The death of success.

NO ONE EMBARKS on a big adventure or takes on a difficult challenge expecting to lose. Even people who get those "Born to Lose" tattoos don't really mean it, I suspect. They're just trying to sound tough. Toy Machine owner Ed Templeton is a master at sounding tough. For years he's peppered his graphics and ads with countless threats to raw jocks and overblown claims of destruction and the like. If you meet Ed, you realize that most of the boasting is fake, a mockery of tough talk, taking the piss out of those who take themselves too seriously. But like the bikers who are "Born to Lose" (read: I'm a winner even if you don't think I am), Ed has a certain level of pride in the Toy Machine's toughness. Since Welcome to Hell, Toy Machine has played a major role in the ushering in of modern day gnargnar, and Ed's taken it to the nuts with the best of them. Despite roster changes and injuries, no one can say Ed or the Toy Machine team have ever been wusses. Which is why it was so unnerving to hear Ed's initial discussions of the King of the Road tempered by what he was definitely not willing to do.

"The Tempster does not get tattoos," he started, "there's just no way."

"Okay."

"Oh yeah, the Tempster also does not get a pierced ear," he added.

"What?"

"I'm not getting my ear pierced," he repeated.

"No one has ever had to get a pierced ear."

"Yeah, well, good, because I'm not getting one."

If you go on a Toy Machine tour you'll soon realize that there are many other rules laid down by the Tempster. For instance, the Tempster holds his food needs over all others. The Tempster needs a full night's sleep every night. When driving, the Tempster always has the right of way. Most importantly, the Tempster doesn't mind sidetracking the whole operation to take an epic photo, hit a sweet swimming hole, or engage in a fully flared paintball battle. Basically, the Tempster chooses comfort and fun over tricks and deadlines. He runs a tight ship of good times, which makes for an awesome road trip, but pretty much murdered Toy Machine's chance of winning the 2006 King of the Road.

TEAM TOY MACHINE MIAMI, FL CHALLENGES

South Beach Smooth: Give the team member who is NOT a party animal a King of the Clubs makeover, complete with a spray tan appointment, shades, fake tribal tattoos, and sweet threads. Then get him past the velvet rope at a club

Crack Pipe Cleanup: Fill a trash bag, sweep, and skate at the MLK wedges

Fix the gap on the other side of the blue hubba ledges and get a trick on it

MIAMI

THE TEAM STARTED in Miami, without The Butcher (held back by Visa problems), and, as it turned out, without me (my flight got cancelled and I spent the first day sitting at LAX). When I finally got to the hotel, the team had just finished a heavy all-nighter at the new MIA skatepark where they bashed through the bulk of the flatground, flatbar, and tranny tricks. All your Toy favorites were with us, but the official team was Ed Templeton, Johnny Layton, Josh Harmony, Billy Marks, Matt Bennett, Kevin Barnett as filmer, Griffin Collins as team manager, and me as the photographer. Johnny and I had started in Miami on the first KOTR (2003), so it felt really familiar when we hit the streets later that afternoon.

Ed's King of the Clubs makeover was first on the agenda so we cruised down Collins Street in South Beach to score some fucked up gear, settling on an all-white kit consisting of linen high-water pants, a lace-up blouse, a yellow wave cap, J-Lo asshole glasses, and a pair of white loafers a la Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Vacation. The shop owner tipped us off to a spray-tan place, and after sucking down some smoothies, we headed in--past the autographed photos of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and John Stamos--to find two somber Arab men who seemed completely unamused by a pack of giggling dudes with cameras.

Unlike the dangerous light bulb tanning beds of yesteryear, the spray tan is accomplished by placing the customer naked inside a small closet-like room where he or she is robotically squirted from head to toe with a chemical that provides a seamless, khaki-colored coating. Once blasted, the goop is absorbed into the skin where it provides a festive, orange-ish glow that lasts for several days.

After stripping down, Ed selected a robe and a Playboy bunny decal for his bikini area and was led to the chamber where the tan-tech handed him some anti-tan cream for his palms.

"Should I rub it on my balls, too?" Ed asked innocently.

"Whatever you want," the man answered plainly.

"Is this whole thing dangerous?" Ed asked.

"No, but try not to breath while you're in the treatment," the man deadpanned.

