My heart pumps Fanta!

Ed and I set up this trip to Spain months earlier in his office. I've got an inside connection, so when looking on his big Toy Machine calendar I passed on the US tour, skipped over the Euro-contest weeks and went straight for the juiciest time slot--the last two weeks in Europe before the team was set to come home--a baker's dozen days of pure street action.

I talked to Ed a week before I was to meet them. In addition to their desire for the raw streets, I found out Caswell had won the Lausanne contest and Ed had knocked himself out, again (and most probably given Deanna a near-heart attack). This was his third or fourth concussion in two years and he was feeling understandably sketched out (see O'Dell's photo if you want to know why).

On July 15th, Nate Broussard and I flew out to meet the rest of the team: Ed and Deanna, Diego Bucchieri, Caswell Berry, Austin Stephens and Dave Huang, the filmer.

I had set up a rental van to be picked up at the airport, but somewhere along the way, Ed had talked himself out of getting it and cancelled the reservation.

"Taking metro and skating is way easier!" he told me. I'm not sure who told him this, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a photographer. "Yeah. We'll just skate from spot to spot!" My back started aching in anticipation.

In theory, the metro is a great way to see and skate the city. It really is, if your skate mission is one of those cruise-the-streets, carving-in-and-out, popping-loads-of-superfluous-ollies-a-la-The-Bones-Brigade-in-Animal- Chin-type jaunts. It's sweet. However, the modern skate adventure involves such high-tech photography requirements and heavy production slant that the metro/skating method is really more of a pain in the ass and not much like those "skateboarding=freedom" essays you read about in SLAP. In practice you can take the metro across town, hoof it six blocks to the spot, get kicked out in two minutes and spend another hour getting across town to the next spot. If you're the average European skater whose baggage includes three Euros and a packet of hashish, shit, go for it, Unfortunately, I have the Big Bag. I hate to even bring it up again. I feel like a baby, always complaining about the stupid bag, but the camera gear I deal with weighs about 150 pounds and is killing me.

I whined, We took multiple taxis for a couple days. Then we finally got rental cars.

There was a three-day delay getting the rental cars because we had to wait until one with an automatic transmission was available. That's right, between six grown men and Deanna, I was the only one who could drive a stick. And boy, was I a jerk about it.

"You can't drive a stick? You Orange County babies! I bet you don't know how to work a lawn mower either!" I accused.

"Yeah I do, you pay the man 20 bucks and he mows it," Ed said.

Actually, Ed never said this, but in the skit I created, this was his line. It was an imaginary conversation I kept going through anytime the issue came up. I also co-opted some lines from the Vincent Gallo film, Buffalo 66.

"What is this shifter car?" I had Ed saying. "I can't drive this shifter car! I drive luxury cars. Have you heard of a Cadillac El Dorado? I drive luxury cars. They shift themselves. My cars shift themselves! I can't drive this shifter car!"

It got annoying, my skit. But somehow I couldn't stop myself from reeling through the whole routine, whenever the topic of the cars came up.

"Go ahead. Finish it," Ed would tell me anytime I started into the lines about the shifter cars. "Now talk about how I don't know how to mow the lawn." Ed's a good sport about stuff like that.

So my car was the shifter car and Ed's was the luxury. They were Citroens, a French economy brand, and were pretty much pieces of shit with the responsiveness and power of a reconditioned riding lawn mower.

Driving in Barcelona is kind of fun because it's so sketchy. Not Mexico sketchy. There were no five-year-olds driving three wheelers on the freeway or anything like that. It's just that, as in most of Europe, the cities were built pre-automobile which makes for some tight streets and loads of confusing one-ways, round-a-bouts and dead ends.

The luxury car's door got gouged by a parking lot attendant and I accidentally feeble grinded a median in the shifter. No additional charges showed up on the bill, so I guess the damage was minimal. Another good thing about driving in Barcelona is that you can pretty much park anywhere, if only for a short time. There are never any parking spots anyway, so you just pull up onto the sidewalk and flip the hazards. But the best thing about driving was the amount of ground we were able to cover in a day. This was a working trip after all.

