friday was a fucking hoot. being sponsored has been so uneventful and the opposite of fun. pressure and trying to promote or whatever and doing contests with only me representing the team and whatever. there have really been no perks aside from the occasional free product thing and a ridiculous discount on stuff. i guess i got the first real taste of things friday night. jeff, the team manager, is getting married and had a bachelor party at a skatepark after hours. at first i wasn't going to go because the whole bachelor party/stripper/drinking thing isn't really my scene and all. i guess i was just enticed into the situation by the fact that it would be five hours of skating in a park with only people old enough to be up that late. i'm tired of being the oldest dude at the skatepark.

it was cool meeting the whole team and the guy who owns the company i ride for. in the 40+-and-still-skating-club. tabor. the guy was amazing.

it was a totally new experience to see all of the people i usually only see in contests where we are all concentrating and trying to do well and crap. here there was no one to impress, people were just fucking around. i was beginning to think that these people only did contests and were these stoic professionalistic athletes or something.

we played games of s-k-a-t-e half the night, which was crazy; people pulling these bizarre tricks out of nowhere. i was undefeated, as i've never lost at s-k-a-t-e (it's like h-o-r-s-e in basketball only with skating tricks. someone does a trick and everyone else has to do it or else they get a letter. five letters and you lose). i have the most bizarre of the bizarre tricks on the flatground, half of which do not even have names.

at one point everyone there tried to see how many people we could get skating on the 40-foot-wide halfpipe at the same time. carnage ensued, several collisions, nothing major.

live from folsom prison was played in its entirety for the majority of the night, with several breaks between each repeat to play some other choice selections, including werewolves of london and lawyers, guns and money. (we didn't leave warren out, sarah)

it was supposed to only last until 2am, but i left at quarter of three and it was still going strong, with minimal casualties. several people sleeping in cars and comatose on the decks of ramps.

no strippers showed up, to the chagrin of some and to the relief of others.

big jeff, may your life as a single successful guy rest in peace. it was a great commemoration of the event of its demise.