Making friends is easy *.

COMPLAINING ABOUT THE SIZE of your airline seat on an all-expenses-paid trip across the world to ride skateboards is like complaining that the chocolate chips in your cookies are too small, or that your girlfriend is just too damn fine. It's the territory of assholes, a territory I've mined repeatedly over the years.

MY BOSS JAKE once wrote a caption for a photo of Karma Tsocheff crashed out on a bench. It read something like, "Skaters are like dogs. They know when to bust and when to snooze." Try as I might, I've never been one of those dogs. Maybe a poodle, but never any sort of respectable dog. Never a spaniel. Small seats bother me. So does cigarette smoke and slightly burnt toast and poor water pressure. I get bummed when the tour van doesn't have AC or when the remote doesn't work. I hate taking dumps in public restrooms. I get cranky. In short, I'm the exact opposite of a proper Hellrider.

My yearning for comfort extends to the company I keep. After a few harsh tours in my early years, I've clung like a chimp to the same crews--dudes I can have a good time with, be myself around and still get awesome photos for the mag. Luckily for me they're all really good, so no one's really complained that much so far.

I'VE CARRIED AROUND a certain level of guilt about my up-tightedness, especially when I'm with the unbotherable (aka P-Stone), and I've made small steps--albeit pretty half-assed ones--to become a more go-with-the-punches-the-floor-is-my-bed type of guy. I mean, shit, would Duane Peters be known as the Master of Disaster if he were also known as the dude who had to bring his own hypoallergenic pillow on tour?

Which is why my self-improvement program was completely thrown off when, upon entering the belly of the giant Sydney-bound 747, I was directed not to follow the throngs shoving listlessly back into coach but to make a sharp left and ascend the stair-case to the plane's second story. Yes, it seems after more than 200,000 air miles in pursuit of stoke--after countless trips in the Southwest backwards seats, that 16-hour torture session in the non-reclining row by the cans on the way to Tokyo, and the pressed ham-a-thon I once endured sitting bitch between two 300-pounders en route to Hamburg--I had finally made it to Business Class. Holy shit.

The first most startling thing about Business Class is just exactly how much room you get. After stowing your bags and stuffing the giant tote of airline-provided comfort items in the seat pocket, you take a load off and find, to your utter shock, you can straighten out your legs, point your toes and still not touch the seat in front of you. You pretty much have a miniature dance floor between you and your neighbor and could do a whole battery of those Sit and Be Fit exercises with little worry of smacking another passenger. The seats are wide enough to hold you and a modestly-sized loved one and recline with Lazy Boy precision to form a bed horizontal enough to inspire thoughts of joining the Mile High Club with yourself.

The second most amazing thing about Business Class is the Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation the flight attendants take once they pass through that magical privacy curtain. No longer are they disciplinarians and reluctant assistants; in Business Class, the flight attendants are your friends. No, more than that, they're your fans. They compliment and joke and bring you a glass of champagne before you've even gotten settled. You toast the flight and your amazing good fortune to be one of the lucky ones who ride in the top of the plane while so many squirm like rats in the coach rows beneath. It's as if you're both in on some sort of unspoken joke. The flight attendant, whom you've already learned is named Joyce and has a son who loves skateboarding too, tucks you in just like on a commercial, and your head swims with the luxury.

Any concerns of traveling with an unfamiliar skate crew softened after a few minutes in seat 3A, and I decided that all of the members of the Nike skateboarding team were just friends I hadn't met yet. Since no one likes to be left out I'll tell you that our posse was me, Paul Rodriguez, Reese Forbes, Wieger Van Wageningen, Omar Salazar, Dan Murphy, Bjorn Johnston, Danny Supa, Kurt Hyashi and team manager Hunter Muraira. Once in Oz we also cruised with locals Lewis Marnell, Nugget, Chris Middlebrook, Dustin Dollin, Steve Gourlay and Dave Chami. Wep, I think that's everybody.

REESE FORBES LOOKS LIKE A MANNEQUIN. Not that he's in anyway stiff or artificial; the dude's just seriously easy on the eyes. It's as if Michelangelo's David jumped down off his podium, put on a pair of pants and started ollieing. Want some Forbes fun facts? Well, besides being from the DC area, Reese also inexplicably has braces on the inside of his top teeth. A mannequin with braces? Well, yes. It seems Reese thinks he's not handsome enough and must correct some sort of minor orthodontic imperfection. Shit, if it wasn't already hard enough for us ugly dudes. What do I have to do? I'd need a brace for my whole fuckin' face. Reese also runs the Rasa Libre company of kind brothers, yet I'm pretty sure he does not toke the Buddha. He's also got a great sense of humor. I think I'll stop here before I start talking about how blue his eyes are. Jesus Christ.