Barcelona is a hot spot, that much the nerds among you already know. At first I was hesitant to do another Barcelona trip. I went there last year with the Flip dudes, in June with Circa, and now again with the Machine. I have a hard time gauging whether or not people really catch onto this stuff or not. When I meet regular kids out skating, about five-percent seem to be on the same page as me and the sponsored ams and pros as far as their concern with videos and spots and what not. The rest of them (the bulk) seem to be more of the I-just-wannacatch-air persuasion and usually ask me (the 30-ish guy shooting the photos) if I am sponsored or if I'm sponsored by Thrasher, or they want to know if Krepers are good trucks or concerns of that type. If this describes you, consider yourself lucky to be unburdened with the ridiculous pieces of trivia us five-percenters have gotten caught up in. Point being, I've come to the conclusion that most of the readers probably don't know Barcelona from Boston and could keep goi ng there month after month for a year before the masses would rise up and pull me from the throne. Besides it's a great city for street skating.

Word must be getting around, 'cause a Texas Death Match worth of pro skaters were in town the same time as us. Jason Dill, Rob Dyrdek, Stefan Janoski, Lee Smith, Jamie Thomas, Bryan Herman, Spanky Long, Dustin Dollin, Frank Gerwer, Chico Brenes, John Rattray, Brian Wenning, Kenny Hughes, Terry Kennedy, Clint Peterson, Karma Tsocheff, Seth Macullum, Steve Bailey, Roberto Aleman and Paul Shier, as well as locals Enrique Lorenzo, Alex Castaneda, the Hernandezes and Daniel Lebron were all cruising the city searching for new spots and sessioning the popular ones.

There's been talk about the blowing out of Barcelona. For the sake of the locals, I hope it doesn't happen. They really are some of the nicer skaters you could ever meet. I know everyone says things like this (foul ass-kissing moves to get a high five and a free sweatshirt from cool-skate-shop X in big-time-skate-city Y), but in the case of Barcelona, it's true. Have you ever met Enrique? He's the happiest man on Earth. The dude is always smiling. I bet he even smiles while he's sacking rails!

While getting kicked out of a double-kinked hubba ledge, we finally got a taste of some of that anti-American sentiment I've heard so much about. The concerned citizen who was kicking us out was livid.

"After meeting you, I think I agree with the people who say America got what it deserved!" the woman told us.

I was dumbfounded, There it was. The rumors were true.

She repeated it several more times while defending her precious ledge from the curse of discoloration. Granted, the ledge was getting scuffed. The marks might stay there forever. No, we had not paid any taxes for its creation and maintenance. It was not meant for that. No, we were not even Spanish. All of these points were presented by our antagonist, as well as some anecdotal evidence of other American affronts she had encountered in her lifetime--a rude exchange with an American on the subway once, a general sense of bad attitudes and selfishness she had picked up on. We were loud and demanding, too, apparently.

But did all of that really equal planes into buildings?

"Yes," she concurred, "Maybe it will be a wake-up call to you."

We were going to have to agree to disagree on that one.

Much of my exploration of international travel is usually distilled down to the little idiosyncratic differences that strike me funny and that I think others might get a kick out of--humorous translation issues, weird toilets, sickening food, etc. However, writing off another country via sweeping generalizations has never been anything I've given much credence to. But after meeting that woman, with her insane bandwagon logic, I decided to try out an ignorant-but-compelling opinion to see how it felt; just walk it around for awhile and see if it suited me.

"These Europeans are filthy people," I told whoever would listen, "You don't think so? Well, they live in their own excrement!"

Not that it's legless, my claim. Aside from constant pee stink, we saw public defecation on multiple occasions in Barcelona. Apparently the Spanish are taking the whole children-area-gift-from-God idea literally because the little angels are encouraged to do their duty directly on the concrete whenever the urge strikes them. At the popular Zipper rail, we watched in amazement as a woman held her toddler in an awkward hanging V-press and aimed its pooper (and the accompanying refuse spray) not 10 feet from where we were standing. She then grabbed a piece of paper from her purse, wiped up, and threw that on the ground too, Americans might be loud and rude, but I'm hard pressed to recall a time when a member of my family took a crap on the sidewalk

"Yep. What can you say about a group of people who don't have the good sense God gave 'em to keep their doody off the sidewalks? Filthy! That's what. Filthy savages."

I didn't believe it for a second. It was a just a nice bit of harmless but semi-compelling doctrine to throw around--a rock I had in my pocket, to tell myself that I could break windows, too, if I wanted.

"That lady must be crazy," Spanish skater Alex Castaneda told me, when I told him about the woman at the ledge.

I knew she was, but it was nice to get a confirmation from one of her countrymen. I put away my rocks.

