Viva la Latvia!

Day 1

On a rainy day at the end of July we decided to have a roadtrip to Riga, Latvia to have some fun and catch the Converse Sk8attack competition. We had 2 cars and 8 people, including me. Also attending this trip to Riga were Kristjan Prik, Hendrik Hundt, Mihkel Vahermaa, Hendrik Gross, Eron Nõlvand, Eron's friend Ats (sorry, i don't know his last name) and Georges Agonkouin. It was the best day of the week: friday. Car 1 with Ats, Eron and Krix left the capital of Estonia in the morning. Since Gross is a working man, the rest of us had to wait for him til 3pm. We met up, bought some food and beverages and off we went. The mandatory Pärnu pit-stop was a blessing, since everybody was either hungry, thirsty or had to piss. We arrived to Riga at 8pm. Krix, Gross and Georges had a hotel reservation and the rest of us accepted the fact that we had to sleep on the floor at their rooms. "Don't worry about a place to stay, we have extra two rooms available for you", said Kristaps, who was one of the organizers of the competition and the "godfather of latvian skateboarding", as most skaters would describe him. Once we settled in to our rooms the only thought in our minds was to check the park out and get to skate it a bit before it gets dark. Lucky for us the park was approximately 7 minutes from the hotel, that is if you skated the whole way. Skated the park for a hour and later Kristaps with his friend (who drove us alot, thanks for that!) told us to get the fuck in the minivan and get a bite to eat. After a couple of beers and a bottle of whiskey we got back to our hotel, showered, changed clothes and headed back to town via taxi (who by the way ripped us off. Cunt). Gross and Georges went to "Club Essential" or something like that and the rest of us wandered trough town. Found some bars, had a pint and a chat. Got to our hotel at 4:30 am or something. Hendrik fell asleep and Miku and I had a cigarette because we couldn't sleep. Must be insomnia. Anyway, since we were bored we decided to tease Hendrik a bit. It was fun for 10 minutes. Our next thought was to stay up til free hotel breakfast (7-11), eat and then go to sleep. While our plan seemed watertight, we didn't. We doze off and found ourselves the next morning in the bed. Atleast we woke up before they stopped giving free food!

Day 2

It was a sunny Saturday morning and the competition was ahead of us. The free breakast was delicious, but my liver thought otherwise. The competition was scheduled at 1pm so we had some time to chill at our room. Talked about the night before, which is always funny. But we got bored and went to the park a hour earlier. Some guys wanted to "warm-up", as they tried to convince me, but we all know that they were stoked on finding some latvian girls. So off to the park we went! Eron, Gross, Krix and Georges competed also, so they had to skate extra while the rest of us just slacked off. Some sick tricks went down, some shitty tricks went down. As usual. Nobody ASKED me to film the competition, so all of the footage is filmed because i got bored. I didn't film the finals, where the best hammers went down, because i'm such a slacker and actually wanted to enjoy skateboarding trough my very own eyes. I'll sum up:
Highest ollie: Georges Agonkouin 95cm
Best trick: Enis Fazilov, flip crooked grind.
Sympathy prize: Karlis Bogustovs
Best video: Whei! (Finland)
3rd place: Samu Karvonen
2nd place: Ville Mäkela
1st place: Georges Agonkouin

When the competition finished, everybody anxiously waited for the afterparty. Food and beer from Statoil, hotel, shower, eat, drink, drink some more, being nude at the hotel hallway, drunken finns, clothes, beerbong, afterparty. The location was a bit sketchy. It was next to a yacht port, the house looked like a boat-shack where you could buy alcoholic drinks for some lats trough a small window. Needless to say, it was awesome and fucking epic! Eron was trying to be the 19 year old version of Hugh Hefner, I found some new friends, everybody else were making new friends and Krix almost died that night. Yeah, that's right! Falling into the river when you're drunk is not good. Dozen hands were stretching for him, since the wall was so high. 4 or 5 tries were unsuccessful and when he almost was to weak to swim, he got an arm and got pulled out. His clothes, wallet and cellphone were all wet and it was 2 am. Not a good state to be in. Ditching the party seemed like a good option. Wondering at the streets trying to find an after-after party. The location that we went to was some bar named Cafe Cuba. All the finns were there too, so we were bound to have a good time. And good times we had. Me and Krix were pretty tired and he was wet also, so we decided to head back to our hotel room in the early morning. It seemed like deja vu. We walked half of the length and all of the sudden Krix says: "Hey, let's go back!" "Back where?", i responded. "I don't feel like going to the hotel anymore so i'm just going to go back to the city now." That kind of made me nervous, because he still was drunk and delusional, but it also was funny for me because it was pretty stupid. Walking back alone wasn't that fun, especially when some guy comes who screames "Heil Hitler!" to me. Awkward. I was the only person with the room key and i had no idea how the other guys were going to get it. Honestly, i didn't care, because they could get a spare key from the reception anyway. Which they did. I tried to stay awake by reading the latest Transworld but no, i was dead.

Day 3

I woke up, found the guys next to me. "Good, they got it", i thought. Tried to go to the bathroom but only to find krix on the floor. Everybody woke up and went to eat free food. Having apple juice and laughing about the night before equals good times. Sadly we didn't have time to skate any spots since we had to get back to Tallinn. Gave the administrator my key, checked out and off we were for a 4 hour journey on various tarmac roads. Fin.