KEEP GOING ON OSIRIS TOURS?"

Well, they pay me a bunch of money to go to exotic parts of the world with my friends. When I tell people I'm going on an Osiris tour they imagine me trapped in a small room with T-Bone, the Kasper and Smolik (who hasn't been on the team in two years). Chad Knight, Jerry Hsu, and Adam Louder are three of my favorite people to be around, so going on tour with them is great. Chris Dobstaff is kind of a loner, but fun to travel with nonetheless. Chany Jeanguenin came on the Japan part, and is an awesome guy but since we didn't manage to shoot any skate photos I won't mention him again.

Neither of these trips were tours. The trips revolved more around mall poster signings and a tradeshow cameo. Most of the time we were arguing with the distributor just to give us some time to actually go out and do some real street skating. I mean, it's a good deal for me to get to tag along, but scrounging an article together is pretty tough.

THE G-EDDY AWARDS

There is something great about tour that makes people lose it. An oral tradition of people losing it on tour is "tour lore." You should try to avoid entering the annals of tour lore at all costs. Every dumb thing you do will be told repeatedly on future tours. Sometimes tour lore can be so great that it is passed on to the lore of other teams, and sometimes it ends up in magazines or videos. Tour is a lot like summer camp, and the lore is the equivalent of campfire ghost stories. Exchanged during long van rides, tour lore can be far creepier. The worst falls under the category of "career enders." Jerry Hsu claims he has a photographic collection of career enders, a little book of blackmail he shows no one but assures me that, if published, many of today's top pros would be toppled.

The G-Eddy awards are a tribute to tour lore. Most of these fall under the "you had to be there" category. Two anonymous members of the team came up with these. I had to remove a couple awards involving the sexual orientation of two well-known skate people, and one for insinuating that a threesome had taken place between a young skater's mom and John Cougar Mellencamp. I'm not that big of a dick. Most of these awards could not be independently verified.

JAPAN

It's not all their fault-actually it's mostly my fault. I have a tendency to instigate laziness. For example, one day me and Jerry were wandering around Tokyo looking for spots that Koston hadn't ruined yet, and we came upon a pretty nice ledge off some stairs. Jerry said he could shoot a frontside crooks on it. Then I opened my mouth. "That would be sick...hey, are you hungry?" Suddenly we're eating sushi, drinking Said, and the photo is long since forgotten.

The Japan trip coincided with a big Japanese trade show. The show was fun for about five minutes, but the distributor insisted on our presence there for five hours at a time, three days in a row My favorite part was the unusual Thrasher booth, full of all kinds of high-end fleece jackets and pants that zip apart in 18 different ways embroidered with Thrasher logos. I think Phelps got hard up for some beer money one night and made a rather odd licensing agreement. But I did manage to steal a nice Japan only edition Gonz T-shirt from them.

The trip ended with Jerry, Adam, and I losing our minds. Jerry thought he was Luke Skywalker, while me and Adam hid from a dragon. Chany had his underwear on his head. Ed Dominick yelled at the locals, demanding he be taken to a strip club. "Licky dicky," he yelled incessantly managed to live entirely out of vending machines.

PUERTO RICO

So Jetset was in effect, and we landed in Puerto Rico. Chany disappeared and Jerry hurt his back, so we traded them in for Chad Knight. I've known Chad since we were in high school in Ohio. We have since joined forces in the name of evil. The hotel in Puerto Rico was this fancy yuppie resort. In close proximity was a state-sponsored cockfighting arena. At night we'd go to the bar and charge $5.75 Budweisers to our evil distributor Gustavbro. We'd get a ton of beers, and write huge tips to the sexy waitresses. It was so rock star it hurt. Any of you young rippers looking for a shoe sponser should try to get on Osins. Your friends might pick on you, but you're the one sitting on a troppical island drinking beer with exotic ladies.

Chad and everyone went out to a club one night. I wake up in the morning, no Chad. I go to the other rooms and they say, "Oh man, he went home with a fat chick with a shaved head, who looked just like Nel Carter from Gimmie a Break," Three O' clock the next day and Chad still hasn't turned up. It was poster signing time at the mall; the show must go on. I decided I Would take one for the team and pretend I was him. What I thought would be funny turned into the most embarrassing situation of my life. I put on an Osiris T-shirt, a pair of D3s, and a G-Bag blaring the Osiris CD (I especially like the song that goes: "Who's shoes are the tightest? Osiris!"). Upon entering the skate shop in the mall we were greeted by at least 100 screaming kids; one even yelled "I love you!" Maybe some skaters get a little thrill out of this but I had never felt like a bigger idiot in my life. I sat down, signed a couple things and got out of there. On the way out I passed the line outside the store. I could feel them pointing a t me, trying to guess who I was. There was a group of 30 kids following me. I explained that I wasn't a pro, but the kids said "Just sign this anyway!" I signed one thing, and that's when the shitstorm started. I had to sit there and sign posters for the next two hours. I signed each one with a different name. Finally we get back to the hotel and there Chad was, with his face so swollen that he looked like Corky from Life Goes On. The night before--after everyone saw him with the fat chicks--Chad claims he met some hot girls (Code: He left with the busted ones). On the way to their place two club-type guys knocked him out. He woke up in an alley at 10:30 the next day, robbed and swollen. He then managed to find a taxi who gave him a free ride.