Innsbruck 08 ollie dom ollie dom tuai
To Whom It May Concern,
austria done tom tuai and pumes way from tom kikman on Vimeo.
At about 4am I left my room in Cardiff, waking up everyone in the flat as I got caught in the front door. Good start. When I got to the bus station, there was a massive gang of tramps/chavs/welshboys pikey-ing it up to the max. I’d stayed awake all night for some reason, feeling pretty smashed I was sketching out like a horse on crack that they were going to mug me or something. Relief when I finally got on the National Express Enterprise to Gatwick (south, not north) until I realised the guys sat in front of me absolutely stank of curry, lynx and sh*t keeping my nostril-valves disgruntled for half the journey. Passed out in a ball on the seat when I got near Bristol, woke up mysteriously on the floor when the bus got near Reading.
Outside the airport was colder than a polar bear’s left testicle. It wasn’t long before Tom and Tuai arrived. Initially I was excited to see them, however they had a lot more sleep than I did so they were ridiculously hyper, it was unreal. They complained of me being emo-tional. Thankfully they chilled the fu*k out by the time we got on the plane.
The plane was alright, not much turbulence to keep us excited, same could be said for the air hostesses as they were pretty minging.
Innsbruck airport is pretty small, it’s more like a bus shelter with a driveway. I had no idea who was picking us up, so we’d figure we’d just have a skate in the road. For the life of me I can remember who did pick us up, but cheers anyway!
The demo setup was part of this massive exhibition thing in the centre of the city. There was heaps of different stuff, like cars, massage chairs, and water beds, hosted by:
• Grumpy old men
• giant moustaches with legs
• or fair young Austrian maidens, who were there for Tuai. None for me as I’m married to an imaginary woman, and Tom had a disease so he couldn’t get with anything.
The fashion show proved to be Tuai’s favourite event of the trip.
That night we had some sort of Austrian macaroni cheese, Sepp paid for all our meals of the trip which was class, danke schon Sepp. The demo ramp comes of this massive American style beast truck. There were no barriers between us and the crowd, and a massive bling-bling hummer next to the landing which is another thing in Austria Tuai had particular affection for. Before each demo this “stuntman” would do burnouts on this superbike/quad thing, then try and do some other sh*t on this motorbike. All in all it was an epic fail. He was terrible.
On the first demo I forgot how to do backflips and ended up doing barrel rolls instead, much to Tom and Tuai’s delight. They themselves did some sweet tweaks, stunts and other manouvers. In between each demo we’d walk around and try to interact with each stand as they were intended. We couldn’t get free wine because we were with the world’s youngest mountainboarder. After the last demo that day, we got smashed in the beer village and drew penis-with-wings tattoos on one another. Andrea drove us to and from the exhibition hall everyday, teaching us how to say “pierce you clit” in german in the process which was class. I’m gonna be honest and say it was her idea to say it at strangers driving past in the car. The youth hostel had a skatepark behind it, which made up for the frankly downright shoddy tea and coffee they provided. The bread, jam, meat and cheese was good though, the others got caught stealing. The beds were ok, the shower was well easy to break into when they were locked which proceeded to amuse Tom the entire time we there. Each day sorted blended into each other, the demo routine was the same. We pissed about around the hall quite a lot (see video), and had some class nights out.
One night, we had a bit of a skate behind the hostel, Tom’s disease not holding him back for once. We went back to the room, got changed and waited at the bus stop outside where Tuai got chatting to this old American lady (who LIED about her age, she said she was late 20s but was actually 32 the sneaky bitch). Somehow she ended up coming with us for this meal in town, then to the pub where we found a bottle of vodka on the floor. This got mixed with everything, from here on I don’t remember a lot. I think we went to some club where these two chicks wanted Tom but he had scabies so he couldn’t do jack sh*t. Meanwhile, Tuai was loving it with this old bag and I was falling asleep. Next thing I remember is Tuai being dry humped, me running about the youth hostel starkers and Tom trying to maintain international relations sat on the windowsill, also naked as the day he was born. Indeed, the time was gay.
Next day we had to clean up the room before we left. The kids had a food fight with this stuff that looked like diarrhoea, which ended up “everywhere”. On the flight, the scenery made up for the gammy air hostesses. The bus took ages to get home, though not as long as it has taken for me to write this up (6 months).
Thanks to Sepp for inviting us over and giving us the biggest pizzas I’ve ever eaten, Andrea for teaching us some crazy words and the rest of the guys for being sound as a pound, particularly Jean-Marc for doing a large part of the filming.
Love Pume x x x