So back to the fun differences--the variations of custom and behavior that teach us about other people, and even a little bit about ourselves. Like the fact that, over the course of my two-week trip, I probably ate 30 ice creams.

At least 30, and not all due to classic skate photographer gluttony--it was just that on a lot of days ice cream was the only thing I could find that I even wanted to eat. Though Spain is renowned for its famous dishes (paella, a delicious soup, most often mentioned), Spaniards must eat at home a lot, 'cause the food in most of the Barcelona restaurants seemed god-awful to our spoiled American palettes. Weird old-looking sandwiches on rock-hard bread with corn snuck into them, fish-paste pizza, and potato-egg things were the mainstays of 'round-the-town snacking. For better or worse, the convenience store is non-existent in Spain, which means most items have to be purchased from behind the counter of mom-and-pop bars. Lunch time means entering a tavern filled with old men smoking and drinking, going up to the most bartendery among them and pointing at items behind dirty glass or up on the wall and hoping for the best. Should he or she ask you a simple question such as, "Do you want this heated up?" or "Do you want this to go?" you either smile dumbly and point some more, or panic and run Out because you speak no Spanish. A few experiences like this might explain why more often than not I was satisfied to just eat ice cream, which could be purchased easily from one of a million stands. The only other constant in our diet was Fanta, which we drank instead of water. Seriously, everyone but Ed and Deanna drank a gallon of Fanta a day. Fanta is like the no-name grocery-store soda from the US. It's everywhere in Spain. By the third day, I was sweating lemon-lime.

I mentioned earlier that visiting different countries is a great opportunity to learn a little about yourself. Well, the thing I most often learn about myself while visiting Spain is that I'm a dumbass who needs to learn some Spanish.

After two trips to Mexico and South America and three to Spain (not to mention I live in Southern California, not exactly whitesville, demographically,) my Spanish is still horrific. I can order food in restaurants (if there's a menu to cheat off of) and can get to the airport in a but other than that I'm limited to a few useless phrases and an overwhelming urge to describe every new noun I learn as fantastic.

Pantalones fantastico.

Try it, it's fun.

A box of rotting fish showed up on the ground at the Sants ledges one morning where it stayed for several days as passing skaters wafted the acrid stink back and forth.

"iEl caja de pescado!" I announced, so pleased with myself for stringing together a phrase in Spanish without any help. "Hey Diego! ""El caja de pescado!" I shouted to him.

"Finally," he deadpanned, "After five trips to Spain you finally know how to say the box of fish."

I thought Diego would have peen happier about my progressing language skills since he was once again forced into the role of official team translator--a position that quickly grew to include all duties that involved speaking to anyone in Spanish.

One night Diego had parked the luxury car on the street in front of the hotel and told Ed, "Hey, ask the front desk if we have to move the car." Ed did this and then told me, "Hey Mike, the guy at the front desk said we have to move the car." At this point we both went to bed.

The next morning the car got towed. Diego was dumbfounded.

"Did you ask the front desk if we had to move the car?" Diego asked Ed.

"Yeah, and I told Mike about it," Ed replied. I shrugged. I guess we figured Diego would take care of it because he spoke Spanish,

Diego spent the next four hours and $150 getting the car back.

Caswell's Spanish was in fine form as well, as he repeatedly argued in English with people kicking us out in Spanish and even said, "Shut your mouth, old man!" to an elderly gentleman. Actually, he might have gotten that one from me, but as I said it in jest and under my breath, Caswell delivered it with the conviction of an ornery teen fully annoyed.

One afternoon at the MACBA ledges, Ed slipped out on a nollie noseslide and took it directly to the tailbone--no hands down, no feet, just straight to the ass. It immediately swelled up like a plum and Ed had his pants down every five minutes so we could monitor the spread of the purple wine-stain-like bruise that stretched from his crack across the cheek like a ghoulish catcher's mitt.

"It's numb!" he kept saying. "Deanna pinched it as hard as she could and I didn't feel a thing!"

The ass was well documented, including by a tourist with a video camera, and Ed slammed on it a few more good times before the trip was over resulting in a position I like to call The Whimpering Flounder.

Production-wise, the trip was good. Everyone was ripping and the fear of Spanky and Herman doing all the tricks in town had everyone on their toes. It was cool to be able to go skate everyday without the typical long driving times we suffer back home. Diego announced he's moving to Barcelona at his earliest convenience.