I was a little worried about going on a trip with Danny Supa. Well, not Supa particularly, just a dope New Yorker. I'm not sure where I got this notion (although a trip around '98 with Harold Hunter may have been part of it), but my general impression of New York skaters was that, although they might be great at speaking the latest jive and wearing puffy coats, they weren't always the most motivated when it came to riding the board. Boy, was I wrong. Dead wrong! Danny Supa is a knockout. Seriously, he's the nicest kid and totally hell-bent on ripping. No weird handshakes. No all-day weed or Foot Locker missions. I think I must have seen Kids one too many times. I'm so sorry New York. Please forgive me even if you can never truly accept me.

I'D MET WIEGER BEFORE, and although I've always been able to pronounce his name (Vee-ger Von Vog-a-Ning-un) he was consistently frustrated at the other's attempts, done especially poorly to infuriate him. In retaliation he would loudly mispronounce our names over and over again. "Burnaaaughhh! Burneeeachhgg!" he'd groan in the elevator.

A few years ago there was an active movement in professional skateboarding to rename the talent that was filtering in from around the globe. It worked sometimes (Diego Bucchieri becoming "The Butcher," and Rodrigo Teixeira shortened to "Rodrigo Tx"), but was a disaster for others (attempting to get the kids to call Danny Fuenzalida "The Chilean Prince" being the most heinous example). Ed Templeton and I once made a game out of giving skaters with foreign names new souped-up Americanized ones. It's fun. Karma Tsocheff becomes Karl the Chef. Rodrigo Lima becomes Rodney Lime. Arto Saari is changed to Arthur Sorry and so on. When we first told Diego he was going to be known as Doug Cherry I think he thought we were serious for a second.

"Fuck that, Doug Cherry! I am The Butcher!" he snapped back.

Luckily no one ever took us up on our ideas. But if they did, Wieger's new name would have been Willy Van Wilder.

Omar Salazar is an extremely enthusiastic young man from Sacramento. He filmed every bit of the two-week trip with a little video camera and soaked it all in with the wide-eyed optimism we should all have. After a day at Torquay, we stopped at a golf course where a herd of kangaroos hang out and Omar practically tried to jump in one of their pouches. They hissed at him warily as he edged closer and closer. Omar got hurt the first day, which explains why all he gets is the 'roo shot. But he's still a certified hitter.

When the other guys were calling Dan Murphy "The Birdman," I thought it was some sort of Tony Hawk reference that I wasn't privy to. I soon learned it had nothing to do with the inventor of the 900. It's just 'cause Dan is off his fucking rocker.

"Squawk! Squawk!" he yelled from a treetop.

"What's Dan doing in that tree2" I asked.

Apparently the answer was plainly obvious. He's The Birdman.

Dan's awesome, even if not the finest strategist in the world. On our first day at Melbourne's popular spot the Drains, Dan got it in his head that instead of rolling down the massive banks to hit the gaps he'd prefer to try and jump the whole dang thing. Twenty-five tries later, The Bird was flattened. And then he got sunburned. And then he drank all the booze in Melbourne. After a couple days of recovery, Dan decided that instead of easing back onto the streets, his first point of business was to go back and make that suicide drop at the Drains. It seems the problem wasn't because it was gigantic or had a rough landing or had downhill runway. The reason he couldn't make the crippling gap was because he needed to go 180. Another 150 tries and The Bird finally pulled it, though not without a hefty beating. He was out for the rest of the trip. Two weeks, one spot, two beatings--but still, The Bird flew.

PAUL RODRIGUEZ is one of the more popular of the new skaters today, but he wasn't at all what I think of when I picture teenage millionaires. There was no gaudy jewelry, no boasting or bragging, no retarded trap. It seems even if Paul has a taste for some of life's finer things and the sweet sounds of modern hip-hop, he doesn't make it his entire personality. Instead, he was mostly just quiet. Aside from a brief conversation on the better points of Alexander the Great and the film DC Cab, Paul let his skating do the talking--tipping it to shreds when he liked a spot, and sitting thoughtfully under headphones when he didn't.

