Tuesday September 30th 2008

Skate day

Today we skated hard. We woke up before 11 today and brought our backpacks down to put them into storage for the day. We had breakfast and then left the hostel with Aram to go skate the famous Sants Estaçio bus station benches. Best skate day ever, the benches were so fun to skate and all the people there that were skating were super awesome to skate with.

Ryan

fronstide smith

backside smith

Sheen frontside 5-0

Sheen

note all the broken boards and shoes on top

enlarged section shows proof of the ollie

backside crook (thanks Marc)

front board

i tried sooo many times for this backside tail... never got it, but this looks alright

aram trying some handstands

classy

We skated there for nearly 5 hours and then decided to come home, shower, and figure out our deal as to what we need to do tonight. Turns out that Michael is super awesome and we can just hang out here in the hostel until we need to catch our bus to the airport at 3:15... and he refunded us for a day for the hostel night, sweet. I went with Sheen and we bought a pizza and some coke to tie us over until later.

I just woke up from a wicked power nap, it's 2:10 in the morning and we're about to leave for Paris. I hope everything works out when we get there.

bye

Monday September 29th 2008

We basically wrote today off. We woke up to the news that the Hostel is shutting down tomorrow and that we have to leave today... oh, thanks for the warning. We were told that we have a room paid for at another hostel down the street for the next two night but instead we decided to bargain with Michael, the awesome hostel running man. Somehow we are able to stay tonight but tomorrow we have to leave, I guess we'll have to spend some more time in the airport. After some bargaining we took it pretty easy, my foot was still pretty sore so I rested it.

Daniel, Mesri and I got kind of bored and needed something to do so we went for an adventure into the ghetto. We weren't out too late, we came back and packed up all of our gear. Tomorrow we're getting up early, meeting with Aram at 11, and going out for a full day of skating.

Sunday September 28th 2008

Frosted flakes

Ryan doing some work

This morning I woke up and enjoyed a glorious bowl of Frosties and milk... just so everything is clear, "Frosties" are the same as "Frosted Flakes", it's just a euro name. The milk was cold and awesome and the Frosties were fresh, I also enjoyed a baguette and jam. After our late breakfast we took the train to the Parc Guell which is desgined by the famous architect Antoni Gaudí. Apparently the worlds longest bench is there, we sat on it's beautiful mosaic detail at sunset and it was great.

The world's "longest" bench

Once we arrived back home the cooking began. We ended up having cheese and ricotta/spinach tortellini with an amazing parmesan sauce. To top it we had some red pepper and tomatoes pan fried with some seasoning and a seperate chicken and tomatoe mixture on the side with assorted hot spices. Brandice made a salad, we grilled some baguettes and called it a meal. After everyone was full we had a few drinks and cleaned up.

Aram Barazanda on the left and Daniel on the right

Daniel, Barazanda and Mesri (Barazanda and Mesri is their last names)

Daniel, Barazanda, Mesri

The friendliest 19 year old giant, Daniel

We took off after supper in search of the world's most popular construction site, the Sagrada Família. Unfortunately while we were in the near distance we saw the lights go off and we were unable to see the masterpiece lit up. We made the best of it and claimed to return tomorrow night before they shut the lights at midnight. When we got back we chilled in the main area of the hostel for a while and then called it a night.




Yesterday Sheen and Aram decided to do some touchless dancing... here's how it turned out

Sheen decided that they should dance with his fly unzipped

Salut

Saturday September 27th 2008

Today I woke up before everyone and hung out in the main area of the hostel and drank some tea and coffee, I also had some decent granola bars. We went shopping today and got some serious amounts of food, I decided that I want to make supper for our group and the new friends that we made... apparently supermarkets aren't open on sundays. I picked up a few bags of cheese tortelini and some spinach and ricotta tortelini also. We got some fresh baguettes and got out of there. When we got back we made some fairly impressive vegitarian sandwiches.

After we ate, Ryan, Brandice, Aram and I left in search of a festival at El Prat just a few minutes outside of the city. We had to take two trains and a bus to get there but it was totall worth it. When we arrived it was still a bit early before everything started, we saw a bunch of people rigging up a bunch of fireworks so we decided to hang around. We grabbed some beers and skated in the street until we joined a drum line/parade that lead us to the main party.