Ed dropped his towel, put on a shower cap, and stepped into the dark closet. The tan-tech made a quick exit while we gathered around the closed door and waited. A whirring noise, the gush of the tanning jets and then excited yelling soon echoed through the small room. When the machines stopped, Ed emerged, stumbling back into the light looking like he'd just been raped by a caramel apple. Brown tanning juice dripped down his face and chest, and he stammered in shock, cupping his now-peanut-butter-colored genitals in his hands as the rest of us roared with laughter.

"I couldn't breath in there!" he finally sputtered.

Stripped of his dignity, Ed was definitely ready for a journey across the fabled velvet rope of South Beach's club scene. The world of clubbing and VIP rooms was totally foreign to all of us, so I called my personal expert in all things Guido: Giovanni Reda. In addition to his excellence in both photography and chest hair, Reda is doubly skilled in helping out his friends in all situations East Coast.

Meza once told me, "Call Reda at two in the morning, tell him you're at particular cross streets in the Bronx, and that you need a one-hour dry cleaner. He will be so stoked to tell you exactly where to go."

It's totally true, and soon Reda had a string of Miami's late-night elite calling to help us out. In the meantime, we used the late afternoon light to knock out our first Miami challenge, cleaning up the area around the MLK wedges. While we filled a trash bag with everything from shitty drawers to bullet casings, Griffin got the JT Fade, shaving off his hair and eyebrows while the locals looked on in confusion. The MLK wedge is a rough ride, and seeing as how Jerry Hsu and FORE have regularly mowed the thing down in the last few years, the Toy team felt they had nothing more to offer it trick-wise and split.

Around 10:00pm I got call from a man named Tatonka, whom I was forewarned by Reda was as big time as you could get in the world of Miami clubs. We followed his instructions and ended up at a swanky hotel swamped with fancy looking people, tuxedo-wearing doormen with headsets, and, of course, the velvet rope. One of Ed's great gifts is his irrational confidence and, despite being dressed like a complete dipshit and sporting Magic Marker tribal tattoos, he proudly stormed to the head of the line with Kevin and I in tow as media.

"Yes, we spoke to Tatonka," I said to the man behind the rope. "We're from Thrasher magazine."

"Ah yes," he said suspiciously, "and where is your professional skateboarder? Hmm?"

"It's me," Ed spoke up, from beneath his wave cap.

The man in charge quickly changed his tune, happily pumping Ed's hand and showing us in. Once there, we sort of didn't know what to do and gradually made a loop through the luxurious surroundings. I get embarrassed easily and was feeling really out of place in my shorts and T-shirt until we entered the bar area where all eyes turned to Ed. Because a camera crew was following him, everyone was checking him out and he soon sidled up to some skinny girls for a well-received photo op. The place was really nice and we were tempted to get a drink from the bar and post up, but remembered all the rest of the dudes sweating out in the van. Our bite into the upper crust lasted a total of seven minutes.

IN DISCUSSION of our last Miami challenge, to patch the gap at the blue hubbas, I feel it's an appropriate time to spill the beans on the issue of KOTR cheating. As the KOTR is largely an honor-system type of affair, there has been a steady climate of rule bending, starting with the very first year when the Deluxe team opened all their envelopes ahead of time and ending with this year's rampant Slipknot shirt and neck brace purchasing. C'mon. Do they really expect us to believe that there's that many attractive girls cruising around at night in neck braces? Whatever. A little cheating is okay, as long as it doesn't affect the overall results, and since we were dead-ass last I feel alright revealing that, upon reaching the blue hubba in Miami, we found out that it had already been fixed. What followed was some shabby pantomime for the video camera, making it appear as though we had dutifully repaired the gap. In reality, cops kicked us out in the first five minutes and then Josh snuck back for a quick 50-50 in the dark. Again, we lost--bad--so expect a few more confessions later in the story.

The next couple of days was a quick excursion through the South, stopping in Gainesville to skate a rail, Atlanta to skate a couple of rails, and Birmingham, AL, where Ed further broke his Straight Edge streak (he's had a glass of wine in Europe before) by throwing back a couple of candy-flavored woman's martinis at a hip Thai restaurant. Though claiming he didn't feel a thing from his Peach Passion "Funtini," Ed marveled at how easily he was chucking himself down the eight-stair we went to directly after dinner.

"It's weird," he kept saying, "That Funtini made it so much easier to jump this thing!"

