Hey, Hold My Beer

There's a saying that goes something like this: What do you usually hear just before somebody dies in the South? "Hey, hold my beer."

by Michael Sieben

April 23, 2012, 4:40pm

This past weekend I went on a bachelor party camping trip with a bunch of old skate buddies. I thought I'd start this column by sharing some nature photography with you from our campsite. Why? Because I think there are a lot of people who have never visited Texas who make the assumption that the whole state is a big desert, and I wanted to prove to you that it's not. Why? I don't know. Maybe I'm just defensive of Texas since most people assume it's horrible here. Well, guess what, it's not. It's actually very pretty. You're thinking of Oklahoma.

See, told you.

But anyways, back to the bachelor party. I felt kind of awkward trying to turn my buddy's bachelor party into a blog post. I guess it felt sort of like I was trying to make his thing my thing. And I really didn't want to run around the whole time trying to capture people acting crazy or silly or whatever. My hopes were that something awesome would just spontaneously happen that I could photograph and that would be it. Put the camera away and enjoy the trip. Sometimes you get lucky. "What was that? You guys are building a skate ramp to launch into the water?" That should probably do it. I borrowed this photo from my buddy Cary Jackson. The BB gun is a nice touch.

And then things started happening… (Photo also borrowed from Cary Jackson.)

An empty Gatorade bottle was tied to the back truck after the board was almost lost.

It proved to be awkward to hold it while ramping.

But it worked.

"I got an ollie hole on my foot." You sure did. I had initially pushed these beer cans out of the way to take this photo but it seemed like the inclusion of the cans gave this image a deeper context.

It's pretty much a guarantee that any time you mix beer with a homemade ramp and a wet skateboard, eventually something bad is going to happen. Luckily the media was ready for it.

Turns out, we didn't have to wait more than a few minutes for tragedy to strike. Adam Blanchard shut the spot down. Literally. As in, his shoulder broke the ramp. I'm still not totally sure what happened though. It looked like his back wheel somehow punched through the plywood. It looked pretty painful and awful. And awesome. Sequence by

Shaun Mefford.

It could have been a lot worse. He could have lost a mouthful of teeth. Close call. There's a saying that goes something like this: What do you usually hear just before somebody dies in the South? "Hey, hold my beer."