How Did I Get Here (13 page)

Here I am, dead, on the set of
CSI: Miami
. Action!

I didn’t understand. Hadn’t we reached the top? Didn’t the buck stop here? Didn’t
he
have the power to give the green light? We held strong, trying to give reassuring answers without making false promises. Apparently it wasn’t enough.

We never heard back.

Going Indie

Although I’ve all but given up on doing something with a big studio, I still hope to create something that Hollywood will be interested in. Our current plan is to do it from the bottom up, through our website
shredordie.com
, which aggregates amateur and semiprofessional action-sports video shorts. We’re now pitching an alt-sports version of the HBO series
Funny or Die Presents
, which is a spinoff of
shredordie.com
’s sister website
funnyordie.com
.

A lot of the best stuff on
shredordie.com
was produced quickly and cheaply by the nimble crew at 900 Films, and I’m convinced that if we can get the right network execs to just look at the footage, they’ll bite. The best thing about this idea is that we don’t have to wait for a studio to give the green light before we’re allowed to turn on a camera. It’s really satisfying when one of my talented friends comes up with a good idea for a short video, and within days it gets shot, edited, and posted online. No storyboards, no casting calls, no sippy cups, no lunatic moguls.

And no meetings.

11

STINKY DIAPERS IN FIRST CLASS

How to balance travel and family: bring ’em

A few years ago, when my youngest son Keegan was in preschool, the teachers asked the students in his class to describe the kind of work their fathers did. The teachers then wrote the responses on paper and pinned them to the classroom wall. Most of their quotes were cute: “My dad sells money,” and “My dad figures stuff out.”

Here’s what Keegan said about me: “I’ve never seen my dad do work.”

I suppose that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, considering that I make my living doing something that my sons see as fun and that I obviously enjoy. Only occasionally—when a demo ramp sucks, for example, or I have to perform with a tweaked ankle—does skateboarding itself feel like “work.”

I’m acutely aware that I’ve been very, very lucky in my career, and that much of my success has to do with being at the right place at the right time. And in recent years, after traveling to places like Sierra Leone and Cambodia, I’ve grown increasingly grateful that I don’t have to sort trash or sell rags to feed my family. There are 12-year-olds mining diamonds in West Africa for pennies a day; I’ve made millions by riding a skateboard. It’s one of those cosmic absurdities, and I try hard not to lose sight of it.

So while I don’t have to “do work,” as Keegan put it, I have tried to develop a work ethic. For example, if I promise to make an appearance or attend a meeting, I do everything in my power to get there on time and stick with the schedule. Nothing pisses off fans (or stresses event organizers) more than when a celebrity arrives late or leaves early.

Most of the actual “work” I do requires me to travel—a lot. I’m on the road 100 to 150 days a year; I’ve been a member of United Airlines’ 1K Club (meaning I’ve flown 100,000 miles per year) for nearly 10 years in a row. I don’t mind being on the road, especially with my skater friends, but I also love being home with my four kids.

I could write a long essay about the intricate dance that’s required to create a nominally stable domestic life when your job requires you to be gone half of the year. Instead, I thought it best to illustrate the concept with excerpts from various journals and blogs I’ve kept in recent years.

April 12–15, 2004

Sport for Good Foundation, Sierra Leone, West Africa

As an official member of the Laureus World Sports Academy, I was asked to visit one of the Sport for Good Foundation (Laureus’s primary charity) projects to see first hand their efforts to offer sports and other activities to needy youth in places like India, Brazil, and China.

The call finally came for me to visit a project in Sierra Leone. I only knew the country from the civil war it fought for years, and the atrocities that were occasionally covered in the news.

In Sierra Leone, Laureus supports a program called Right to Play (RTP), which gives traumatized children a chance to simply be kids again. The program has trained about 400 local volunteers to organize games and leagues with equipment provided by the charity. So far, about 5,000 Sierra Leone teenagers have joined in RTP sporting events. A lot of these kids had been forced into combat, labor camps, and sexual slavery during the country’s dark war-torn years. They’re just now learning to do the things that kids are supposed to do, like playing soccer or volleyball or Frisbee.

