II. THE FIRST MONTH LET THE ADVENTURE BEGIN
My flight left on the 28th of December. I remember I wasn‘t too thrilled to go anywhere the day before my flight, if I had the choice the last second I would’ve stayed at home, but the flights were booked and there was no going back, so off to the airport. Tim was already in Barcelona, his flight left a day earlier. We contacted Mark Heuss prior to our departures and begged him to hook us up with some Powerblading gear. The basic concept was that skating around on small wheels and anti rockers is not fun at all. So change the two small wheels to four 80mm wheels, all of a sudden the most basic things in blading are so much fun again. When I arrived Tim picked me up, we hung out for a while, got out our PB‘s and bladed effortless all the way from Gracia to the Forum. The most fun I’ve had in a long time, right on my first day. A few days later we had new years, our plan was to create an epic fireworks/ powerblading edit but due to the Spanish way to celebrate new years, there were not many fireworks at all. That’s why we never made an edit, we didn‘t even go out that night, had a pretty lame new years. (I later found out that they have the big party with all the fireworks in midsummer, makes a lot more sense. It is warm.) After I realised that Tim’s conception of the Barcelona adventure differed from mine, I started to do more and more things on my own. Still hooked on the PB thing I would just pick any random last metro stop, metro there and blade back. One thing I found interesting in particular were the arrangements of big apartment buildings spread all over the outskirts of the city. It seemed really dangerous to hang out there at the time, I was always scared to get robbed, but the only time something like that happend was when I walked drunk down Las Ramblas.
BARCELONA JANUAR 2012
After we spent a week or so in the city Oliver Nermerich told me that he was going to visit and stay at his friends Kevin’s place. He asked if we wanted to hang out, that’s how I got introduced to Kevin. Kevin and I hung out after and he eventually made me a member of one of the local dispensaries. I later passed that legacy on to Dustin. The next visitor was Ben Harmanus, he actually visited twice, one time with his girlfriend and the next time on his own to be able to skate. We went blading a few times and I made an edit out of the clips we got. I have to say, Ben’s skating is crazy to watch, he always tries the weirdest shit which results in the most awkward slams, but he manages to never hurt himself. At the same time a bunch of Tim’s friends also visited, Daniel Groner, Dave Benski and Bartholomäus Zientek. Dave is involved with Black Jack, the original plan was to make a Dave Benski Black Jack edit, not a Ben Harmanus Adapt one, but Dave didn’t feel to shred hard so I focussed on Ben. Later Kevin and I met Christine to sort out a new flat for me. We had dinner and I got introduced to Darina. I guess we liked each other and decided to go up to Tibidabo to see the amusement park and enjoy the view over the city.