The luxury didn't stop when we got off the plane in Melbourne. The Adelphi is what's known as a boutique hotel, which means that the staff members all look like they're in a band and you're not sure whether the weird-shaped cubes in the lobby are for sitting on or are some sort of art project. The halls and rooms were awash in Ikea-style stainless steel and cream-colored laminated hardboard, and Kurt noticed that if you had an Allen wrench you could conceivably take the entire hotel apart. The bathrooms featured one long steel sink that looked salvaged from a dance club and the shower heads sprayed carelessly onto the polished black tile floors, kept at bay only by a slight glass divider and a center-placed drain. Rather than slink past reception like you would at an average American Super 8, I'd often exit the lobby elevator to find the guys engaged in lively and flirtatious conversation with the beautiful and intriguing staff.

"Get over here, Mike," they'd laugh out. "Inga's telling us about the time she roadied for Morrissey!" There was no zoning out to TV or napping for the Nike team. When they weren't out ripping it was time for shopping! Apparently one of the many, many perks of tiding for the world's largest footwear manufacturer is that you can go on free shopping sprees at any of their many retail centers any time you want. Often the dudes couldn't even find shoes they wanted so they'd use up their shopping allowance on whatever else was there--jerseys, bags. One time they all came back bouncing basketballs. Other shopping excursions included afternoon trips to Quiksilver and morning ventures to Volcom, each yielding heaping bags of goodies for the guys. I'm the type of dude who's embarrassed to ask my friends who own their own companies for free stuff, so I found the amount of goods they were accumulating decadent.

"Why do you even want to drag all that stuff around?" I'd ask.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" they'd respond.

It should be noted that I am a little older than the average skater, so I am fully open to the idea that this can be chalked up to me just not getting it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's it.

MY FRIEND Andrew Mapstone has always spoken highly of Bjorn Johnston, the Kiwi powerhouse, and he was indeed totally pleasant and radical. Since I can't think of anything especially funny to tell you about Bjorn I'll give you a short and shitty lesson about his home country, New Zealand. New Zealand is off the West coast of Australia. It consists of two islands and its native people are the Maoris. Instead of saying "bro," the Maoris say "brew." In Australia they call New Zealand "NZ" for short, except they don't pronounee it "enn-zee," the say, "enn-zed." Did I mention that Australians call the letter Z "zed?" Yeah. They also call crosswalks "zebra crossings," except, you guessed it, they pronounce it like "Debra." Australians say all kinds of funny things, less so if they're from big cities like Melbourne and Sydney, and more so if they're from out in the cuts. You should hear Matt Mumford. Get a few beers in him and it sounds like Crocodile Dundee is in the bar. I guess that doesn't have much to do with Bjorn or New Zealand, but they're both great guys, Matt and him. New Zealand's real good too. I went there for my honeymoon.

ONE NIGHT DUSTIN DOLLIN treated us to a full-on gourmet barbecue at his elegantly Goth-themed home with his better half, Shannon, bringing out course after fantastic course. Knowing the wasted, screeching hellion of yesteryear, I would have never imagined that he would ever be so domesticated (or have such a great lady friend). Dustin's a champ. In Sydney we started out at some apartments in Chinatown but soon relocated to the W Hotel after Reese and Paul spent an afternoon there shooting photos for a lad's mag. How fancy is the W? Well fuckin' Fabio was staying there! No shit. The l Can't Believe It's Not Butter guy! Other celebrities we saw included some skinny big-lipped model I vaguely recognized from TV and the skateboarding industry's

Rick Howard and Megan Baltimore. There were paparazzi posted up outside the front door to shoot the stars that strode in and out, and the bar was like an exclusive club with disco lights and a velvet rope and everything. It was a total shiny shirt freak-out, but Kurt and I had a great time hanging out in our room ordering $12 cookies and watching The Naked News on the Australian equivalent of Cinemax. The showerheads came equipped with temperature gauges and the toilets had two flush settings one for number ones and one for number twos. Sometimes I treated myself to the latter, even when I'd only peed. After all, I was the goddamn guest. The days flew by as the dudes did demos and shop appearances and we went out to eat every night and got drunk. I got to meet Lee Ralph and skate the ancient parks of my childhood dreams. I shot heaps of photos and don't remember getting pissed off once. At the end of every day we'd drop the van with the valet, return to our luxurious, climate-controlled and immaculately cleaned rooms, and sink into the mothering comfort of the 400-thread-count sheets. If I could move my wife and dog out, I'd still be there. I think Paul might have put it best when he said, "I don't know how I'm ever gonna go back on a regular tour after these Nike trips." And while he'll probably never have to find out, I know how I'll do it--go back to coach and the La Quinta and the fuckin' Denny's superbird. With tears running down my face.