On The Road With The. . .Chairman of the Board

There was a time when Tony Hawk and his friends toured the country’s skateboard parks in a clunky old van, with money enough for only one hotel room among them.

“We had two beds and split those beds into a mattress and box spring,” Hawk recalls. “You had two people to share a mattress and if you chose a box spring, you got it on your own . . . and that’s how it was. You ate at Taco Bell every day.”

These days, the man who has been dubbed the Michael Jordan of skateboarding travels in style, aboard a luxury bus with air-conditioning, plush leather seats, TVs and the all-important PlayStation console.

There’s room enough not only for all the skateboarders, but for a camera crew, a trainer and even an occasional stowaway.

And so it was, at a recent dawn’s early light, that I found myself sneaking aboard for the westbound journey from Tempe to Encinitas, hoping to learn more about a burgeoning sport but mostly to escape the hellish Arizona heat. . . .

. . . It was an assignment anyone would envy--anyone 17 or younger, white, male and with a closet full of loose-fitting clothing.

That’s your typical skateboarder. There are nearly 10 million of them rolling around the nation’s streets, considered nuisances by some and fun-loving kids by others.

The plan was to fly to Phoenix, take a cab to Tempe, watch a demo, spend the night in a cheap hotel, board the bus to Encinitas, spend another night, catch another demo and find a way back to Los Angeles to file a report on the recently concluded “Tony Hawk’s Gigantic Skatepark Tour,” with 14 stops in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, starring its namesake legend.

Hawk’s life has totally revolved around skateboarding. He was a bright kid, scoring 144 on an IQ test in second grade. But that won him no friends. He was an outcast during his school years in San Diego County, woefully short and paper thin, a fanatical skateboarder among nonskating classmates.

In his autobiography, “Hawk, Occupation: Skateboarder”, Hawk remembers being so skinny that “birds could have used me for nesting material. . . . I was 12 years old, barely over 4 feet tall and weighed in at a freakish 80 pounds. I was a walking noodle.”

That didn’t matter to his friends at the local skate park, which was Hawk’s salvation.

“I had entered another dimension and liked it a lot better than the one I was accustomed to,” he says. “I skated everything, barely taking a break the whole day. It was a vacuum that sucked all my energy, and for the first time in my life I actually felt . . . content. It was an alien feeling.”

Hawk idolized the top skaters of the time and wanted so badly to impress them that he once ate a wad of gum from between the toes of one of them.

His tours in the early days took him and a small group of friends around the country, competing for as little as $100--or less; they were often stiffed by promoters--before mostly sparse crowds.

But Hawk didn’t care. “All we wanted to do was skate,” he says.

A vert ramp, or halfpipe specialist, he began soaring to incredible heights, winning contests, starring in videos and attracting sponsors. He turned pro at 14 and skateboarding, whose popularity has ebbed and flowed, began one of its boom periods. Hawk was earning $70,000 a year as a senior in high school.

He had become so dominant that some of the other skateboarders considered finishing second a victory. The tricks he performed were amazingly difficult, many involving aerial spins and flipping the board with his hands or feet while spinning.

He invented nearly 100 such moves, all born of a fierce determination that had become his trademark. Most noteworthy was the seemingly impossible “900,” a midair, 360-degree rotation done 2 1/2 times. Hawk had seen the trick in his mind for more than 10 years. He finally stuck it during the 1999 ESPN X Games in San Francisco.

The feat was to skateboarding what Nadia Comaneci’s historic perfect 10s in uneven bars and balance beam at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal were to gymnastics.

By nailing the 900--he remains the only person to have done so--before an international audience, he had elevated his status even higher.

Hawk later appeared in a “Got Milk?” commercial. He has been featured in numerous newspaper and magazines articles. He owns a skateboarding business and is co-owner of a production company, 900 Films, that was on board for this year’s tour for a series to air on ESPN and ESPN2 beginning Saturday.

Disney animators used him as a jungle-hero prototype for the movie “Tarzan.” His “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” video games have set PlayStation sales records.

Indeed it has been quite a ride.

Today, Hawk is 33, a loving husband and proud father of two sons, with a third child due this month. He’s still thin but hardly a noodle, and at 6 feet 2 he looks down on most of his peers, but only literally.

“He was always somebody to look up to,” says Jason Ellis, 41, a longtime pro-turned-TV commentator from Encinitas. “When I was a grommet he was the dude who was ahead of everybody, but setting a good example as well, which I think is something that [pro] skateboarders lose these days because of the money side of things.

“They say, ‘Screw what everyone else thinks. I’m in it for myself and that’s all that matters.’ But Tony, he gave me a good opinion of skateboarding: Don’t be an . . . to everybody. Try to help out your friends and your friends will help out you.”. . .

. . . It’s an hour before showtime at Tempe’s SDG Park, an indoor facility. Hundreds of boys and girls, most with their parents, have taken their places in line.

One has blue hair, another orange, another a mousse-soaked Mohawk. Some are wearing rings in places other than on their fingers, and some are sporting colorful tattoos. But they’re nice enough kids, and surprisingly patient. The skate park holds only 300 and there are nearly 1,000 in line.

“I know it’s a gamble, but it’s worth it,” says Elizabeth Lenz, waiting near the back with sons Cory, 13, and Casey, 8. “It’ll be special if they can get in.”

Closer to the front, Vanessa MacDonald stands in a sliver of shade with son Jack, 8, who is asked to identify his favorite athlete.

“Tony Hawk,” he says, after a moment. “Why? I don’t know. . . . Because he’s just the best--he did the 900!”

A 900 isn’t in the cards on this day, but Hawk and his entourage do not disappoint. In a gesture of good will, they agree to skate in shifts, for as long as it takes to entertain all comers.

