Just one day before the "World Deconstruction Tour" hit the stores in 2004, Austrian skateboarders hit the highway in a much unexpected way. Pretty low-key in a private session, some of the best skaters around turned the tunnel at Semmering into a skate park ...
Two weeks was all we had, from the first talk with the Asfinag – the owner of the Austrian highways – to the event. Luckily all the important points were prepared; a big truck loaded with ramps was waiting at the Red Bull Headquarters for some action. The park was designed by IOU Ramps mastermind Schützi and was about to be ripped for the first time.
It was a lot more than just some hours of preparation. Looking for the right location was a problem, finding this spot another. Even tough Red Bull completely supported the idea of invading a highway – who can be asked for permission? And even if there was someone cool enough to let us skate, we still needed a skateable piece of road, good concrete, as flat as possible. And a tunnel, just for the case of rain! Or snow. Plus we needed a spot that was looking highway, no dirty construction site.
I’ve been travelling to Vienna quite often in the last couple of months, so Semmering seemed to be ideal. The last missing link of highway between Styria and Lower Austria was about to be opened, due to the mountain there is a long tunnel, so we tried to get connected to the Asfinag. We were pretty lucky, as their PR employee liked the idea and got us the permission. Only the date of the event was unconfirmed, as building the road was behind schedule.
But two weeks before the event we got an okay for the 5th or 6th of October, we were to decide. But the 5th was a problem for almost everyone involved, so we went for the 6th. We had a nice list of invited skaters: Roman Hackl, Andi Luger, Reini Rietsch, Markus Schwarz, Andi Fugger, Steve Ebner, Thomas Steinwender, Zivko Brtan, Michi Nadler, Tomy Rath, Roman Astleitner, Kevin Fambri, Philipp Götz und Mac Krebernik. And two or more BMX-riders were about to come.
As the event came closer, the weather turned better and better. It looked like we had chosen one of the last really warm days this year.
Our timetable was pretty mellow, allowing us to deal with unexpected things. We met at 8:30 a.m. as Schützi planned to work for 3 or 4 hours to build the park. It was foggy that morning, but Semmering was the only place in whole Austria with fog, and the forecast promised a nice afternoon, with temperatures rising up to 27°C.
When we started, some things didn’t work out the right way. The truck had to go for a new route to get to our location, as the highway was closed for our invasion. But that lead only to a short delay. This got longer, as removing all parts from the truck wasn’t as easy as expected. And setting up all the ramps was quite tricky – the park hadn’t been tested in full setup.
But the park grew rapidly, starting with some curbs, then the first funbox, a bigger funbox, some quarters and more stuff to ride. Meanwhile, the first skateboarders arrived, using the time left until the shooting to warm up with the given architecture on the highway. Some wheelie pads invited to do tricks, others were just cruising the tunnel, doing manuals.
After a short „warm up“ on the S-curb we already spotted the first highlights. Steini did manuals kick flip out all the way around the tricky curb, and Reini sticked some manual varial flips out. But there was more to come.
On another tricky obstacle, a wheelie pad with a kink, Mac sticked a nosemanual to flip to manual down, unfortunately without a camera recording his trick. Some tries later he did it again, even if not as clean as before. At the same time Asti started to wallie the jersey barriers and one of the bikers, Alex, did some wheelies on that same obstacle.
The session swapped over to the small funbox. Andi Fugger did a couple of nicely stalled salad grinds down the rail as well as switch 50/50ies on the ledge. Philipp Götz killed the ledge with bs tailslides and bs smith grinds, while Fugge cared about the rail, sticking fs bluntslides to fakie.
On the bigger fun box Roman Hackl and Roman Astleitner battled for airtime, and while Asti did some incredibly big and tweaked airs out of the transition Roman Hackl rocked as always with kick flip fs grabs, methods and a couple of indy 360° tries.
But it was some of the rookies, rocking the hardest. Tomy Rath skated as hell with varials doublegrab (tailgrab and mellon) and showed that he can catch some air as well. The other guy – Steve Ebner – did tricks, every THPS player likes: pogos, caspers and darkslides on the small curb. Even a really hard slam couln’t stopp Steve.
The BMX guys completed the session with a couple of nohanders, 360ies and backflips! Word up to Alex, who really tested the transition in his own way.
As the evening approached, the session got better. At some point Asti and Mac disappeard to do some stuff inside the tunnel. Asti was talking about doing wallrides inside for almost three days, and he managed to capture some on film. When he came back with a big smile he saw Mac stalling and tweaking some unusual yoyoplants.
The two bands were still missing. The Antimaniax, a true skate-punk-band from Graz was late. They had troubles with their car and couldn’t make it in time. But as the band arrived, they started to play immediately, and that inncident was forgotten. 45 minutes of cool music in front of the b®andwagen. With Tom Zwanzger skating more than dancing.
The Session went on with Guadalajara, the finest ska band in Styria. I think everyone had the best time of the year, it was a really funny night in front of the tunnel.
After they stopped playing we started to clean up the whole place. But suddenly the speaker inside the tunnel started to play music. And really fitting into our session it was Frankieboy with „I did it my way“!
And yes, we did this session our way. Or to stay with Frank Sinatra: „we did the highway“. It was a damn good session, that will stay in our heads for a long time (as well as the Antimaniax skating the whole 6km tunnel in the dark - that was a blast!).
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