Soon after, he unloaded the frontside 180 tailgrab while Josh knocked out the switch frontside shove-it.

The Funtini had no effect, however, on Ed's ability to land the impossible to 50-50 on a flatbar. With the help of Ben Gilley, we'd acquired a flatbar from the Faith skateshop that we took to a parking garage later that night. While Bennett got the back lip 270 and Billy clanked through the fakie three flip lip, Ed pounded on the impossible 50, a trick he actually invented around 1990. An hour went by, then two, and still Ed couldn't get it to go to anything but a lipslide or, at best, a lipsliding Willy grind.

"I need a fucking tampon over here!" he roared. "A FUCKING TAMPON!"

He was exploding in obscenities after each failed try, bellowing in a voice reminiscent of Henry Rollins. Then after an especially hard slam, he pulled out all the stops.

"Someone give me a tampon!" he cried. "WITH WINGS!!!"

Not even verbal self-flagellation invoking the most shameful of sanitary napkins could motivate him. After a few more attempts, Ed lurched back to the car a beaten man.

In other bad vibes, the Toy team became aware of a negative Web posting by the Baker team which made reference to the size of Johnny's ass--ridiculous as Baker's own Jim Greco is notorious for having the most prominent buns in boarding. In psychology terms, that's what's known as projection. The bad boys of Baker also made two different attempts to hire local skaters to sticker our inside rearview mirror (which would cost us 50 points). In both eases, the would-be saboteurs 'fessed up before any damage was done, but to be on the safe side we broke ours off and hid it in Billy's luggage.

AUSTIN

A QUICK NIGHT in Shreveport, LA, and we finally made it to our second city, Austin, TX, where we met up at a Mexican restaurant with Griff's friend Brandon, Thrasher's own Michael Sieben and surprise special guest, Johnny's dad, John Layton Sr. All the challenges seemed like gimmes, but later, when we were walking up to do the race at Stoke's garage, we were greeted by two shirtless skaters fleeing the scene and a stout woman who warned us that the cops would be called. Neither sign of trouble was taken seriously, and I posted up at the finish line while the dudes jumped in the elevator to the top floor. Seconds later, a patrol car turned into the garage and drove right past me up the ramp. What transpired next would be a truly cliche Thrasher moment if it hadn't actually happened. As the crew raced down, they met head-on with the cop who was on his way up. With flashes flipped, the cop slammed on his brakes as the guys sped past him. Clearly infuriated, the officer, who happened to be a little heavyset, did a full Roscoe P Coltrane, struggling with his seatbelt before finally scrambling out of, his cruiser to yell, "Freeze!" At this point, everyone was almost to the bottom. Everyone, that is, except Billy and Brandon, who were lagging behind and had tried to hide. Stuffed into the back of the squad car, the pissed off cop drove them around the block to find the rest of us. Meanwhile, we had all made it back to the vans and had taken off, hoping to meet up with Billy and Brandon later. As almost always happens the cop drove around with them awhile, making wild threats and listing off the charges, but eventually got bored and dropped them back off. Still, it was as exciting as you could get on a simple parking garage race. Oh yeah, Griffin won.

From there we went and lit up the Psycho Ditch where Ed did the Straightjacket Challenge, actually sweating through the coat before being set free to pursue a litany of other bank to wall moves. In a sign of ditch solidarity, Sieben even hung out with us until damn near four in the morning despite being a grown man who doesn't typically spend his time with such things.

TEAM TOY MACHINE AUSTIN, TX CHALLENGES

Make banana daiquiris for the Banana Farm locals

Psyche Skate Challenge: Using a backwards jacket and soma duct tape, make a straight jacket for one team member who must then get a frontside rock on the ledge at the Psyche Ditch

Hold a race down the Stoke's Garage. Last place must buy everyone dinner

WITH TEMPERATURES AROUND 103, we didn't get skating until well into the afternoon the next day. After a long session at the ski jump gap (with Billy nailing a kickflip and John Sr blocking cars), we took Josh to the University of Texas where he quickly tackled the big Gilley double-kinker, adding his own touch with a frontside 180 out. From there we chased down the Banana Farm locals to get those daiquiris going, and wandered into some of the Southern hospitality you've heard about. After a little warm-up, Bennett was ready for some sporty 40s, so we took it to Sixth Street, the Ybor City of Austin, where Mrs Sieben wrangled an entire gift's night out of 40- and 50-something she-cheetahs.