And from the ensuing five hours, here are some observations:

* Top-tier skateboarders are athletes in every sense, utilizing a mixture of talent, perseverance and passion to take their sport to the highest level--and they have the scabs and scars to show for it.

* Skateboarding fans are equally passionate. They hang on every switcheroo-to-fakie, stalefish front-side 540, kickflip McTwist and heelflip slob air, if in fact I’m seeing any of these. (I had to have an ollie, the basic act of popping your board into the air with your feet, explained by a 7-year-old boy outside the park.)

* Old man Hawk, who has endured countless concussions, had his front teeth knocked out, some vertebrae compressed and his knee cartilage torn, remains a master technician, even if he has slipped physically.

He and his hand-picked crew--Bam Margera (of MTV’s “Jackass” fame), Mike Vallely, Alex Chalmers, Lincoln Ueda, Kevin Staab, Ellis, Steve Berra and Brian Sumner--have methodically skated themselves to a collective pulp. (BMX freestyle-riding legend Mat Hoffman, nicknamed the Condor, also tours with Hawk.)

As the crowd thins, so do the skaters’ ranks. Chalmers and Vallely have the street course--street courses feature small ramps, rails and curbs--practically to themselves and are trying a trick neither wants to give up on.

It involves skating high up a wall, reversing course, gaining as much speed as possible and launching over a four-foot railing onto a wooden platform 10 feet below.

Neither is able to successfully stick the landing, but everyone is impressed by their efforts, even two policemen working crowd control, and an exotic dancer some of the skaters had met the night before.

Ultimately, the dancer is presented a skateboard as a keepsake. The policemen are largely ignored. . . .

. . . It’s the morning after in Tempe, still hotter than blazes. I’m one of the first on the bus and have found a seat, but it’s as clear as the desert sky that there’ll be no serious interviews en route to Encinitas.

A night on the town has taken its toll. Hawk is stretched out on a seat in the back and soon, every inch of the vehicle’s interior has a seemingly lifeless body on it.

“We live a rock-star lifestyle,” explains Chalmers, 23, a skateboarder-stuntman from Vancouver. “Every night, we’re out partying at strip bars or going downtown. We sleep for an hour and then rip it all day or whatever, and then we do the same thing the next day. It really is the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and I wouldn’t give it up for the world.”

Above his head, dangling from the curtain rod, is a pair of women’s thong underwear in leopard-skin pattern.

Otherwise, the scene on the bus is surprisingly wholesome.

Berra is whispering to someone about missing his wife, actress Juliette Lewis. Staab, Hawk’s longtime friend, takes a cell-phone call from his fiancee, and learns that she’s pregnant. Word spreads and congratulatory yelps break the silence, but only briefly.

Sumner, called “the fifth Beatle” because of his hairstyle and Liverpool heritage, is jotting words in a journal, perhaps chronicling the magical mystery tour he’s on.

Finally, the bus rolls to a stop and Hawk and his friends begin soaring higher than ever: 12,500 feet, as guests of Perris Valley Skydiving.

While they’re falling from the sky, Robert Earl, the tour sidekick hired by ESPN to inject comedy into the TV series, shares his views on the athletes he’s traveling with.

“The cool thing about doing this is that it gives me an insight to their lifestyles,” he says. “The guys didn’t buy into the tour at first, because they’re skaters and did not set out to be stars. The media made them stars.

“Tony? He never wanted to do anything more than skate. All this celebrity stuff just happened to him--he never sought after it. To this day, he’s still the same: He is so humble, but you can’t even use that word because he’s not anything but himself. It’s almost as though this surreal thing is happening to him and he’s just having to adjust to it all.”

Back on the bus, I finally get a few words with Hawk, who acknowledges, matter-of-factly, that he had never planned on making skateboarding a career.

“We didn’t care about money; it was just fun,” he says of the early days.

He then opens an e-mail from a fan asking that he relinquish his endorsements, give up his role as ambassador and let skateboarding revert to its renegade past.

“What am I supposed to do, put my family out on the street?” he asks with a smile.

The street finally looks familiar. It leads to Hawk’s sprawling Carlsbad estate. He steps off, lifts his young son Spencer aboard for some quick hellos, and the bus proceeds to a nearby hotel, where the others will rest for the next day’s demo. . . .

. . . There’s a buzz in the air at the YMCA in Encinitas, more so than at Tempe. Some of the skateboarders are from the area and most have performed at the outdoor park.

Soon, the skaters roll in and the vert ramp and street course come alive.

By now, I’ve learned that a 540 is 1 1/2 rotations while soaring above the vert ramp, and that a 540 McTwist is the same move with a flip thrown in. I know that a lip slide involves sliding atop a surface on the middle of the board; that a kickflip involves flipping the board with a foot after an ollie.

I’ve also learned that professional skateboarders, at least those on the Hawk tour, are not the rebellious radicals some still think them to be.

Vallely, for example, is a street specialist who relies on power as well as skill. He has an intimidating presence on his board but is a gentle soul with feet squarely planted, known throughout skating for his tireless work with children.

Margera, 21, a talented street skater, is among the more mischievous of the bunch: He jumped from the sixth-floor hotel balcony into a shallow swimming pool while on a European leg of the tour.

And then there’s Ellis, the aging vert specialist. His greatest assets these days are his hilarious commentary and daredevil antics at demos such as these.

“You do need a ham, so here I ham,” he says. “I have bone fragments floating around in both ankles and they ripped a tendon out of my foot about three months ago, so I can’t skate in contests anymore.

“I can pretty much just do a demo like this and then recover for a couple of days. But I’m in the time of my life, where all I want to be is on the bus. I love it. I don’t want to go home. I just skate and laugh my ass off all the time.”

With that I decided I’d had enough laughs for a while--I said my goodbyes and ollied on home.