Memorial TCC Caderno da Graduação

Silas, Mike Anderson and I were Flown to a shore town by a diamond mining company in South Africa. I know. The billionaire boys, the Maloof brothers, apparently backed from the South African Maloof Money Cup, so the event has been officially adopted ore mining firm and by a diamond and has been rebranded as the Kimberley Diamond Cup. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. http://skateszone.com/the-top-8-best-skateboards-for-beginners-reviews-2017/

We flew to Cape Town a week ahead of the big Games in Kimberley to go street skating and do a few demos. Into our 32-hour flight, I understood there was a absence of black folks on the plane. You'd expect to see at least a couple of people of color on a trip to Africa, right? Nope. Not just one. Out of boredom I got up and walked around the cabin to verify if my discovery was really correct. It was all cracker-ass crackers as far as the eye could see; it looked more like a trip to Cape Cod compared to Cape Town.

Apartheid officially ended in the mid '90s, But South Africa is still broken. It did not look split by race than course, which inadvertently becomes a race thing. Our tour guide, Wandile, was a Zulu (along with also a skater) and he seemed fairly well off. However, in general, most black into were undeniably doing worse. In what looked like an attempt to rid themselves of a few Caucasian guilt, a concrete skatepark was constructed by Cape Town's town in the middle of a few of the city's townships. A township is a shanty town or ghetto, but it's worse than any ghetto from the States. Houses are made from scrap metal. There's no water. People are without shoes; it is the type of place where missionaries visit shoot those you-could-feed-a child-for-only-ten-cents-a-day type of advertisements. You couldn't help but feel terrible about the circumstance. In an effort to purge our own remorse, we ended up giving merchandise and all our additional boards away . Since they had been so excited which at first seemed like a rad thing for us to do. But we started to notice shady older kids lurking around the perimeter of the playground, probably waiting for us to leave so that they could steal all the gear. I am pretty certain our actions made their lives worse. A number of them got beaten up for the merchandise we gave them. Add that.

We left the shore Town and flew into Kimberley started. We peered out of the windows since the plane was landing as well as our eyes were met with a reddish desert littered with scrub trees. This was definitely more along the lines of that which we expected Africa to appear based on our restricted understanding of the continent.

We'd seen a photograph of an epic ditch in a South Skate mag and it had been to check out. We discovered and received some instructions that it had been. The morning of the qualifying event was and supposing that we'd never get the opportunity to skate this epic terrain we got up early and hit the road. http://skateszone.com/what-size-skateboard-should-i-get/

James Hardy, Alabama's greatest, was at the hotel lobby when we were leaving, and we convinced him to make the trek with us. Our strategy: get back in time and skate the ditch for those qualifiers. Simple, right? Wrong. As Mike was getting comfortable with his frontside air now got a call. Silas, James and Mike had been flown out by the diamond company to skate the contest--and sure enough--we were going to miss the whole thing. The three of these were bumped to the heating, and we had been advised that the contest was already the middle of the fifth heat. Go time.

This information lit a flame and Mike landed his trick. We relieved and were stoked thinking we can return just in time for all to take a run. On the way there we got stuck in some insane traffic brought on by an accident between some villagers along with a herd of wild warthogs. Sitting on the side of the road, we recognized that it was not going to occur; we weren't going to make it back in time. The excitement from finding the ditch and receiving the trick was replaced with a mood. Everyone felt dumb for letting down people and blowing off it. To top it off, the dudes each would have gotten a thousand bucks just for showing up and shoving round the program. Bummer.

It's interesting, though, that there is a huge Gap between the mind-set of a genuine road skater vs. a contest skater. No self-respecting competition harm or Possibly skip a contest just to skate a new spot the day of an event. On the Flip side of this, no real street skater would pass up the chance Once-in-a-lifetime spot. We spent the next two days sourcing competition organizers since our Crew of "blow off its" sat on the sidelines and saw Nyjah rack up Another $100K for his bank account. http://www.scoop.it/t/how-to-choose-a-best-complete-skateboard-for-beginners

Manufacturers and the judges told us That they "understood" and forgave everyone for missing the competition, However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the members of all staff blow it won't get Next year invited back again. More guilt.