"Uhmm. My friends are on a scavenger hunt and they need to kiss a woman over 40, so I was wond--" Mrs Sieben started.

"Where is he?" the women shot back, instantly.

Next thing you know there's a veritable conga line of Rue McClanahans dancing over to suck face with Matt B, who handled it with the same laid-back aggression he brings to the 10-stair rails.

"How was that, Matt?" we asked.

"Pretty tight," he says about everything.

At this point it was time to take stock. Although we had a fairly good run through the South, there were still huge holes in our book and we heard a report that both Darkstar and Zero were already in Colorado and had finished their third City Challenge. Meanwhile, we were two-day's drive away, still in Texas. We needed to pick up the pace. The next day saw a 4:00pm departure after a two-hour visit to the country's biggest Whole Foods, hardly the type of time we needed to be keeping. We stopped at a park in San Angelo for a mongo focus, and then managed to make it all the way up to Lubbock that night where Josh got some wicked lines at the famous Buddy Holly transitions. Still, the heat was on.

The next night, after checking into the hotel around 3:00, I was awoken at 4:30am by Shiloh Greathouse, calling me out-of-his-mind drunk to chew me out about--well, I'm not sure exactly what he was mad about. Regardless, the fact that he could barely speak five hours before his flight gave me a pretty good indication that he might not be showing up the next day. With memories of the Jason Jessee debacle of 2004 bouncing through my head all night, I wasn't especially surprised to learn that both Shiloh and Clyde missed their flights. Fortunately for us, neither of them sent their own replacement so we were free to assign Windsor James and Abdias Rivera, two Thrasher favorites who were down to help us. Even more fortunate was the fact that we got Los Angeles legend Malcolm Watson as our mystery guest--one of the coolest and mellowest dudes you could meet. We knew we'd need his infamous manual skills to get us through the book.

We hit the ground running at the Denver park, pulling the Just Friends fakie rock and taking care of a handful of fly-outs. The team challenges were next, and although Ed suffered a hellacious wipe-out on the cross-country race, Johnny ended up taking out Reynolds, Cole, and Momolu in the high ollie contest, lofting over the equivalent of Billy Pepper in a top hat.

Johnny, who was an unstoppable dynamo on the 2003 KOTR, was wracked with a nagging ankle injury that flared up repeatedly on this trip. The frustrating part for everyone was the see-saw nature of this injury, which would allow him to do things like win the high ollie contest one day, but leave him writhing in pain with claims of torn ligaments the next. Had he been healthy, I'm pretty sure we could have gotten at least two places better, and maybe even won. Johnny's that good.

The board build-off challenge was pretty much a bag after Billy lost one of the axle nuts in the grass. But we came back strong when Bennett choked down five hot dogs in the weenie-eating event. As luck would have it, Josh had recently seen a similar event on ESPN3 and knew that dipping the buns in water would give Matt a competitive edge. He quickly cut the top off a water bottle and set it in reach of Bennett.

FT COLLINS

WE PULLED 200 POINTS at the team showdown, but while all the other teams were hightailing it West, we still had to do our challenges in Fort Collins, which meant another day in Colorado. The Fort Collins stuff went smooth. Ed made Matt an irie Rasta shirt for the slappy challenge and Josh got the nose wheelie at the skate plaza. The plaza was also perfect for the Just Friends kickflip (though Johnny's ankle suffered another tweak in an early attempt) and some hot manuals by Malcolm. A local even hooked us up with some 'blades, allowing Griff to bust the Eisenberg kickflip with raw, fishbrain style. In another episode of cheating, we went back to Denver to session Dave Tuck's made-to-skate baekyard pool (which Darkstar also skated), where Josh powered through half the pool tricks while Kevin tried hard not to film the skatepark-like shallow end that would surely reveal our fraud.

"If we end up losing we should totally rat out Darkstar on the pool tricks," Ed said, although we forgot to.

We made a small attempt at hitting the streets back in Denver, but came up with only a couple of tricks. At that point, we decided to jam through Las Vegas and get to the sweet spots of California ASAP.

Somewhere after Texas, Kevin had developed a weird rash on the back of his knees that was starting to bother him.

"Looks like poison oak to me," I offered.

By Denver it had spread, and his leg had become a disgusting puffy stump glistening with a trickle of orange bloody sap.

