Kickflip Boys by Neal Thompson

Author:Neal Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

The idea had started small, but word spread quickly, and we soon had an entourage.

Sean and Leo would each bring a friend: Willem for Sean, Nathan for Leo. Three dads latched on: my decades-long friend Lou, with his son Niall, who’d known my kids since babyhood; Reid, Sean’s elementary school teacher from back in Asheville, who’d become a good friend and now lived in Charleston; and Willem’s dad, Paul, an old-school skater who’d join us for the final few days.

When I launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for an RV or van—calling our project “Sk8 the St8s: a coast-to-coast, fathers-and-sons adventure”—friends gave me shit for taking their money to pay for a vacation. But I’d convinced myself their investment was serving a greater purpose. With the boys teetering on the edge of a new school phase, and me on the verge of an upcoming career transition, I wanted to take a few weeks to immerse myself in the sport and culture that had come to dominate our family lifestyle.

“This is no vacation,” I told friends and reluctant donors. “It’s a mission.”

Our mission was to drive a giant S across America, from South Carolina to Oregon, where I’d drop three of the five boys at a weeklong skate camp outside Portland. Along the way we planned to interview skaters and skate dads, chronicling the skate scenes of Middle America on a blog and on YouTube. A former high school classmate who worked for CBS saw our Kickstarter campaign on Facebook and offered to help with the blog and have CBS radio stations interview the boys in a few cities.

The $4,500 we raised was supposed to pay for a 1979 school bus nicknamed Bustaride, owned by a friend of Reid’s. Air-conditioned and wired for sound, with a lava lamp and shag rugs, it was a dorm room on wheels. The boys couldn’t wait to flop into one of the beat-up couches.

“That bus is gonna smell like ass cheese in a few days,” Reid teases as he drives us through Charleston toward our preplanned rendezvous with the bus.

That’s when we see Bustaride’s hood propped open like the maw of an giant alligator, three men standing on the bumper, staring into the engine well.

Bustaride is busted.

Reid and I plunge into Apollo 13–style contingency mode, ditching nonessentials at his house, the minigrill, camp gear, food, my guitar. In his wife’s SUV, which we dub “Trustaride,” Reid drives us to Richmond to meet Lou and his wife, who shuttle us to their home outside D.C. Reid says he’ll rejoin us in Los Angeles, “If you ever get there.”

After a flurry of calls to RV and car rental places, all I can find is a seven-passenger SUV at Reagan National Airport, which I’ll have to return in St. Louis four days later. “I’ll take it!” I yell, putting our adventure back onto a wobbly track.

The next day’s USA Today carries a full-page, color-coded map showing most of the country locked in a record heat wave. The red zone? We’ll be rolling straight through it.

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