Departing Hawaii International, we split the members of the Darkstar team into each house, each with its own Enterprise mini-van. Both houses were furnished with complete kitchen, bathroom, and sketchy beds. As soon as my skin made contact with the sheets I got an itch all over my body like I had been stung by every insect within a six-mile radius.

ALMOST INSTANTLY each house earned its reputation as rightfully described below:

THE NUMERO UNO HOUSE was the no-bullshit house. Morning came and they were ready to skate before we even went to bed. Residing in this house were the following:

Gailea Momolu, who had no service on his cellular, so his days were spent destroying the infamous red rail, and nights in his room talking up a storm to someone in Oh Canada.

Mr Chet Thomas, who had discarded the title of Bossman for one of his only recent trips where he could generally be 100-percent skateboarder and not be bothered by such tasks as driving drunks home from the bar or managing the details.

Our Thrasher photo guy was Neggy Nick Scurich, who attended to the beautiful medium format Polaroids and slight shit talking, then anti-shit talking. Over all Scurich is a strict, up-to-date skate business guy who has a low tolerance for "shitty" tricks. Basically, if he knows you can do better, he will request it.

Lastly was Paul Machnau, who single-handedly argued with every security guard in all of Oahu and was always on point with where we were going, skating, or what we were doing. He also bad serious dramatic issues with my signature Filmbot buttcrack--and as for his skating, need I say anything?

Now we retire to our second house where we stay up late watching MTV, ironing oversized pants, requesting "mandatory" white shirts, and cooking breakfast while everyone else sits in the car waiting to leave. This earned us the name of the Lagger House, Lateness was our skill and we were masters at it. It went as far as a rider laying in his bed in boxers saying, "Dude, I'm ready to go; I'm just waiting for him," as he points to a guy walking out the door.

MEMBERS OF THE LAGGER HOUSE were:

Ryan Kenreich, the most qualified member to be aptly singing "PIMP" Unfortunately for your little dirty minds I cannot disclose any information pertaining to this subject. No matter where we were driving he always had some little story about his buddy Jack, could not ride in the van without music playing non-stop, and was constantly grooming himself.

Mike Hastie took the gnarliest reverse caterpillar slam known to my camera's fish. Assumably, we wrote him off as injured for the rest of the trip; within the next day he surprises everyone and has no problems skating better than ever. Canadians confuse me. Hastie complained little and skated lots, but lied about how he wasn't going to drink, and he sucks at playing pool!

Not really knowing Chris Dobstaff, he came off to me as a funny guy. For example, he'd be eight bites deep with someone else's food, then ask with a mumbling mouth full, "Can I have some?" And if Chris was preparing his own snack, he'd start cooking just as we were packing the car to leave. So when I questioned him on why he would do such a thing, be resorted to his coined phrase for anyone who disagreed with him: "Why you catching feelings?"

Windsor James, our miniature Chris Rock, was non-stop pure entertainment. The smallest and youngest on Darkstar, this kid wears shirts the size of bed sheets and is constantly yammering on his phone and running business like he was a contestant on The Apprentice. He personalized everything he owned, and I especially enjoyed his grip tape graphics with various ways to write "asshole" in a sentence.

Finally there was me, the lackey film herd, and basically the only responsible dude in the Lagger household, which isn't saying that much. Most of my time at home was spent on the couch, waiting for the Britney Spears "Toxic" video, and, well, that's about it. This was my first real trip being the team manager with all the Darkstar guys, and the entire team took pleasure in really giving me hell by said things above.

OH YEAH, so back to the non-skate subject of what we did for the entire week. With my intentions of heading out on the beach to gawk at more legs than KFC and just plain ol' party, it saddens me to tell you that we did nothing of that sort--because some days it showered, some days it poured, all days made it very hard to skate or do much of anything. Now in the process of writing this article I have come up with something that would describe the weather and our attitude in the same word. Pourdom. This means being bored as it pours. And because of our pourdom we did other things.

A few of us from the Lagger House made our way into a little bowling alley with joint bar, owned by a short Samoan guy with no teeth. We tossed an enlarged marble for a couple games, while some friends and random people came over and said their hellos, what's-ups and blab-blab whatevers. One of these randoms was a girl I remembered seeing as I walked in, and I could have sworn I caught her with a devious smile on her face. Now, what makes this girl different was that she had made a claim of XXX with the whole team (that's triple X, meaning both of what you were thinking). And what makes this slizzard even more unique was the fact that she had wedged her way into the arms of other skaters from teams we knew, which made it that much funnier. Though none of us were hungry enough to fulfill the request, we all kind of cringed at the thought of being "scarred for life, brah," by taking on this young FUPA *.

HAWAII HAD THIS ONE UNTOUCHABLE DOWNTOWN SPOT that was impossible to skate for more than two or three tries, because security would surround us. It was a gap over a bar, directly on the corner of two major streets. As we attempted numerous times to skate it, we almost always returned home unsuccessful. We tried to stealthily approach the building like ninjas, prepare all of our equipment so it would allow us a couple extra tries ... But no matter what tactics we used, security was consistently on it and would shut us down. One day we encountered the so-called owners of the building (AKA Super Hero citizens) who came out yelling at top volume for us to leave. Paul was not about to quit, especially for these three older men who rudely shouted and commanded orders. Getting angry, these men banded together forming a human barricade, which enabled Paul to reach his landing. But like a 10-ton wrecking ball, Paul blasted through this blockade and scattered these men apart like bricks. After this, we knew our time was short and the local authorities would be arriving any minute. We casually retreated back to the minivan to continue our normal daily routine of driving, getting kicked/rained out, and some skateboarding.

WE HAD A RAINED-OUT 808 SKATESHOP DEMO that supplied us with a drenched mini-ramp, which the young Hawaiian kids skated, no matter how wet or close to death they came. We also participated in everyone's demo favorite, the Game of SKATE contest, which was more exciting since every trick was preformed on an extremely soggy board. Seriously, it's a game not to be taken lightly. Maybe next year's ASR should be supplied with buckets and water hoses. Now that would be an exciting contest.

Getting quite restless, we decided we were not about to be held up by a couple of measly rain clouds and downpours, so we chased the sun on the island. Armed with an artillery of every bath towel from both our houses combined, we tried to skate as if it were a regular day. If the spot got wet, we dried it. If it rained, we waited. This was great for the first couple spots, but then it only got irritating. The rain was inevitable, and it was getting the best of us.

ALAS, THE LAST TWO DAYS of this trip were non-stop blaring heat and sun. Instead of jumping into the clear blue Hawaiian water, we opted to take full advantage of the weather. We skated from sun up to sun up again. We sopped up the wet spots and skated them 'til our legs about fell off. It was good to be out, skating around, and it was a bonus that we had Ryan from 808 as our tour guide since he knew all the spots available. The best part was that most of these photos you see were shot within those last two days, so everyone was pretty psyched to salvage this abandoned article at the last minute.

With the pressure off and the article at least minimally filled, I was ready for a breath of fresh air. I headed for the beautiful sunny beach to really enjoy my first day of vacation. But as I looked at the time I felt like there were so many things left to do, plus catch my flight back to the mainland. What the fuck? After all this hassle, rain, and condensed skating, I never even spent more than 15 minutes on the beach during what was supposed to be my vacation. What a rip off.

* FUFA: Fat Upper Punani Area