"I think I need to go to the hospital," he said.

"You'll be fine!" we all told him.

Little did we know how much worse it would get.

KING OF THE ROAD RASH 

KING OF THE ROAD had taken on an intimidating, even cautionary atmosphere whenever it was mentioned to me in the weeks before this most epic of skate trips. There was the excitement of our freedom from the stuff normally associated with a US tour. There would be a high sense of purpose, the motivation of healthy competition, and no demos. But clouding this enthusiasm was a deep sinking feeling that there was something else out there to be worried about, something I couldn't even imagine.

It started as a bug bite. My legs were covered in them. The Floridian mosquitoes could smell the fresh meat of my rarely exposed legs, and they feasted in between filming and swatting. It wasn't until Denver when I realized that the constant scratching, muggy conditions, and soiled clothing had resulted in some sort of rash on the back of my right knee. I resorted to rolling up my jean shorts, instantly degrading me to that clueless Dad appearance every 20-something tries to avoid--but function over fashion, and this would clear up in no time. The next day is when the skin started to fall off, and a clear liquid started seeping from the dime-sized void. Normal ointments and hydrocortisone creams simply dissolved in the mix of tacky fluid and puffed red skin with no effect whatsoever, and the dime had multiplied into the size of a quarter by the evening. I decided to pull out all the stops and go for hydrogen peroxide, bracing myself for the torment of drenching the swollen, irritated area with that stingingly harsh solvent. The bathroom of every new hotel became my own personal torture chamber as I watched the hole grow bigger and my roommates flee for the floors of less infectious rooms. Sleep became impossible, and the clear fluid turned sap brown and started trickling down my leg. Each morning the sheets looked like Baghdad. By the time I hobbled to the van to start the day, I was covered from knee to ankle in a gruesome slime that dried in a golden crust and filled my shoes with a bacterial swamp. The rash pulsed and crept up my thigh and down to my ankle. The wound was now an inch-and-a-half wide and as long as my pointer finger; not that you could tell under the mess of hair, puss, and mystery ooze. I thought about an emergency room visit, but that isn't a challenge in the book. Duty had its hold on me until 11:59pm on the 25th, when I hightailed it from the End of the Road party straight to the ER. Nurses glared warily as a gooey brown puddle formed under the bed where I sat. Upon being mystified by the wound, the doctor hastily admitted me into the hospital. There I endured blood test after blood test, awaiting results while an IV full of antibiotics pumped through my body. The rash on my leg subsided, the gash began to mend ... but I noticed new infections growing on my hips and stomach. Soon my hands and back were covered with an intolerable red itch. The doctors still had no answers and my frustration grew with my hives. After five days of agony in my recovery hell, it was a chance visit from an "infectious disease" doctor that freed me. He recognized the new rash as an allergic reaction to the very medicine I was put on to relieve my initial breakout. He warned after discharging me that it could get worse, and worse it got. By the evening of my hospital release the epidemic had covered my entire torso, and I could follow a bright pink line of rash from the vein where my IV had been to a red explosion of itch in my armpit and all down my back. I even had the treat of getting it on the tip of my dick. My pee hole was swollen over and made me piss in all directions but straight. Days later my hands became a forest of raw, prickly blisters. Flipping on light switches became an unexpected adventure in discomfort. After living on concentrated doses of Benedryl and Claritin, the final blotch disappeared and the last blister popped. I had survived King Of The Road, just barely.

TEAM TOY MACHINE FT COLLINS, CO CHALLENGES

Jammin' for Jah! Slappy 50-50 the flatbar in front of the Skateboard Market skateshop while wearing Rasta colors

Nose manual across and down the big hubba at the Fossil Creek skate plaza

Jump off the bridge into the Poudre River near the old skatepark

LAS VEGAS

WE REACHED VEGAS around 10:00pm and called Fabry to get the challenge at Kirk's pool. Although he seemed a little confused, he gave us directions to meet him at a bar near Kirk's. Once inside another dude greeted us--a dipshit named James--who Fabry had sent in his stead.

"Fabry said he doesn't want to be the next Faggot Eyes," he explained.

James was acting wasted and Fabry wouldn't answer our calls, so for the first time we decided to take it in the nuts on a City Challenge. A quick call to Kyle Anderson (Kenny's big bro) and we headed down to the Wynn Casino, where he happily performed not one, but five, perfectly executed ho-hos, dressed in his professional best. Kyle rips, and we were 50 points richer.

