THE SUMMER OF MY CONTENTMENT.

WEZ LUNDRY

SUMMERTIME THE BEST OF TIMES. Quit your job, or just work a shitty one that lets you take time off. Travel. Relax. Skate all day. Forget your troubles. Read a book. Find a new swimmin' hole. Sleep on couches. Sleep on floors. Sleep in cars. Sleep outside. Sleep on the plane. Sleep in the bowl at the skatepark. Visit somewhere new. Hang out with old friends or make, new ones. Explore. This summer for all of the above.

The girls of Oregon may be the best on the planet, as a group. Always hospitable, always down for a night out, and always ready to wake up and travel to the next skate spot, they are a fair sight better to look at than guys.

They put up with a lot of shit. Some guys just don't like girls who state. Many to the girls haven't been skating that long and don't have the etiquette down, but they're learning. What's more, they're unafraid to roll and grind the deepest and gnarliest parts of some of the parks. I know a lot of guys who probably couldn't grind the bowl at Donald, and most likely would even balk at dropped in.

They drive muscle cars and cadillacs. They pick up garbage off of the street. They drink and smoke. They listen to punk rock and meral. They are rowdy. They build compsites for everyone on July Fourth. They hooked us up with a place to stay. They fed us. They bought us drinks. They look us to spots. They put up with our shit. They got us into fights. In short, they ruled, and I salute them.

Beer had never tasted as good as it did this summer. It was a cooling liquid gold; the perfect tonic to reduce the summer heat to the dull hum of background noise. There is nothing like beer to slake one's thirst, and beer is one of the few drinks that will ease the heat of spicy dish.

Beer is also the great lubricator for conversation. When running into old friends or making new ones, a beer always helps. To paraphrase the late, great and hated Charles Bukowski, "I was really working at the beer." Some claim beer is a gift from the gods. Maybe they're right. I'm not one to argue.

And if beer is liquid gold, Guinesses is the rich oil that stokes the mid night flame. And I gotta say thanks to Shag for buying me my first Belfast Car Bomb: A shot of Irish whisky (Bushmill's or Jamieson's will do nicely) in 2/3 pint of Guinness and whiskey and drink up fast-the whiskey will curdle the cream in the Bailey's. A great way to start the evening or put an end to it.

There is no place on earth like Burnside, never will be. The original. A banked wall turned into a DIY concrete playground via a process of slow evolution. The whores and addicts were served their eviction in 1990. Portland has never been the same. Neither has skateboarding.

It's too rough? Nope, it's just right. Hey, they replaced some of the coping so quit your bitching.

Self-policed, you can drink your beer and smoke your stash, but if you're blowin it you're out. And consider yourself lucky if you open your mouth out of line and escape without a beatdown. Don't be scared, just be awed. And be cool.

Mark "Red" Scott. Mark "Monk" Hubbard. Sage Bolyard. Osage Buffalo. Mikey Chin. Karl Hubble. Mike Kirchoff. Neil Heddings. Pig Pen. Andy Bohna. Aaron Rawlings. Choppy, Chippy. L'il Stevie. Elliot. Jay Keck. For each of these guys are scores of others who ride, from the dirtiest swamp trog to the freshest flip technician. Germ lived at burnside in a dumpster with his pregnant girlfriend. Burnside is home. It's like corn--every year there's a new crop. Respect Burnside and it will live forever. And Burnside begat all the other kill parks in Oregon that Hubbard and Red and Swim and everyone else are building. And now it's moving to Washington. Does anyone wonder them why I chose to spend majority of my summer there? Wonder why it truly was the summer of my contentment? And now it's spreading. Washington is shaping up and hiring the right people to build the right parks. The more the merrier.

There is so much great about the US--we fucking kicked the Limeys out, didn't we? Then we proceeded to decimate our own natives. Good and bad, take it with a grain of salt. But I like explosives. We went to Lincoln City for the Fourth. We had a huge crew, and everyone was down. There were almost as many girls skating on the Fourth as there were guys. We hit the beach for a bonfire when the sun went down, and skit was comedy. Sure, the city had their own fireworks, but I like to buy my own explosives. Little John brewed up some magic tea and everything was alright; Hewitt was claiming his dad was a forest fire (and I believed him). I met a girl on the beach who also speaks Indonesian and skates; how random is that? We lit off so many bottle rockets and firecrackers that we had the girls running for cover. What can I say, I'm a guy and I like to watch shit explode. Monk continues the tradition of blowing things up and throwing sparks, even in the Butter Bowl next door. Frontside ollies with tracers.

When we are young, our elders tell us that the feeling of immortality we all seem to espouse at that age will fade with time. Why? Why does it have to? For some I think it comes from their own fears of mortality, but why worry about it? Maybe it's jealousy of the carefree life of the young.

Why not ignore their useless bleating? Live forever. Or at least act like you will live forever. Surgery may not make everything feel like it used to but the shit will still work. Let them be the scared and the insecure. Quit your job if it sucks. Drive somewhere new. Buy the cheapest car you can find and drive it into the ground. Go Greyhound. Hitchhike, Skateboard. Immortality is your own device.

I picked up Mike hitchhiking just south of Eugene, Oregon. Hitchhiking is legal on the freeways of Oregon. Mike wasn't threatening, just a little haggard-and little drunk for l0am. A Vietnam Vet, he saw little action over there, but was almost killed by a booby trap at his maintenance job. Not the stereotypical deranged mental patient 'Nam vet, but he had his problems. Lost the love of his life to cancer at a young age. Battled the bottle. Got flicked over by his crackhead boss who owned the carnival.

