St. George Down Under

I almost died today.

March 21, 2009 at 11:13 pm (Uncategorized) (australia, birdhouse, half pipe, olympic village, skateboarding, skating, sydney, tony hawk, vert)

(Well, I kind of almost died. More like almost got knocked out… Pretty much, I just go for attention-getting titles. I’m a blog-hit whore.)

Today was supposed to be my study day. “Supposed” being the operative, key word. Woke up pleasurably late this morning and found myself with a craving for Subway… I’ve been wondering if it would be or taste any different…So I headed down to the Mac Center and got myself a club (it’s “$7 footlongs” here…don’t know how their jingle goes). Suprisingly they don’t have my favorite vegetable for subs, peperoccini, or bananna peppers, for some reason. Also, only American cheese. I asked for pepperjack and got a weird look. Oh, and no oil and vinegar. Wonder what the reasons were behind those decisions…

Anyway, had the sandwich, then treaded back up to my place. Laid in the grass on campus for a while listening to Car Talk, then walked the rest of the way home and started cleaning. I was checking out twitter, doin some procrastinating before even starting any studying, and saw the following twitter…

tonyhawk  Monster Skatepark, Homebush Bay, 5pm. You might not have heard it here first, but that’s beside the point.about 10 hours ago from mobile web

I had never been to Homebush Bay before, but after a little bit of research I found that the skatepark was actually in the Olympic Park. It was 3:45 by the time that I saw this, so I thought, “What the heck? Might as well check it out.” 

Caught the train, had to make two switches, but arrived at the village at 5:45 or so. And it went till freakin 6:45, so they went for a long time. It was different that before, much more people, and the setup was just this HUGE half-pipe with a gap. Man, they got HUGE air! I got some sweet pix, and took a vid for y’all. 

Oh, and I almost got killed! I had my eye in the viewfinder, watching the action, and one of the skater’s wiped out. His board went shooting up the pipe, up maybe 30 feet into the air, and came at my direction. The skater immediately yelled “Loooook out! Look out! Look out!” This skateboard was hurtling at me at a huge velocity. I didn’t even really have time to move, I just batted at it, along with another guy. Man, woulda knocked me out. After surviving we just kinda looked at each other with relieved looks. But i touched the skateboard! barely. still, kinda a cool memory.

Tony Hawk at Monster Skatepark-Sydney Olympic Park

▶

Keep in mind that Tony Hawk is 40 years old. He got HUGE when he completed the first 900° in 1999 (youtube footage of that below…) Also, it kinda seems like he really got going after this…doin crazy spins and flips and crazy stuff with the board. This is vanilla, except for the end, which he landed consistenly later.

Hawk threw his helmet and shirt into the crowd, and the show was over. I went around back to see how close I could get, and there was just a huge group of people around him, pestering him, almost rioting. As he moved this amoeba-like swarm of people followed him.

He got into his car and continued signing autographs. I thought that maybe I’d try to get something signed, but I’m not aggressive enough, so he didn’t sign my little paper of directions. Held some kids skateboard in front of him to try to get signed, but it didn’t work. I was like 5 feet from him tho, it was pretty cool.

See him? He's up against the car, kinda coming out of that kids head in the foreground. Also, look at the joy on the kids face to the right! A signed helmet!!!

Afterwards I just kinda headed back, through the park, looking at all the Olympic stuff. It’s pretty awesome there! There was a rugby game about to start that I kinda wanted to go to, but I had to get back for Heat’s dinner. 

Olympic Stadium

Stadium where the rugby game was about to take place.

Some olympic art or something in front of the previous stadium. Looked pretty cool...

I got back and immediately we began to eat, as it was 8. He made a dish where it was kinda fondue style, but it was boiling water instead, and we put vegetables and seafood in, then pulled it out when cooked and into a soy-sauce based sauce. Good stuff!

I was very proud of myself today. This is my maturation. In the past I would have thought that an hour was too little time to get to some place I had no idea of its location. I just kinda soldiered out, asked questions, and made it there. To a part of Sydney I’d never been to before. It was very liberating, and really cool, just how connected this city is. 

I was gonna go into town and go on a pub crawl in the Rocks area with Reese and his friends, but by the time I was gonna leave it was already 930, and I was tired of taking trains. I kinda wished that I woulda gone, but I am just SOO tired. That is a bit of the old Peter, as opposed to earlier, which was the new Peter. Whatever, it doesn’t all happen at once.

First Skateboarding 900, EVER. 1999 XGames

This is at the 2001 XGames when he performed the 900 again. Look at how smooth it is!