The last challenge, to try to talk a couple out of getting married at a wedding chapel, sounded easy enough, but upon reaching the row of chapels at a shabby far-flung corner of the strip we realized that midnight on a Wednesday wasn't a very popular time for nuptials--even ill-conceived drunken ones. Instead of giving up, we decided to--anyone?--cheat. We would find a couple and have them act it out with us. But even with his boyish good looks, Josh was mostly just scaring people as he flagged them down on the street, waving his arms excitedly.

"Excuse me! Can you help us? We need you to pretend to get married!" he'd shout.

Finally, an older burnout couple wandered along and were just cooked (or nice) enough to help us out. What followed was a piece of acting worthy of an Oscar, or at least an understudy role in a high school play, and we were finally done with Vegas.

TEAM TOY MACHINE LAS VEGAS, NV CHALLENGES

Skate Kirk's pool with Ryan Fabry

Find Kenny Anderson's brother, Kyle, and gut him to do a ho-ho at work

Hang out in front of a wedding chapel and try and talk a couple out of it

THE BROS TREATED themselves to a night of gambling, so it wasn't surprising that we didn't make it to Victorville, CA, until the next night around eight. Despite a hot-and-cold pace for the days prior, Billy, Josh, and Matt were still fired up and we set up the lights for the big 19-stair rail at Victorville High.

We often like to accuse Josh of demanding instant gratification. When he gets something in his head, it's often hard for him to be patient and it's not uncommon for him to cry out something like, "If I don't get out of this van right now I'm gonna faint!" or "Somebody better find me a bran muffin, NOW!"

And while this sort of I-need-it-now impulse can be funny or frustrating in a packed van, Josh also applies it to tackling the big stunts. With little warning, he 50'd the large rail first try, and then fought through several rapid-fire attempts at the Smith, finally blasting one through the kink and off into the night. He wanted it. He got it.

Matt Bennett tested the waters on the 50-50 and then jumped from the top of the stairs directly onto his nuts. Done. Billy was the last man standing and, after several sketchy attempts, machine-gunned a firecracker down the long 19. We were sure we'd get the Highest, Longest, Most for that one and excitedly made our strategy for the next day as we motored down the Cajon Pass into the Inland Empire.

WE WOKE UP in Corona the next morning (all of us except Kevin, who had stayed up all night digitizing footage and watching his leg rot), and met Billy, Malcolm, and Bennett at the park where they had just come from the tattoo studio--Bennett getting the dreaded Bam-a-Gram on his heel and Malcolm surprisingly sporting a Skate And Destroy dead center on his forearm. After trying the last of the tranny tricks we split up, Billy swerving off on his own to jump a water gap and backside Smith a rail, and the rest of us heading to the Brea park.

We'd decided that, even though Griffin had ollied a six-stair naked in Atlanta, we'd be better off trying to get a harder trick to win the Sherm's Revenge points. Ed has impossible spine variations on lock so he warmed up with some, while Billy quickly kickflip lipped the nearby 12-stair rail. When that was over it was almost dark, but the park was still pretty crowded and there were several children present, including an eight-year-old girl on rollerblades.

California's a weird place, so we didn't want Ed to get charged with a sex crime or something just for skating a skatepark naked. We waited until everyone left and then lit the spine up with the generator. This turned out to be a very prudent decision as Ed, concerned with issues of shrinkage, could soon be seen trying to jack it up over in the corner.

"Which man showed you his penis?" I imagined the police officer asking the little girl.

"The big one," she'd reply, "and he was pulling on it, too."

Naked skating, when done with a quick dropping of the pants followed by a spectacular maneuver, is one thing. Naked skating, where the man takes 15 minutes to land his trick, meanwhile standing around nude in front of a bunch of teenage girls who happened to wander by a few minutes into it, is quite another. Ed definitely took it for the team on this one, and I can't help but think the experience may have been humbling for an artist so quick to display the peckers of his peers.

That was it. No more time. We drove into Santa Monica and ate at the California Pizza Kitchen, toasting and laughing. Deanna came and joined us, too. Johnny A had already gone home, Josh was hurt, Bennett was hurt, and Kevin was hours away from being checked into the hospital for five days of extensive rash treatment. We dropped our footage with Jake, talked to the other teams and got drunk at the triple set bar. It was all over.

