Sestri Competition (VID)
A Grindhouse view on "Sestri Levante" Italianrolling Party
Untitled from Daniel Prell on Vimeo.
A Grindhouse view on "Sestri Levante" Italianrolling Party - by Daniel Prell
Wednesday 11th June 2008
The usual chaos. Tomorrow Id like to travel to Milano, stay for one day at Jason's place and skate the competition in Sestri Levante on Saturday. So far the plan but my friend Alex (the driver) has an important test in school (tomorrow) and doesn't have an ID (till now). I still have to finish my application work for university and post it. So the odds are low...
Thursday 12th June 2008
With barley no sleep I somehow managed to finish all my important tasks. Instead of leaving at 13.00 we left at 18.22 - well at least we tried - first we bought some food (popcorn, chips & beer), then we went to an electro store to buy tapes, then, and then, and then and after we payed a visit to my university we finally left at 19.40.
At 21.50 somewhere on a motorway in Austria suddenly 2 lights rapidly approached us and hit the guard rail next to us. We stopped to see what happened and nearly got killed by some flying metal parts. Fortunately neither we nor the people in the other car where injured and so we continued on our way to Milan. It's a miracle we somehow found Jason's place in Milan and even a bigger miracle that we found a parking lot barely 30 minutes away. Packed like mules we rang the bell and Lepszy opened the door.
He was pretty bored cause he was "alone" in the office. Quote: "I don't know where Chris is, here is just one guy sleeping on the couch." Of course that was Chris. After Lepszy found out how to switch of the light (it took him only 20 minutes) we had a little fight with huge empty plastic bottles (check the edit)... Before going to bed Alex noticed that what he thought was his sleeping bag actually was nothing more than a crappy mat.
Friday 13th June 2008
We got up at 11, had breakfast and skated a nice little ledge till the police arrived and friendly asked us to leave. Next we took a train for 20 minutes to skate some nice handicap rails - unfortunately they where newly painted and I knew there would be trouble but we were fast enough to get some tricks done (Jason Truespintopsideeverything). Close by there were some nice ledges. We sessioned them till we had to run to get our train. During the train ride it started to rain badly. Best thing to do was walking back to our place in boxers.
It was useful in 2 ways:
1. The rain didn't bother me at all.
2. I was the only one who took a shower that night .
At Midnight everybody started singing: "happy birthday grandpa" - seems like Mr. Prell forgot his own birthday - We (Lepszy, Alex, Peter, Chris, Prell) decided party that night - unfortunately god decided against us:
1st club more than just crowded - guest list only.
2nd club private party
3rd club closed
4th club 15€ entrance for a gay and lesbian party...
Fortunately it rained cats and dogs all night so at least we didn't sweat too much - only Chris was lucky enough to got splattered by passing cars a few times.
When we came back home Lino already arrived - now we where complete but too tired to do anything else but go to "bed" - some of us had a better night than others...
Saturday 14th June 2008
Jason, Lino and Peter took the train at 8 while Chris, Lepszy, Alex and Me slept till 12 pm. Lepszy woke up with pain in his back, he had some trouble with a post box last night and as if that wasn't enough someone stole his cap. On our way - in the car we decided not to go to the amateur competition but check out the beach instead. After noticing that we traveled the wrong way through a one-way street and some illegal parking we finally found the beach. Going to the beach turned out to be the best idea ever, we had a blast buying fake sunglasses, swimming, getting kicked from the hotel beach, getting kicked from the private showers...
In the skatepark we had an amazing session, Lepszy fishbrained the long kink ledge, lino did some crazy negative grinds while I checked out the new bank-box-thing. As every year they built some cool new obstacles, a rainbow rail, the funbox with a huge rollin, ... I heard a rumor that next year they will build a roof...
When it was too dark to skate we took the car and drove to the camping (5min). Jason reserved a caravan for us so this year we had no trouble with tents... This night we ate Pizza in the camping restaurant and because somebody didn't finish his diner it started to rain again before we went to bed.
Sunday 15th June 2008
Good morning Rain.
Due to the rain we witnessed some amazing table soccer games, enjoyed Lepszys flipper skills and filmed the "Hollywoodswing intro" for the Section. Lino discovered the reason why the alarm string in the shower is called alarm string. In the meantime the sun came out and dried the wet roads and the skatepark. We skated an amazing session till the competition started. The comp itself was a lot of fun too. Everybody had 2 runs but the final was a big session. Peter and Maxim, the best amateurs skated the pro final. Roman (Abrate) and me tied first place...
I don't know the ranking but I know that Lepszy "the king of organisation" had to leave one minute before his run started...
After this amazing weekend we were sure that god is a rollerblader - one minute after the price giving it started to rain again...
Before we left Italy we thought it might be a good idea to go to the beach, swim and then have a shower to get rid of all the sweat and salt. Unfortunately somebody else thought it was a good idea to turn of the showers so we had to enjoy the travel like we were.
The Sestri competition is definitely one of the best events every year and were all looking forward to Sestri 2009. Cu there...