"Finally, a place I can skate every day and speak Spanish!" he kept saying.

New Toy Machine amateur Nate Broussard was having a difficult time getting any photos or footage on the trip. It's always hard being the new guy, so to take the edge off and focus on the next day's ripping, Nate would get shit-face loaded every night. After staggering to the room at between three and five am, he would do some brief hollering before turning in. A few minutes later, after all the lights were off, Nate would usually have a choking fit that would last anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. I never did get to diagnose exactly what was wrong with him, but a couple of times I thought Dave was going to have to give him the Heimlich right there in his damn jammies! As the choking fits were winding down, the gagging noises started. These were usually followed by some light hocking and spitting sounds and then eventual silence. On one of the last nights, Dave was off getting lucky, so I was the sole audience for Nate's post-cocktail attack.

Although it was dark, I could tell he was done choking and had moved on to hocking loogies on the wall.

"OK. Whatever," I thought, "I'm down with the whole punk rock thing."

That's when a glob of spit hit me in the side of the face.

I flipped on the lights and threw my pillow at him, yelling. Nate just smiled back in a semi-comatose haze. I grabbed some covers and wiped off my face, hollering at him the whole time. He had no idea what was going on. He grinned at me like I had just told him I really liked his hair. The next morning he sheepishly apologized and everything was cool.

Near the end of the trip we drove to Elche, a town six hours to the south of Barcelona, to meet up with our old friend Roberto Aleman. Elche looked like Don Quixote country and we were greeted by a 50-foottall billboard silhouette of the famous Spanish bull. It was over 100 degrees and the dudes slugged it out at a double-set plaza while I had a minor mental meltdown. No matter how far I get from infancy, I still can't escape the lure of the occasional tantrum. It's kind of cleansing, really. I recommend it. I'm just glad the Toy Machine team are all nice people and understanding enough not to get weird about it.

Must have been contagious, 'cause Caswell had a fit at the very same spot the very next day. He smashed two boards in a row and threw the pieces in a fountain in disgust. He then had to strip down to his shorts to fish out the trucks.

An elderly woman looked on in amazement. "That boy must really hate his toy!" I imagined her telling her friend.

At this point, the Toy Machine team had been on the road for a solid two months. They were spent.

As always, Diego had one more fish to fry. He always plans it like that.

"This is the last day so I better kill myself," he says. It's masochistic logic, at best, but it sure makes things exciting! We went to a double set he had eyeballed prior. Though The Butcher has jumped plenty of stairs in his day, this was the first double set that started wide on top and ended up the width of an average closet door at the bottom.

He sized it up, shouted in Spanish a little bit to get psyched and then went for it.

He packed on the first one, jumped off in the air on the second and got obliterated on the third. He was looking pretty bad.

"If I don't make this one, I'm going to die," he croaked.

Of course he nailed it, squatting deftly through the narrow landing and out into the plaza. Although his arm no longer wanted to work and he couldn't drive the car anymore, he was satisfied.

"Stop the car. I need to get a fucking beer," he ordered. It's a smart athlete who knows when to medicate.

The last day of our rime in Spain was Ed's 30th birthday. Unlike his peers, Ed seems completely unashamed of reaching this milestone and was in good spirits about skating into his third decade, despite a broken ass and an exhausting schedule. Thirty might sound old, but it's gonna creep up on you sooner than you think Just hope you're having as much fun and ripping as hard as Ed when the big day hits you.

Of all the things that happened on this trip, I mostly think about that woman who told us the United States had it coming. She said the meanest thing you could say to an American and said it like it was common sense. It felt so bad to hear. The most troubling thing about the whole exchange was that she really did seem like an educated and reasonable person. She could have just as easily been a friend of my mom's. How do you respond to something like that? An Osama Yo Mama bumper sticker? By purchasing a 9-11 "We Will Never Forget" beach towel? By traveling across the world to ride skateboards and then writing a story about the inferior fast food of Spain and all the ice cream you ate?

Oh yeah. That's the ticket. U-S-A! U-S-A!

