Dave is Crazy

Photo: Sam Milianta

Let me fill you all in on what's going down here.  So Dave has 3 days left to film for his part in the first video.  We're stressing like we were filming for the new Zero video and Jamie Thomas was shoving his fisheye up our anuses, demanding that we get footage or resign.  And Dave is at the forefront of the insanity.  He hasn't had a sound night's sleep in like a month, and his body is beat to shreds.  He's wearing a wrist guard at all times and maybe an ankle brace from having jacked up his ankles.  He just needs to get a few more tricks for his part, and so he decides to go out in a blaze of glory.  We were up in Salt Lake with a bunch of homies.  Sam Milianta took this picture, Garrett is filming with the fisheye, Jimmy Atkin is in the background, I'm (Jon) filming with my camera, and Matt's on high def camera guard duty.  There was like 6 other people there too.  So we went to all these different spots and couldn't find anything to skate, we kept getting kicked out of spots.  Dave and Sam verbally duked it out with a guy that tried taking Sam's flash just before this, so nerves were on edge.  After getting kicked out of all the spots, we decided to do what every skater does in Salt Lake when presented with time constraints on filming: Go to the University of Utah.  So there we go, we park, Dave sees this gap, and with no hesitation says, "yeah, I'm doing it."  Just like that, a moment later my good friend was hurling his body off this 8 foot drop gap.  The gap is just crazy, with a curb at the top and these heinous cracks you have to plow through before you hit the gap.  With 10 or so people filming, watching, placing bets on whether or not he would land it, and ultimately just lurking, Dave jumped off this gap unfazed.  His first 2 tries he kicked the board out and bruised his hells.  Not caring about how hurt he was, he kept going for it.  He slammed hard like 8 times on it.  Limping up the stairs each time he didn't make it, Dave kept trying until he rode away.  It was nuts.  My brother Matt said that Dave's eyes got huge when he realized he was rolling away at the end.  It was a moment of joyous celebration...  We were all motivated after that, and I tried to kickflip over a rail for almost 2 hours after that.  I finally landed it, but I definitely would have given up if Dave hadn't landed the gap earlier.  You've go to give it to him, he's pretty amazing...