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Time for a sneak Peak
Special to Page 2

Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found another e-mail from a bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California. We decided to pass it along again. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.

Chapter Two
... in which our hero chops Pike's Peak down to size

Maybe you're wearing a tuxedo shirt and black pants and serving crispy miniature crabcakes to rich people, but that doesn't mean you don't have as much competitive fire as the heavyweight champion of the world.

I had to keep reminding myself of that the other night in The Buffalo Club, where I was freelancing as a waiter at a reception for Lennox Lewis.

All my extreme sports friends, especially my homey Puker, called me a traitor for working that night. That's because of what I voluntarily chose to miss. You know how people get news on the Internet when monster surf rolls into Hawaii or Newport Beach? Well, half the skateboards and roller blades from the Valley to Orange County were gathered behind a fancy estate in Brentwood while I was at The Buffalo Club. Some rich guy's mansion was under construction and the contractors had drained the immense pool. When there's that many square feet of unguarded smooth, curved surface, word spreads like wildfire. The result was Woodstock with helmets, kneepads, cut-off cargo pants and no Richie Havens.

"Wheeler, you are out of your crate for passing it up," Puker insisted. The whole week before he had hung at Lore's, the sports bar which is my steady job, eating Extreme Nachos with Pork on my tab and telling me I was deserting the Gravity Gods.

But I had a plan. Part one was somehow getting into this Lewis reception, even if I had to carry a small silver tray. Lewis turns out to be a totally mellow dude, chilling for a couple days after pounding David Tua into a poi stain.

"I know how to decide this Presidential thing," Lennox was saying. "We'll get Gore and Bush to step into the ring. I'll be the referee. There's no doubt about that. It could only be me. And they'll just have to duke it out. It will have to be Queensbury rules. Not the Texas rules, because we know how they fight down there. And then we'll see what Gore does to the Bush. What are those?"

"Miniature crabcakes, Mr. Lewis," I said. "Would you care for one?"

"No, thank you," he said.

"I'll have one," a voice said, and the next second I was looking into the face of the man I'd really come here to see: Hall of Fame agent Leigh Steinberg, who I figured would be at his client's shoulder.

Steinberg and Brian Medavoy were throwing the party. It was filled with tons of sports visionaries from Fox Sports West and executives from Steinberg Moorad & Dunn Sports Management.

I gave Steinberg the crispy miniature crabcake. But what I was really here to give him was a dream of mine. And to see if I was right, that as a Hall of Fame agent, he shares my competitive spirit and would add to it his special talent for turning dreams into money.

See, while Puker was inhaling Extreme Nachos with Pork at Lore's last week and telling me I was turning my back on the cause, one of the dozens of monitors was showing a tape of the Pikes Peak Road Race.

It gave me and Puker an idea. We were heading out after my shift for some suicide street luge. We wait until it's late at night and there's only scattered car traffic, so there's room to maneuver. We go up to Mulholland Drive and luge down Laurel Canyon, slaloming around the oncoming vehicles. Once I spooked the hell out of Charlton Heston driving home in his Avanti. He entered rehab the next day.

Anyway, one look at the Pike's Peak tape and I said to Puker, "What if we did street luge down that?"

You hear right. Everyone thinks it's awesome heading up the mountain in your car. You want to talk extreme -- tear down Pikes Peak on your back about six inches off the ground at over 100 miles an hour. You just might break the sound barrier.

The trick was funding the race. And that's why I told Puker he'd have to go it alone skateboarding that empty mansion's pool in Brentwood, that one way or another I was going to meet Hall of Fame agent Leigh Steinberg or some other sports visionary with a wallet.

"Have all the tiny crabcakes you want, Mr. Steinberg," I said, and I told him my dream of the world's first downhill Pikes Peak International Street Luge Festival to benefit victims of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.

"Picture it," I said, "we time it so that the luge is coming down just as the race cars are heading up. People will be flying everywhere."

Steinberg didn't have a chance to tell me what he thought. At that moment his partner's cell phone began ringing and when he answered it his face looked like it was throwing off sparks.

"THAT'S PRIVATE PROPERTY!" he screamed into the phone. "SHOOT 'EM ON SIGHT, D'YOU HEAR ME? OKAY, RUBBER BULLETS AT FIRST!"

He hung up. He explained he'd just gotten a call from his security patrol. They'd found dozens of skateboarders swarming all over the pool behind the mansion he was building in Brentwood. If he had to, he'd use live ammo to chase the "scum" off.

I wanted to tell him that wouldn't be so easy to do. You don't just walk up to someone who's grinding the edges of gravity and order them to walk away. Guys like Puker don't walk away. And neither do I. If there are three words that define who I am to my core, they are: Don't Walk Away.

This night I had to. I offered another tiny crabcake to Leigh Steinberg. But he was already hurrying off to help his friend in the battle for his backyard. Too bad for them they were wearing tuxedos. The evening was definitely going to end bloody.



	ALSO SEE: Wheeler's X-Cellent Adventures: Chapter 1