It took Lhotse and me 30 hours to get from San Diego to Freetown, Sierra Leone. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that I would end up in a place like this just from riding a skateboard. Children were everywhere: in the gutted and burned houses, on the streets, in the diamond mines (which we could see from the road), and at the multitude of streetfront retail stands. Most wore torn clothes. Few had shoes.

The first thing I noticed as we pulled up to the RTP site was the abundance of happy faces on all the kids, regardless of age. And they were some of the most well-behaved and engaged kids I have ever seen playing together. They waited for the coaches’ instructions and made the most of whatever game they happened to be playing. It was a far cry from the too-cool-for-school kids that I’m used to seeing on playgrounds back home. I jumped in, joining the limbo line and losing at the soccer dribbling races. One of the best moments came when Lhotse showed some of the kids the video she’d shot of them and they freaked.

At the next site we visited, volleyball was obviously the most popular activity. There was a demolished school nearby where I found just enough intact concrete to skate. As I wove around broken cement and exposed dirt, the locals were perplexed by this “roller boogie,” as they called it. It was kind of like traveling from the future to show what will be possible, and quickly leaving before anyone has a chance to figure it out.

Later that day, at a playground, we met a girl who appeared to be about 12 years old and pregnant. She was knitting a baby pouch for her future newborn.

It was unnerving—not because of the babies-having-babies aspect, but because everyone took it as normal. We also saw three- and four-year-olds with babies strapped to their back—toddlers caring for infants. I can’t even get my five-year-old son Spencer to look after his favorite Hot Wheels car, let alone his younger brother.

Back at the hotel, drained, we fell right asleep. When I woke up for dinner, I missed my boys more than ever.

The next morning, all the RTP volunteers gathered in the town’s only real soccer field for a full day of activities involving about 500 kids. Later, we went to the certificate presentation and listened to some long-winded speeches. When it was my turn to talk, I pledged to spread the word about the good work being done there by the Sport for Good and Right to Play projects, and to help raise more funds for their programs. I’d feel like I accomplished something if my visit opened some eyes and more kids got soccer balls in the process. They’re kids, after all, and they just want to play.

July 1–7, 2004

Adio Tour, England

I was skeptical about going on a week-long core tour (meaning that it would be mostly street), but my son Riley was out of school for the summer and it was time to get back into skatepark mode. We did a total of three demos over the course of six days, but most of our time was spent driving between stops. Overall, it was a good trip.

Riley Hawk and Shaun Stulz.

Riley and his friend Shaun Stulz were the highlights of each demo, getting just as tech as some of the pros and inspiring the younger skaters in attendance. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights):

• Riley’s video camera being stolen from him by some thug kids while he was passing a bus stop in London. I was across the street when it happened. They now possess an NTSC camera that they can’t charge and can’t play on their televisions. Good luck, guys.
  
• The genuine appreciation of the crowds in England. I have never heard such applause for basic tricks.
  
• If an organizer told us that a place was 20 minutes away, it was an hour. If they said it was an hour away, then it was three. This means that we were consistently late for autograph sessions or demos, and we regularly checked into hotels between 2:00 and 4:00 A.M.
  
• Chappelle’s Show
  (Season 1) on DVD made the drives much easier.
  
• Autograph sessions that seemed more important to the crowds than live skating (and lasted longer than any of the demos).
  
• Sightseeing in London. “Look, kids, Big Ben! The House of Parliament!” That was the extent of our excursions.
  
• Spending July 4 in the land that we celebrate getting away from. For some reason, we weren’t invited to any cookouts or fireworks displays.
  
• Being back on a real skate tour after a long hiatus and getting to enjoy it through the eyes of my son.