But Mike was immortal. He had hopped trains. He had driven a big rig, but didn't like it ("They tell you that you ge to see the country, but flick that, all I saw was freeway!"). He camped out in cars when he worked at a junkyard. He traveled with the bag on his back, all that he owned (well, he did tell me he had a few other things in storage at a friend's in Medford). He answered all of my questions about Vietnam without batting an eye. I told him I was driving back to Arizona from Seattle and had been living out of my car, staying with friends. He was stoked for me. We talked about girls. He told me some prime spots for camping and which cities were tolerant of the homeless. When my car was getting hot and I pulled over, he let me roll one of his smokes. He'd been in jail, but only for stupid stuff, and didn't want to go back. I told him I didn't understand some guys' insistence that jail time was a badge of honor. We both agreed that it's better and smarter not to get caught in the first place. We shared a leg of our journeys together, and I dropped him off by the side of the freeway, miles from the nearest exit. He knew a stand of trees where he would camp out and let the beer work its way out of him. The next day he would walk into the nearest town where there was a VA hospice, dry up, shower, and get fed for his allotted 15 days before being given the boot. Then what? Who knew? Who cared? He was immortal.

We shook hands and he gave me directions to the Medford library. "Gonna check the web, huh?" Smart as a whip, on the ball, and happy. If in Oregon, I suggest you pick up a hitchhiker.

My sister dropped me off at the airport. Fitting, it was she who gave me the coupon for the restaurant we went to the night before. I lost my board a few days prior and Smiley hooked me up with one for this trip. Before I left we skated a pool. Pools are rare in Washington, and are usually bunk. This one was good: Nice house, big piece of property, minimal bust, and a crazy shape. After we skated I took Smiley and Nate to the Copper Sky Grill and Bar to use the coupon and say thanks for the ride and the board. A stripper walked out as we walked in and we all thought "this must be the place!"

Unfortunately the bar full of strippers that we had imagined never materialized; just three cute Asian girls huddled around froofy drinks and a woman who looked just like Joey Ramone (hair and all) sitting at the bar talking to some guy who never turned around. I booked a ticket on the cheapest airline (half paid for by the group I work with and whose meeting I would attend that weekend) before going up to Rhode Island to meet Davey, Leah, and the kids, and the best girl the world has known.

NOS THESE DAYS

Some people grow up, get married and have kids. That's what Davey did, although he hasn't quite grown up all the way yet. Leah's the best, and their kids might be the cutest. They're both gonna rip, no question.

And thankfully my trip coincided with both of their vacations. Every night was a beer night. Every day was a skate day. And we managed to take the kids out shopping, go to a crazy church thrift store (they wanted to separate Leah and I from the kids; I thought they might try to pull some kind of Rambo baptizing: "Bammo! Now your kid's one of us--for eternity!"), go the beach, watch trashy TV on the couch, and eat mussels.

Davey's home park gave me mixed feelings, so I'm not gonna mention it. They seem to be burning the wrong bridges, if that is what you are going to do. Kicking out the old guys, including Sid--The Motherfucking Package--who started the whole show. I guess if you're going after the kids and their parents' money it doesn't matter if you please the hardcores.

Speaking of kids, Aquil was on fire. Supposedly he rolled in on rollerblades one day and wisely pitched them for a board, and hasn't turned back since. He is an up and comer.

And the Scots. They like to party. They like to skate. Welcome to 'em. And we hit Nashua, a messed up street set-up if ever there was one, but the bowl is big, it attracts some of the big guns and ex-big guns, and Eastie was there to top it off. Seeing old friends that you never get to see is the best, especially when there is skating involved. There usually is; most of my friends skate.

Young guns are everywhere, and it's refreshing to know that not all of them are the same; some ride different terrain and aren't worried about sponsorship, coverage, etc. That's good, because riding the obscure shit isn't gonna turn you pro or make you a millionaire. I guarantee you'll have a good time among some of the best people on earth, however.

Welcome to Brent from the Midwest, now in the Northwest, a young gun who's tatted up and unapologetically rides the bowls. He takes a lot of shit, but he's willing to dish it out too. Plays a mean guitar. Moved away from his girl because he had to skate. Purity.

Some people skate the same spot over and over again, what the Q-Man refers to as "jock skating." He's right. Why wire one spot and never go anywhere else, when the world really is your oyster, and life on the road is a life worth living?

I thought about video games that are supposed to be skating. How rewarding is it if you know you don't have a chance at hurting when you slam? And it's one of the top selling games in the country? How many armchair skaters can there be? What's next, a pool skating game? It's something the video game consumers couldn't fathom due to the subtlety and nuance. What may appear repetitive and mundane is much more complicated. But it is something the masses can't fathom. Still, the idea of a bunch of non-skating couch potatoes playing a game in which they try not to get busted or get a grind or something gnarlier (Would all the pools be kill? Or would there be sketchy ones? And busts?), then high-fiving each other over a death box grind, still seems pretty fucking funny to me.

We all know the hangers-on. They used to skate. Now they think they can rest on their laurels. They're not fooling anyone. Because they used to skate it's alright that they own a shop, a park, or a company. But remember, they're not running the show, no matter how much they act like it or even tell you that they are. We're on our own boards. We are running our own show.

And the ride back to Arizona: More couches to stay on, friends to see, beer to drink, people to meet, spots to skate, loose ends to tie up, Rhino and the SD guys had pools waiting, and when they suggested a trip to Baldy, that was my perfect ticket outta there. Hadn't been there in 13 years. Some people might think that things are coming full circle, but it's not a circle. It's Never-ending. We're all immortal. Often and worst part of the trip can be leaving and saying goodbye. But it can also be the best. What lies next?