Buckle up butter cups.

Don’t forget your vitamin B.

After spending most of Saturday drinking myself back into a coma, I’ve got a new lease on life, and I’m full of vinegar.

The coma part isn’t entirely true, but after spending the first half of the day riding skateboards, and being healthy, I decided that the second half should be spent drinking my weight in beer, talking about bikes, and punk rock, and the midwest, and heartbreak, and whatever the hell else came up, while hanging out with these guys;

I mean, you just can’t go wrong.

At one point however at my final stop, I went to the bar to buy a round, and realized I had no more credit cards in my wallet, because they were at all of the other bars I’d been to. It was then I took note that perhaps my evening should come to a quiet close, and melting back into the darkness would be the best thing for both myself, and my ever-waning finances.

However upon opening my eyes on Sunday began fielding texts that Olympic skateboarding was boring, the commentary was awful, and what the hell happened?

My short answer was ‘The Olympics happened’.

There is and never ever will be no way that something as creative and free form as skateboarding can be put in a category of ‘who’s the best’, because as it was pointed out in some magazine or another many years ago, picking the best skateboarder is like picking the best painter. It’s totally subjective, and can’t be put into a box so easily as the strongest weight lifter, or the fastest runner. The Olympics are desperate to remain relevant, and with the metric rise of X-Games, culture, this was their stab at inclusion.

It will remain on the roster, but it will always be hopelessly watered down and boring.

But at the conclusion of the street finals, Japanese skaters Momiji Nishiya snagged the gold for the women, and Yuto Horigome took it home for the men;


Of course, at this juncture, every asshole with a keyboard is now an expert at all things rollerboard, as proven by this, the Tweet that upon reading it, actually made me dumber;

So here’s a take for anyone who is interested- This isn’t just a win for these two kids, but a win for the greater good. Think for a second that being a skateboarder in Japan isn’t held in any sort of regard. It’s a waster of time, and is thought of as generally disruptive. It’s not socially supported, either by society, or families. So beyond that, millions of girls are watching this and understanding that they can do it too. With Nishiya and Horigome winning, literally everyone won also.

But nationally, these two victories will forever change an entire country’s notion of what a skateboard is, and if you doubt my perspective, I beg you to watch this final episode of The Letters;

Learn it, love it, live it.

I’d talk about the Olympic cycling events, but honestly, the only thing I paid attention to was Mathieu van der Poel’s crash, which I treated thusly;

Haters will say it’s photoshopped, but I saw what actually went down.

It’s like the best version of this;


and this;


In news of other goings on in the world of the internet, Laura from Soulrun reached out with a tale of heartbreak from her camp, as well as a bright spot amongst it all;

Hey Stevil,

How’s it going?!?! As always we miss you and hope you can make it out to Moab again for some fun soon. It looks like things are going really well for you in your new home and we could not be happier for you!!
We’ve had some ups and downs this month as we had to say goodbye to our beautiful Zeus;

14 years of awesome times with him so we can’t complain but miss him so much. To help fill the holes in our hearts we welcomed Archie to the pack ? He is such a love bug and makes it impossible to not be happy;

Things in the Soulrun sweatshop are going great. I’ve got tool rolls, different pouches and have just added martingale collars to our shop. I was wondering if you would mind sharing for me, I appreciate it so much;

Thanks Stevil, I’ll talk to you soon! Miss you!!

Much love,
Laura, Joe, Summie, Bandit ,Harley and Archie

That right there I suspect is a fast track to healing. If you need some of the goods that Soulrun provides, there’s no time like the present to place an order. It’s not as if their dog food bills are decreasing.

And there we have it. Bikes, boards, beer, bangers, buddies and butter. All the B you need.