Great and Terrible Day of Bolts of Thunder

So I've been wanting to tell this story for a long time. Seeing as how I'm sitting at a computer right now and I don't have teachers on my back demanding that I do work, I'll take the time to tell it. For it is a story that one must take time in order to tell correctly. It's a story the warms the spirits, stirs the soul, and chills the bones right to the marrow, so grab a box of cleanex and a blanket... It is the story of the premier of Bolts of Thunder. Like I've said in other posts, I was super stressed in making our first video. We all were. Dave lost astronomical amounts of sleep stressing over tricks that he wanted to get for his part. He already has insomnia, so the stress just triggered it. So the month leading up to the end of the video was a tense one, and emotions were running high between all of us. Dave had a couple tricks he had left to get, one of them being a 50-50 down this double set rail. You all know the one I'm talking about. It's the one that got Bolts of Thunder onto the Transworld website. Well, if you don't know what I'm talking about, I attached the video just above, so you can watch it. So we went to the rail a week before the video premier. The day before, Dave bruised both of his heels doing an ollie down that huge gap that's at the end of his part. It was crazy. But he wasn't deterred, he really wanted to grind the rail. So with bruised heels, Dave went for the rail. He started grinding it, but then a cop pulled up... Long story short, we all booked it and Dave got pinched... Not that we abandoned our friend, we all could have gotten away, but Dave wanted to try the rail one more time, right in front of the cop. So the cop didn't care that Dave was skating the rail, but when he ran Dave's ID, it showed that Dave had a warrant out for him for not taking care of a fix it ticket that he had taken care of. So the cops had to arrest Dave right there. Matt and I came out of hiding and were able to talk to the cops to see where to pick up Dave and pay bail. The cops were surprisingly super nice to Dave. They should have put him in jail for the entire weekend because the courthouse was closed already. But the cop called a woman he knew that worked at the courthouse to see if she could come there to accept the bail money. She did it, and we drove out to Orem to get Dave out of jail. As a having gotten out of jail celebration, we all went out to Village Inn after that... So I thought, "well at least you tried it Dave..." But that wasn't good enough for Dave. He wanted to land it. Problem was Dave and Lauren were leaving for California Monday morning for the week and wouldn't be back until late Friday night, and the premier was Saturday. That meant we would have to go to the rail Saturday before the premier and get the trick.... That's what happened. So the day of the premier, we started getting everything ready. Nick got his hands on a projector, we got the house ready and all that, then Dave called saying he was back in town and ready to skate the rail. We called up Weston and met up at my house to warm up. Dave could barely even ollie because his heels were still bruised, but he said, "screw it, I'm as warmed up as I'll get, let's just do it." So off we were to the rail. Nick staked out on the road as a watch out. We weren't getting pinched this time... Then Dave just started going for it. He's nuts. He grinded the rail through the kink, but kept losing his balance. I thought he'd get it. Then tragedy struck and he slammed on the rail. It's the first wreck on the video. I thought he had like broken his back or something, it was scary. He kind of squirmed on the grind then barely got out, "water..." so I ran and got a thing of water that we had on hand. We all thought for sure it was over there. Who would try the rail again after all that? Dave would. And he did. Yeah, he kept going for it. He only sat for like a minute, then he just started trying it again. But having been weakened by the first slam, he fell on the rail again and landed on his back in the shrubs. He knocked the wind out of himself pretty bad and couldn't breathe. He thought he might have broken a couple ribs or something. We helped him for a while, but he was in so much pain. I said we'd take him home and get him Advil or something for the pain. But Nick happened to have Lauratab (I don't know how to spell it. some kind of pain killer) on him because he had it for his broken wrist . Dave took one of the pills, then he told us, "man, I usually act really weird when I'm on this stuff, I hope it doesn't affect me too bad." (Just a side note, Bolts of Thunder does not promote the illegal use of prescription drugs).  At that point, we just didn't want him to be suffering. So we got back to my place and finished setting up everything for the premier and started barbecuing all the food. Dave was in pain, but he was talking normal with all of us. I went out of the room, then I came back and said, "I'm going to iron the sheet for the projector." Dave just stared at me like he was looking right through me, then he said, "yes, what a grand idea...." It hit him in a split second, all of a sudden he was out of it. It was almost funny except I wanted him to be coherent for when we premiered the video, and it started in like an hour. Then Dave was like, "I should call my wife and tell her what happened..." He was saying a bunch of other weird stuff, so we thought it would be best if I called and broke the news to her instead of Dave doing it. So I found his phone in his car and called his wife and told her that Dave had slammed and was acting funny. When I came back into the room, Dave kept asking me, "did you make her cry?" She came over and picked up Dave and took him home while we prepared for the premier. It was so funny to see a veteran such as Lauren tell Dave to behave. He wouldn't listen to anything we were saying, but then when Lauren was there, she pulled out an imaginary magical wand and would use it to freeze Dave and tell him what to do. And he obeyed it. Like he was wandering off in front of my house, so she froze him on my stairs. He didn't budge until she came back and unfroze him. It was pretty crazy. So with Dave in the custody of his wife, we took care of all the preparations, and everyone started showing up. It was pretty awesome, everyone from the video was there (Nick, Matt, Dan, Dave, and me, and Nick, Matt, and Dave's spouses), and Weston and his family, Sam, my mom, Rachel, and some other friends all showed up to support Bolts of Thunder's big premier. Dave showed up with Lauren about 10 minutes before the video started and was creeping everyone out with his wild-eyed staring and stories of catching jelly fish at the beach. So all the pictures you see of Dave, he looks kind of out of it. It made it fun though, and he remembers the video and experience, so I'm happy about that. It seemed like everyone had fun, so I was really happy. And it was a truly proud moment in our lives, those of us in the video. Who would have ever thought that all of us old, misfit skater dudes would have put together a video? I'll publicly say this, I'm very proud of Nick, Dan, Dave, and Matt because they put themselves out on the line to make this video. With all the madness and mayhem that led up to the premier, it turned out to be a super fun experience, and it all payed off in the end. The food was good, and we all got to chill, so it was fun. The first video was like a pilot video for Bolts of Thunder, and it's started what I hope will be a lot more videos, pictures, shirts, blog posts, and whatever other random crap we can think of. Bolts of Thunder Gone Wild is scheduled to come out August this year, and I'm already telling you that it's going to be another epic experience. We're working hard on it, and we have a little better handle on how to make videos, so things will hopefully go smoother this time 'round. When the time gets closer, we'll announce the definite premier date for the video, and we would like to have all of you Thunder Bolts out there in attendance. And, for any of you who think Dave is done grinding kinked rails, you've got another thing coming. Just a couple days after the video, he told us, "when I come back next summer, I'm grinding that stupid rail." I guess you'll have to wait until the video comes out to see what goes down...