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Smacked hard with a board
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Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found this e-mail from a bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California -- the first of many, he tells us. We decided to pass it along. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.

Chapter One
... in which, thanks to our hero, a once-fleet wide receiver loses $30 million but learns a valuable lesson.

Some athletes live to hoist a trophy or spray champagne. Not me. My peak moment is having a pin pulled out of a broken bone. That pin equals freedom to compete again. That pin is the key that unlocks a competitor from jail.

Pins, not trophies. And who needs a doctor to take them out. This afternoon my homey Puker used a pair of pliers off his tool bench down in Redondo to yank the screws from my ankle -- the one I shattered last month when I landed the non-recommended way. I guess I wasn't paying attention after taping about four thousand feet of Puker's totally ill freefall acrobatics.

I can't wait until my bartending shift is over tonight. As soon as it is, we'll be in Puker's Bronco, booking east on the 10 for a weekend surfing the air somewhere. I'll have it ready for you to download real soon.

You understand what I'm saying. I know you do because you're here at Lore's. Lore's is to sports bars what Hostess is to cupcakes. Everybody here is in it to compete. Whatever it is they're in. You could be Lamar Odom or Kevin Brown. You could be that agent Leigh Steinberg who stops by sometimes. Or maybe you're a beach volleyball promoter or an assistant sound editor at Fox Sports West or a sports columnist with the Times doing an interview in a corner booth. The deal is the same with all our clientele: What gets you pumped is competition.

Puker hates me taking a second away from extreme sports. But he doesn't realize -- while I'm falling toward earth at terminal velocity I'm not just keeping him in frame -- I'm planning my future. As in paying the rent. And at Lore's you never know who you might meet to help you pay it.

Last night, a Hall of Fame sports attorney named Leonard walked in. I think he works at IMG. He had two clients with him wearing major gold chainage. They're both NFL receivers. Both free agents next year. One wideout, Herman or Johnny -- he said he plays in the Central Division -- runs the 40 in 4.45. The other dude clocks out at 4.48.

They were in town meeting with Leonard during their bye week and Leonard ordered some Dom Perignon to celebrate a scheme he dreamed up. He couldn't resist telling me. He can move 4.48 to a rival club in the Central Division. Now 4.45's club wants to hold onto him even more. He gets a $30,000,000 deal. Then he's going to turn around to 4.48's new team and say how can they insult 4.48 by not matching what 4.45 got. That way he can kind of rig the bidding.

"You have to dream big," he told his clients, and then he looked at me and said, "Am I right?"

Nobody expected me to answer, least of all me. I was just standing there and wiping up the spills. They were on their third bottle of champagne, and they were splitting an order of our Extreme Nachos with Pork. So spillage was becoming a problem. Anyway, I blurted out:

"I dream big too."

I told Leonard and his wideouts how I love to compete just like they do. I dream of a time when helmetcam is an Olympic sport and every American is walking around wearing a helmetcam. Who knows, maybe I'll have my own line of helmetcams -- one kind you wear to work during the day and a more stylin' nighttime helmetcam for when you're out partying.

"Yo, you're one of those extreme dudes," 4.45 said.

"Extreme is what dreams are made of," I told him. "The bigger the dream, the more extreme."

Me being the go-for-it guy that I am, I couldn't resist telling them about my biggest dream, the most extreme. It starts at the peak of Mt. Everest, 29,000 feet above sea level. Just me and Puker and our backpacks snowboarding on the roof of the world. We snowboard straight down the south face. At around 19,000 feet, we board right over the edge into a freefall. In our backpacks we've got specially rigged para-kites. Puker and I have been working on the design for six months and we'll have a prototype early next year.

Anyway, now we're kiteboarding at around 12,000 feet and flying south. We shoot straight down the Kosi Valley. We bank left and kiteboard east and cross into Bangladesh and turn south near Rajbari and fly out the mouth of the sacred Ganges River into the Bay of Bengal by next morning, maybe ride a big set back onto the beach. If I'm lucky, they'll be in the middle of one of those radical cyclones down there. As far as I know nobody's ever filmed how totally ripped it would be to surf a 20-foot storm surge into the ruins of a peasant village.

"The best part is, I'm wearing a special helmetcam that shoots IMAX format," I told Leonard. "I'm looking for someone to finance the trip in return for the rights."

I could tell this was the kind of offer that stirred Leonard's competitive juices. Because I had to blot up the champagne he immediately spit all over the map of India I'd unfolded. He left in a hurry.

The wideouts stayed behind to finish up their champagne and their Extreme Nachos with pork.

"If I was you, and I tried that crazy fly-across-India trick, I'd put my faith in the G-word," 4.45 said to me.

I said I believe with all my soul in the G-word, the one force that rules the world: Gravity.

I don't think that was the G-word he meant. But I believe Gravity controls everything, I told him, and if you're not fighting gravity, you're not alive.

It wasn't easy to track too much of his conversation by this point because it was getting late, and they were on champagne bottle number four.

That's when 4.48 noticed the skateboard I use to get around and laughed.

"I've got a fancy limousine outside waiting for me, Gravity Boy, and this is what you got right here," he said.

I'm a little fuzzy on exactly how it came about, but they paid up and all of a sudden, there we were, standing at the top of the stairs outside Lore's and 4.48 was taunting me and betting I couldn't throw down a tail slide the length of the 20-foot railing to the valet stand.

It never occurred to him that this is a maneuver I do each time I leave work. When I executed the maneuver and even threw in a little popover, the wideout claimed it couldn't be so hard. So while the limo driver held open the door to their car, 4.48 mounted the stairs and tried boarding down the railing.

It didn't go perfectly. About halfway down the NFL wideout and the skateboard parted company. Next thing I knew, he was lying on the cement by his limo, writhing in agony and holding his foot.

"Damn thing's broken!" he hollered. "I'm out for the season."

His buddy bent over him. He didn't really know what to do. I guess he'd never seen a compound fracture before, and the first sight of one can definitely make some people nervous. He tried to help 4.48 up and into the car so they could get to the hospital.

"This is gonna cost us thirty million apiece," 4.48 hollered. "They're gonna have to pin my foot back together for sure."

I picked up my board and watched them go. As a competitor I can always sympathize with lost time. But I was disappointed that he didn't know what he had to look forward to.



	ALSO SEE: Wheeler's X-Cellent Adventures: Chapter 2