Antiz Andalosers
October 27, 2008 @ 5:00 AM
ANDALOSERS - An EASTPAK/ ANTIZ moped ride through Andalusia.
By Sem
The raindrops were hitting the helmet hard and you could barely see the road. When the idea of a moped ride through Andalusia was floated, no one imagined we would encounter the worst storms of the year there. The landscape had nothing to do with the picture of Andalusia we envisioned, and maybe that is why it was so magical. We were riding some big mopeds and had to go full speed pretty much all the time – which was above 100 Km/h – when hitting highways all the time. Wind gusts would push you all of a sudden to one side, only to push you again to the other right after. The only thing you could do is grit your teeth and keep on accelerating, with a crazy smile you couldn’t really get off your face. Deafened by the noise of the motor underneath, the muted colours of the fields, the concrete sky and all this barely seen through the plastic visor. The Andalusian landscape became a vast oil painting in motion.
All of the riders gathered in Seville had to follow the same dusty road every day to go home - which was in the countryside far away from the Andalusian capital – with dust, broken down tractors, and abandoned dogs with broken voices the only company. The group of skaters would get the attention of every Andalusian in more than one way. Julian (Dykmans) decree that “ everyone must have a moustache” was followed without exception. I’m sure it was shocking for the country folk to see all those people dressed so different from them, wearing moustaches, and mopeds loaded with kid’s toys. They would look at us like some leather-lovers’ summer fest - sort of Hell’s Angels meets the Village People. The storm allowed us to skate the first two days though, and we would hit spots through the city by the guiding hand of Edu (Mac), Spanish filmer who kindly offered to come with us. Ben Thé would be making coffee every morning with a smile on his face, “No Café, No Vida” he would joke. And he was too right.
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Not only did he serve up welcomed coffee for all of us, but gave us a crazy and super good looking hippie jump at the very first spot we skated in Seville. Hippies would never look better than that, Ben. We decided to move to the fomer Expo ’96 complex, a huge area with many good things to skate. Having discovered this bank to up- ledge, which was unskatable at first sight, we ended up seeing many things bolted, Steve’s backside tailslide actually tailsliding that super steep ledge, or Julian Bachelier’s frontside boardslide to fakie or Sam lien to tailing- so stylish. Somehow, Julian Furones felt like hunting white whales that day. When he saw the first one in the form of a huge drop into a steep white bank, he grabbed his harpoon and went for himself to face it. The thing was really scary, but he just needed two tries to grapple the monster. Furones was unstoppable then, but next time the monster was luckier than him, leaving Captain Ahab with a limp for the rest of the trip.
Hugo hit the last spot in Seville, which was an amazing boardslide down the a big rail. Hugo had been a bit “out” so far, he would lay on the sofa, or on his moped, deep inside his own thoughts, only awaking to start singing some heavy metal song from the bowels of Hell for a bit, and then go back to his thoughts again. When he saw the rail, he woke up. The street was starting to get busy, since Sevilla F.C. were playing right then, and you could see all kinds of people dressed inn red and white passing by with these thumpets and airhorns. But I’m sure Hugo didn’t even notice. He tried it a few times and when he landed it, he smiled and said truly “I’m back to life again”. And he really was.
Meantime, we already had lost one moped. It just died, and we decided to leave it right there, attached to a streetlight somewhere in the maze of Seville’s tiny brick streets. And then the rains came. When we got back home all soaked and shaking, Hugo (who now had become Captain Jack Sparrow) and some other started talking about the different noises their mopeds made, with their moustachioed mouths, helping the explanation with some hand movements. Amazing. Somehow, in only two days, we had become fully cracked moped nerds.
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