Article by Sven Boekhorst
Monday
The last 30 minutes of our drive we got kind of lost as the navigation system wasn’t finding this new road that were driving on and when we were almost at our location we found out that we were driving to a wrong address so we called the hotel and they gave us the right address. We arrived in Italy in the morning so they were already serving breakfast. After breakfast we went straight to bed. Everybody was tired from the journey.
In the afternoon we got a call that there was a meeting about the presentation that was planned the next day. We walked through the presentation while we were doing that I got a bit nervous as I also had to speak in public about my pro model skate that is coming out next year. I didn’t really had to speak about details on the skate but more about how I felt about having a pro model.
Later that night we had a nice dinner and went to bed not too late as we had to be at breakfast at 08.30 to discuss the last details about the presentation.
Tuesday
After a nice breakfast I met everybody in the presentation hall. Were talked one last time about what was going to happen during the presentation. Tom H. was going to talk about the new 2012 Collection and as soon as he started to talk about my skate he introduced me and I went on stage to have a small talk about it. Just before Tom called my name my heart was beating twice as hard as normal. It reminded me about back in the day at school. The first two sentences were pretty scary but after that it went pretty okay. At the end Tom H. also called David and Rob to the stage.
Later that day there were some other meetings but nothing special. At night we took a bus that was bringing us to a restaurant on the beach but unfortunately it was raining all day. The food and atmosphere was good but it would have been much nicer with some sun. When we got back from dinner I had some drinks with David and Tamara in the bar of the hotel. Some Polish guy introduced us to some of his Sambuca tricks and David did some songs with his guitar for some rugby team from Ireland.
Wednesday
We woke up too late to get breakfast and found out that David lost his phone and camera that night outside the hotel where we were having some drinks. We went down stairs to have a look if the phone and camera will be still there but unfortunately for him someone took it. We decided to have lunch and talked about what we could do about his phone. When we got back from lunch I worked out some file with the adjustments I think should be done on my skate and gave it to Rollerblade. At the moment my biggest concern is that the frame is not matching the color of the soul plate.
We decided to have dinner in Treviso as we spent most of our time in the hotel we needed at least spend some of our time in the Italian culture. Especially for David as this was his first time in Italy. We went together with the distributor of Panama through the city on our skates. David did some pretty sick soul to soul thing on a rail we found on our little skate tour though Treviso. We ended up eating pizza at a big square. Around noon we got back to the hotel.
Thursday
We all met each other around 10 am at breakfast and talked about what we should do this day as our flight was leaving at night to the UK. As it was raining again outside we decided to spend most of our time in the lobby of the hotel behind the computer. That’s exactly also were I’m sitting right now writing this story. I can’t wait to go to the UK and Chaz Invite contest the park is always so much. After the contest we will also make a stop on Monday in the Creation Skatepark in Birmingham and on Tuesday at BaySixty6 skatepark in London.
-Sven Boekhorst
Thinking of joining Team Rollerblade on one or more of their tour stops to hang out and skate? Find more info about the tour over here.
