When we hit the road on 6th of August in Bad Reichenhall at the Ignition headquarters, I was not really aware of what I had agreed to do when Leo had asked me to drive the van, take care of all the people and the organization. Basically I was the tour's big mama. The whole Ignition team, which is Stefan "Porn Horn" Horngacher, Fridolin Eelbo and Konni Harmanus were with me right from the start. Our tour van was a VW Sharan with an automatic AC which proofed to be both a blessing (it had 30° most of the tour) and a curse (I'll get back on that later).
Our first stop was Munich. Konni who didn't skate too much before the tour was really anxious to bust out. He tried to royale a square drop rail with a 4-5 meter gap at the end but slammed hard and hurt his ankle badly. In the evening we went to a river to swim a bit and relax from the skating. Afterwards we wanted to go back by tram but for some reason Frido and Horn can't take a tram, don't ask me why, so we had to walk. Since we didn't bring towels we were all dripping wet and Horn caught a cold which wouldn't have been a problem if we hadn't had that automatic AC in the Sharan. Since Munich Ivo Schäppi, Jochen Smuda and Hinterthür were on our tour. We spent the night at Bauer's who would join us on the tour, as well as Felix, Nagge, Rollo, Davy from the Navy, Blume, Daniel, Lukas.
The next day we went to Nürnberg. Tons of people came to skate with us and the session was really fun. Good skating, good spots, good weather and a good vibe. In the evening we drove back to Bauer's place where we had left our entire luggage. Other than that we needed skates and frames (Frido had already broken his pair). We wanted to stay for another night because it was Bauer's birthday but our schedule didn't allow. At midnight we left for Dresden and hardly avoided an accident at 3 am because a truck had lost one of his wheels and we almost hit it with 170 kph. When we finally arrived in Dresden, we met Jojo and slept in tents in his garden.
The next day it was fucking hot again, however Dresden was definitely worth it because there's this hill that has approximately 7.897.423 perfect rails on it. A great example for German craftsmanship and a perfect location to get juiced for the PIT Finals the next day. Only Horn was kinda down because of the cold he had caught in Munich.
We hit Berlin and the PIT Finals the next day. The USD van had joined our tour and Jeremy Jimenez got on our Sharan. Although I didn't expect anybody from Ignition to skate at the comp (Horn had caught the flu in the meantime, Frido almost broke his collarbone and Konni was still injured from the Munich death drop experience.), Horn decided to skate and guess what; he won. Frido didn't skate all day until we came to the final spot where he put his skates on and destroyed everything with a disaster torque, winning the unofficial best trick contest. After the contest we all got wasted at the after party and headed back to our quarters at 6 am. Everybody was drunk as shit and went to sleep; everyone besides me because I had to pack the minivan. After that I had the pleasure of getting the skaters which were fast asleep by the time into the Sharan and drive all the way to Hamburg.
When we arrived everybody was still done from the after party as you can imagine. We definitely would have needed a day off but Leo, known for his rigorous tour planning (Be-mag tour 2000) hadn't thought of that or more likely didn't care. In the evening we were finally ready to roll a bit but that's about it. Hannover the next day was totally chill and we skated all day. However we had another victim, being Jeremy Jimenez. He dodged our car when we were at the EXPO and did some Frontside Cessslides at 60 kp/h. Of course he fell and his arm and back were badly burnt. We stayed at Hinterthür's parents that night and had a day off the next day. At last we could sleep long and relaxed at the lake.
Perfectly relaxed we drove to Oberhausen. This city was definitely built for a real street contest. There are all kinds of obstacles and everything's within walking distance. Nice. Since we were already in the Ruhrpot we visited Düsseldorf. Also a cool city for skating but things were kinda stressy since there was some wannabe security that kept us from skating but Konni said, fuck you and frontsided the not-so-well-protected drop rail. What a crazy motherfucker!!! Bonn was good because Claudio had organized everything really well. Unfortunately Jeremy left us again to go back to France.
The same evening we went to Frankfurt and slept at Konni's girlfriend's place. However we had to get up at 6 am the next morning to pick up Chris Farmer from the airport. The skating that day was off the hook. ~ 100 skaters came for the session and even Roman Mamon, a german skating legend came out and busted. Later that afternoon the Deshi International Pros team joined us, I guess you can imagine the madness that went down. In the evening we celebrated Konni's birthday at the biggest wankster club I've seen in my life.
Stuttgart topped things off. 200 people came out and the city is one huge skatespot. The Deshi team busted out, especially Chris Farmer who skates like a machine. Nice folks by the way, especially after a few beers. The last 2 days we went to Heilbronn and Ulm. Heilbronn was cool because some of homies from Salzburg joined us, in Ulm it was unfortunately raining, however this was the only day on the whole tour so I guess you could say we were really lucky.
All in all the tour was a really fun although I was stressed out sometimes but hey, that's what a tour's like and that's what the fucking driver's supposed to be. Thanks to all the tourskaters, the Deshi team, the people and kids who skated with us, all the companies that supported us (USD, Deshi, Ucon and Artysm), Fussy the johnniest wigga for just being Fussy and everybody else I forgot. See you next time.
Photos by Philipp Forstner:
Top: Fridolin Eelbo: Kindgrind
Middle: Iain McLeod: True Pornstar
Bottom: Jochen Smuda: True Topsoul
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Fridolin Eelbo: Ao Fishbrain |
Jeremy Jimenez: Bs Royale |
Nagge: Switch Top Torque Soul |
Jochen Smuda: Bs Royale |
Clips by Markus Hinterthür (right-click and save target as):
Fridolin Eelbo: Kindgrind 360 out
Yves Maurer: Fakie 360
For more information abou the tour check out the Ignition toursite, www.ignition-skateshop.com or pick up Issue #4 of Roll2Soul.
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