It was definitely worth waiting around for; we arrived just in time for a giant display of Spanish firecrackers which were set up on a giant jurassic-park-esque styled arch. Out of the arch came a bunch of people dressed up in dark hooded sweaters and bandanas hoisting pitchforks with spinning firecrackers mounted on the ends of them. It was alsmost creepy when a giant sculture of a rooster came out with about a dozen of the spinning firecrackers on it... definitely nothing like you would see in Canada. The firecrackers were going right off in the crowd, at one point the sparks from the giant rooster were shooting into Ryan, Brandice, Aram and I. The weirdest part about this whole demonstration of fireworks was that they kept replacing the burnt out fireworks with new ones... they just kept on going on through the city.

We came home, I put on some tunes.. and passed out. Tomorrow's supper should be great

Friday Septbember 26th 2008

oh heeey, it's fridaaay


It was a rad Friday, everyone but Ryan slept in really late today. Brandice and Sheen went out clubbing last night and didn't get home until something absurd like 5 or 6 so they weren't up until 3. As for Ryan, he stayed up all night and found out that he had to wait for a UPS package, he was told that he had to wait outside between 8 and 10:30 because UPS already came by once and couldn't find the hostel. After he received his packaged he engaged himself in a serious adventure... I would go into details but it wasn't my adventure so I can't tell it. It seems like a story that is worth publishing though, so maybe he'll do so... maybe I could have a Ryan Smith feature on my blog?

During the day today I hung around the hostel and did some stuff that I had been putting off for a while, it was also raining so there wasn't really all that much that could be done.

Tonight was amazing; everything started off in the kitchen area where everyone met and started having a few drinks and playing cards. Two days ago Sheen got us on a VIP list for tonight to some local club, so at about 1:15 we all left in a huge group towards the club. Before I go further into details I should introduce three of the best people on the earth: Aram, Aram and Daniel... yes, two Aram's... All from Kurdistan. The really awesome Aram gave me a quick history lesson on Kurdistan, it was very interesting, apparently in 1985 his parents because guerilla soldiers and fought against the Iran government that tried telling the people of Kurdistan that they couldn't continue living with theocracy and they had to switch over to a democracy. In the end his family fled to Sweden where he lived until he decided to leave and work here in Barcelona for a year with his friends. One last note on Aram, he looks a lot like John Frusciante when he has his hair tied back, so rad. Alright, so went to that club and it pretty much sucked so Ryan, Brandice, Aram, Daniel and I left and made our way to another little club just down the way where it was super packed. We somehow found a table upstairs at the little club and hung out for a bit until the place closed down at 3. After we left the club we went down La Rambla which is famous for shit goin down... very interesting street, a lot of things going on... I wouldn't recomend going down that street by yourself, ever. I guess after we walked down that street and found some food we went home, by the time we got back it was probably close to 6am. Awesome night.

Thursday september 25th 2008

This morning was written off for sleeping in, we deserved it. After we woke up we made a couple of grocery runs, made some food and then left this hostel en route to a sickening skate spot. We Took the Barcelona Metro for the first time to get to the spot, not nearly the caliber of New York's metro system but it definitely does the trick... and it's a million times cleaner than NY's.

We got to the skate spot and it was amazing... it's basically a little park covered in the smoothest cement, speckled with nice shade-offering trees and everywhere you look there's a perfect manual pad with beautiful steel edging for grinding. There were also a bunch of ledges with marble tops, i swear this place was made for skating... and behind all of this there was a GIANT speed ramp that we used for some mediocre downhill jammin. There were a bunch of skaters there that we skated with, they're pretty good... it's really interesting to skate with different people all the time because everyone always has something different and it's cool learning new things from them. We basically spent most of our afternoon there.

I didn't take any photos today,
this one is compliments of Brandice...
We need to go back and do a proper
photo session there before we leave

When we got back from skating Sheen cooked us up some spaghetti and saauuuce for supper, we toasted some baguettes and called it a meal. After supper we chilled in the kitchen area with the hostel crew and Aram and I were jammin to Matisyahu... then we called it a night... I think Sheen and Brandice went out "clubbin", not sure how their night ended.