RELATED ARTICLE: My Ass, by Ed

Skating up the ledge behind Caswell I knew I could do whatever he was going to do, I was in the zone. He did a nollie noseslide. Ah-ha! I did one yesterday, it's in the bag! Just as I came upon it I got a flashback of Enrique beading it up with a cake of wax--it happened only minutes ago, I saw him do it! It was too late, I was in mid-air... My nollie was good and my aim was perfect. I landed into the noseslide but the wax made it feel like air. My board shot violently out, taking my feet with it and laying me out flat about three-feet over the ledge. All of my body weight fell freely onto the corner of the ledge, wedging it into my ass-crack. The row of sitters lined up at the Museum spot "ocohed" the nasty fall. Now, on top of a white light of blinding pain, there was a dollop of embarrassment to make it worse. I tried to stand up and act like I was cool until I rounded the corner away from everyone where I fell down and criddled in pain like a homeless man. I instantly lost feeling in a five-inch circle ne ar the top of my crack. I could feel pain internally, but the skin was dead. About an hour later I was skating a spot trying the impossible noseslide and on my third try the same thing happened; I shot out and took one to the ass. Life sucked. Every time I skated after that day I would fall on my ass and have to squirm like a fish out of water until the sharp pains died down. When I got home it still hurt, much longer than a normal tailbone bruise. Still no feeling on the skin and it feels weird to wipe my ass. I got it X-rayed and found out it's broken or separated-he wasn't sure which one it was-but either way you gotta stay off of it. Beautiful, no matter what in this world, when you go to a doctor he is gonna say don't skate.

Diego's Oasis Shaft

It all started when I was going through different rock and roll magazines and I read that Oasis, which is one of my favorite bands, was playing in Mallorca, an island only a few hours away from Barcelona. Since we were going to spend the next two weeks filming for the Toy video in Barcelona I decided to find out about tickets for the show. Nice try, it was sold out. The next place where they were playing was in a town called Salamanca, a 10-hour train ride away. Since I had a Eurorail pass and the show wasn't sold out, I decided I needed a few days off and went for it. After the beautiful overnight train ride, with a fat dude snoring the whole time, I arrived. I went to get the tickets and found out the concert was cancelled! Roberto Bummin. I then proceeded to get myself a few drinks at the local bar, watched About A Boy in Spanish and took the next overnight train to Barcelona. Fuckin' great!!! I would have killed myself if I wasn't already having a great time in Spain. Thanks Liam.

Ed's International Profanity Primer

How to say "Fuck Your Mother" in several different languages

One thing about travelling so much for skating is you are not in a country long enough to learn the language. It's always two weeks here and one week there, and right when you get the hang of it, when you can order some food for yourself without doing sign language, you leave and forget everything. I have found cussing is much more memorable, because you can use it anywhere. So when I get to a new country I ask a local to teach me how to say "Fuck Your Mother." I can say it in many languages. The bad part is I can't spell it. I only know how to utter the words. It barely ever comes in handy because I barely ever get mad enough to say that to someone. It's one of those "stupid human tricks" where you have a useless skill that will wow people for half a second. While in Barcelona skating a spot, I met a kid from Hungary who was on vacation with his family. He was flipping out over the pros who were in town. When I found he was from Hungary I looked to se that his father was out of earshot and told him, "Bazd me g az anyad!" His face lit up in surprise, "Dad!" He said, "he knows 'Bazd meg az anyad!'" Telling his dad with delight. My face turned red as he was telling his dad to "fuck your mother." They loved it. Here are some other ones I can remember right now:

Croation: "Yebem te peach-ku mat-reeno"

French: "Nique da mer"

Hungarian: "Bazd meg az anyad"

Finnish: "Nussy i-te-asi"

Canadian: "Fuck your mom"

Swedish for "May I lick your wet pussy." "For yor slicka den slask feeta"

Caz Sez

"They should make hamburger yogurt"

Caswell Berry regarding yogurt

"I hate walking"

Caswell Berry regarding walking

Big 4 Wrap--Up *

Jamie Thomas--kickflip, japan air, half-Cab

Dustin Dollin--switch heelflip varial

Kevin "Spanky" Long--switch frontside big spin

Mark Appleyard--backside nollie heelflip

Geoff Rowley--frontside nollie 180

Bastien Salabanzi--backside nollie 180, nollie heelflip

Colt Cannon--frontside half-Cab kickflip

Bryan London--frontside half-Cab heelflip

Carlos DeAndrade--backside nollie kickflip

Chris Cole--360 flip, varial heel, nollie kickflip

Arto Saari--fakie flip, switch kickflip

John Rattray--frontside 180 stalefish

Sem Rubio--nollie

Ryan Smith--backside flip

* Almost all of these tricks were probably done by Europeans in the Puzzle video three years ago. Go Europe!