I have never set out on the KOTR expecting to win, but getting last is still hard. I'm all for the enjoy-the-ride Toy Machine approach. I prefer it. That's why they're one of my favorite teams to work with. Still, dead-ass last? Fuckin' A.

In the days after, we spoke with one another rationalizing why we lost, and trying to convince ourselves that we didn't even care.

"Toy Machine's not that kind of company, anyway," Josh explained.

"If Johnny had been healthy we would have gotten first for sure," I suggested.

"Hey, think about it this way; maybe we won 'cause we had the most fun," Ed offered.

To paraphrase a Toy Machine ad: wimp plus pussy. That's what kind of shit that is.

TOY MACHINE'S 10-STEP PROGRAM TO THE DEATH OF SUCCESS

STEP 1: Get dildo'ed in the bunghole by Uncle Sam when he refuses to grant a Visa to one of your best riders, The Butcher, essentially locking him out of the country and preventing him from being on the KOTR.

STEP 2: Bring an injured rider with a leaning toward dramatic outbursts of anger and Oscar[TM]-worthy performances in personal pain.

STEP 3: Have your filmer get a horrific rash that nearly debilitates him. Make him work regardless of his pain and suffering. Do not let him seek medical attention. Even though he can't sleep, keep working him until his soul is crushed, he hates his life, wants to quit Toy Machine and go to film school, and has to spend five days in the hospital and five days at home with a gruesome rash that has taken over his whole body.

STEP 4: Neglect to offer your riders cash payments for getting points, hoping that wanting to win on a personal level or to win for the team will be more important than only skating because you get money per trick.

STEP 5: Take leisurely breakfasts at Whole Foods markets, where we take 40 minutes to buy our food and 40 more to eat it. As opposed to spending five minutes at a Taco Bell drive-thru, using the saved time to hit the road in search of points.

STEP 6: Stopping to sleep so that your riders are well rested for the death-defying tricks they are attempting is a great way to bring on the death of success!

STEP 7: The surefire way to last place is being too honest (or lazy) to go out and buy a neck brace or a Korn T-shirt to cheat on the easy challenges. Instead, get the police called on you for going up to a woman sitting at a bus bench in a leg cast asking, "Will you kiss my friend?" This will make you feel like the biggest creep ever.

STEP 8: See a field with hundreds of fullpipes in Colorado and don't even think about pulling over to skate them. Even better, one of your riders lives one exit down from a fullpipe factory in California and doesn't even know it exists. Guess who does know it exits? Jamie Thomas and the Zero crew. Toy Machine: Five fullpipes. Zero: 240.

STEP 9: Have a person who you need help from, Ryan Fabry, neglect to show up for a meeting we set up with him out of fear of "being made fun of like that guy who was sent in place of Jason Jesse" on a past KOTR. What does he do? He sends a fake Ryan Fabry, JUST LIKE JASON DID! So now Ryan Fabry is the new "FAGGOT EYES."

STEP 10: Bring the 34-year-old pot-bellied veteran guy who has boycotted skating rails, jumping down anything over five-feet-tall, and takes three hours to land whatever it is he's trying (and most likely will give up before getting it anyway), and then has the nerve to call everyone else pussies.

--Ed Templeton

HAIRDON'T

KEVIN WAS supposed to get the fucked-up haircut, but since he'd already acquired a case of gangrene, I decided to step up and put my locks on the line. I've had a couple of horrible hairstyles on past King of the Roads, including last year's Don Rickles (cut by Ewan Bowman to make me look more like a ward of the state than a naturally balding senior), and 2004's mop (not part of the challenges, just some horrible phase I was going through), but I've never really been pressed to pick a hairdon't of my own design. In the end, I decided to keep it simple, creating a look that was at once believable as it was horrific. I'm sure some dude at some Spring Break somewhere has had this haircut, but I don't think there was a dogshit's chance in hell that any girl would mistake me for the life of the party. I think everyone should get a horrible haircut at least once in their life. It's really liberating in a way. Instead of worrying that people think you're ugly or stupid or whatever, you can just chalk it all up to the monstrosity on top of your head.

"They're not looking at me weird because I'm a complete idiot, they're just looking at the weed leaf."--Michael Burnett