Stoked on Jeff Barkman's music right now, some hometown sound is nice

salut

Wednesday September 24th 2008

Some giant open area with the smoothest ground ever, we skated hard here a couple nights ago, it's beautiful at night

Here is where we skated for quite some time with bunches of skaters.. marble is so nice

We woke up at checkout time this morning after a short sleep filled with exciting events like the guy next to me passing a lot of gas and stinking up the whole room. So we "checked out" and hung out in the room for a while until the cleaning staff came and sort of gave us the boot. We moved shop and set it up in the chill/eating area... Ryan, Brandice and I then left to the nearest Consum to get some groceries to make some more sandwiches. After the sandwich session Sheen and I went to the nearby marble coated plaza area and hung out with the local pigeons... we fed them some bread and played with them. Sheen and I probably probably have the bird flu.

This was the entrance to our home in Valencia

poopy time?

photo?

this little guy was great

We made it back to the hostel just in time to leave to go catch our train to Barcelona. For the first train ride of my life I was expecting it to be a lot more awesome than in turned out to be... at least we got to witness a beautiful peach colored sunset over the Spanish mountains with giant wind turbines on one of them... wow.

We got into Barcelona at 10:30 and just barely found our unmarked hostel at about 11... we only found this place because some others were leaving and we asked them. Besides being hidden this place fucking rules, we walked in and were greeted with "welcome to the world"... there are people here from all over; we got some Italians, some Fins, a girl from Israel, a few Germans and some dude from Brazil who is traveling Europe by bike and train... Oh, and some awesome dude named Aram from northern Iran/Turkey/Armenia... he is apparently from a place where they live in the mountains in that area, they have their own name for the area but I can't remember.. I'll ask him tomorrow sometime. Anyways, this is the hostel life that i've been waiting for, and it's cheap!

We settled in at the hostel and then left in search for some place to party and/or pick up some beer... apparently Barcelona is like the rest of Spain where everything shuts down way too early, we couldn't even find a MacDo that was open. So we came back home and shut it down for the night... the showers are great here also... except the fact that when you open the shower doors it's basicaly fair game so you gotta be quick to grab the towel and your underwear or else you will be seen... I can't imagine the scene during peak shower time...

Oh, so that giant party that was apparently going down here in Barcelona ended today and we totally missed it. Or I guessed Barcelona missed out on us.


really into the remixed version of Thom Yorke's The Eraser... what a spectacular album

Tomorrow we skate.

Tuesday September 23rd 2008

Sheen and I made it

to the moon

today,

but before I go there I should fill you in on what happened before said event:

We woke up and experienced the worst breakfast ever... C grade corn flakes never tasted so bad, that's all you need to know. Sheen and I dealt with shitty petit dejeuner and then headed in search for the local skate shop so Sheen could get a new deck. After Sheen picked up his new deck we skated towards the skatepark.

We took the coolest route possible; it was basically a bunch of mini plazas in a low laying dried up canal with huge bridges passing over it quite often... I don't know how else to explain it other than that.



Once we got to the park I got my mini-ramp fix in a true cheese & cracker style mini-ramp...



It felt so good to finally hit some proper transition. Obviously we got rained out... it started raining just enough to make everything impossibly slippery. Whatever, we took off and ended up in a place we never thought we would end up in...

At first glance you would swear you were on a different planet, but actually all of this crazy architecture exists in Valencia, Spain... I don't know how to explain any of this stuff; I'll just claim that we went to the moon and I'll let the photos do some talking.









After we were experienced we left that crazy place and went to the grocery and got some baguettes and ice cream sandwiches and pounded 3 sandwiches each. After that quick snack we had a quick power skate and then went back home where we ran into the other two. Ryan and Brandice apparently went to the modern art museum today... they claim it was good. We took care of business and then settled down in the chilling area to watch a movie but got kicked out because it closed at 1am. We waited it out in our hallway for a bit and Brandice left to go to sleep. Then there were three... we wanted to finish watching the movie but had nowhere to watch it because the roof area was closed for the evening, the chilling area was closed and there were people sleeping in our room. We found a room on the top floor that was open and empty for some reason... super strange considering all of the other rooms are booked full... Whatever, we sat in there and finished watching the movie Sour Grapes... it was different


Tomorrow we are going to Barcelona... it just so happens that September 24th is their biggest party day of the year... who knows what will happen to us.


Currently: really missing a Julie Hogue chicken soup/stew... either would be great right now

To all: if you are reading my blog, or I should say creeping my blog I will have you know that you should not be afraid to comment on it. Doesn't anyone wanna talk to me?

That is all


God speed space cadets