Lucky Dan

Dan warmed me that at 88 mph we were going to see some sh**. It's a good thing the speed limit was only 70 or else that plastic cylinder glued to the back of the car could have blown of and caused some kind of wreck. So next week I'm heading down to California. To make a long story short, my sister has all kinds of amazing connections and was able to score our entire family backstage passes to Radiohead's concert in Santa Barbara. No joke. So that's where we're headed. But I'm also really excited because southern California is not only home to my sister, but to our good friend Dan Shaw, and we're planning on skating while we're down there. So it'll be really fun. Then I found this picture that I took of Dan when we were in Paris. We were skating this amazing spot in the middle of some weird apartment/business complex, and eating our oranges. It's a good thing this picture was not in Italy because oranges in the Godfather always meant someone was going to die soon. Not on our trip though. Anyway, this picture brings back good memories of skating in Paris with Dave, Garrett, Shereen, and Dan. Now that I'm on the subject, I just remembered all of these funny stories from when we were traveling around in Europe. Only spending a couple weeks over there and only about a week with Dan, we have a lifetime worth of stories to tell. So we did go to Italy when we were there, and we rode the train there. We all got reservations for this train through Italy except for Dan. Dan had already successfully out maneuvered the train security on three different trains and felt that his luck had not run out for the fourth train. Every time we'd see the people checking for tickets, we'd alert Dan who would all of a sudden need to go to the bathroom really bad and hide out in there for a while. Or like on our train from Paris to Nice, we all just hid out in the little bar/restaurant area of the train and went undetected. So this train in Italy, we were all there, then we see the ticket checker dude going around and looking at people's tickets. Dan spotted him and got up for his mandatory potty break. But the dude noticed Dan and probably recognized his technique, so he waited for Dan to come back. He just stood there for like 10 minutes waiting for Dan to come back from the bathroom. He had nothing better to do... So an unsuspecting Dan came back 10 minutes later expecting to have out maneuvered his fourth train security dude. But the guy came back and asked Dan for his ticket. So it's a long story, but Dan had a train pass but not a reservation for a specific seat. So Dan showed the dude his ticket pass, but the guy saw that Dan had no reservation, which he for some reason seemed to have taken personal offense to. He then proceeded to scold Dan in front of the entire train like a little kid. Dan was standing in the aisle in front of everyone, and the guy in his broken, angry English started yelling, "You... aNO aPAYa?!!!! No aPAYa after! aPAYa before! aPAYa NOWa!!!!" He went on like this for a minute, and Dan took it with surprising dignity. All the guy had to do was pull down Dan's pants and spank him bare butt and Dan would have been reduced to 5 year old scolding tactics, but this didn't seem to bother Dan one bit. You can tell a true veteran in the art of parent-scolding-taking when you can just stand there and let someone go on like that without laughing, crying, or pretty much showing any responsive emotion at all. Dan just stood there, then when the guy stopped ranting, Dan just said, "Ok" and paid him 18 euros. It was pretty epic to see a true master in winging it take it hit like that unscathed and unashamed. For the rest of Dan's month and a half in Europe, he pretty much perfected the art of train hopping and hiding. He even snuck his bike onto the trains undetected. It was funny to hear his stories after. Anyway, I'm excited to see Dan in a couple weeks and have some more fun. And so you don't feel cheated out of a skating picture, I'll put up a picture of Dan airing a couple feet out of a pool, just to show you that we really aren't messing around any more. I put this picture up a while ago, but I don't care. Deal with it...