Karaoke is my favourite Hobby.

The older we get, the harder it is to orchestrate a skate trip with a bunch of good friends. Balancing your “adult” life with time spent drinking cheap beer and talking shit about inanimate objects can sometimes be challenging. It’s still an impossible task to explain to your relatives the beauty of destroying your body in the flaming hot sun with a beer and a donut for breakfast only to have a four second clip to bore your friends with. Is this our escape from adult reality? Have we even grown up at all? Is Ziggy a secret Jedi cosplayer?
The good times seem to be a guarantee on any skate trip I’ve been on, and the last one has left me hungry for more. Finding a purpose for footage/photos is usually something that is decided afterwards or during a trip due to the fact you can never tell whether a trip will be productive or not. Having skated a lot, we ended up with about 4 minutes of footage and decided to make an edit. Justin and Ziggy representing the Karaoke crew and Teun and Jesse the newly founded Hobby crew, we decided to put two and two together. You might have never heard of Hobby, and maybe you never will. You have now though. 

Since making a business agenda is an adult skill I’ve picked up, this report will be written in the aforementioned manner. We had a very busy schedule, only the most notable events were mentioned. 

Wednesday 16-08-2023 (first night)

16:00 Justin and Ziggy met up in The Hague to come pick up Jesse.
17:00 Played with Ramsy the French bulldog and picked up Jesse. Continued driving to Teuns place.
17:45 Pick up Teun. Drank 2 beers in front of his house. Talked shit about Empel. Continue driving to Heuvelland (final destination).
18:30 First piss stop after another beer in the car. 
20:00 Food stop at a random snackbar in Belgium. The veggie Mexicanos were sold out so Justin had to settle with a vegetarian Bicky burger. Large fries in Belgium are for two persons. Ziggy finished his. 
21:15 Stopped at Gabriel’s gas station. Almost bought a bag of onions and a roast chicken from the vending machine. We did buy some beers. Ziggy smoked a ciggy across the street from the whorehouse. 
22:00 Arrived at our trekking hut. The hut was extremely hot and had rubber mattresses. The bunk bed was made for kids. 
22:30 A few beers at a picnic table on the property. A few people had farted in the car before but after we arrived everyone could let loose. 
23:30 Time to sleep. And fart. And mosquitos.

Thursday 17-08-2023 (Trip to Calais)

8:30 Woke up and Jesse made banana pancakes. Teun bought instant coffee but also coffee filters. Teun hates oatmeal, but loves instant coffee. The neighbour gave us his leftover butter. Teun hates banana pancakes. And oatmeal. 
10:00 Shower, brush teeth, sit down again. Made the plan to go to Calais. Farts.
11:00 On our way to Calais. The drive was terrifying. 80 in a 30 zone, ignoring traffic signs. Driver will remain anonymous. 
12:15 Arrived at Calais. Checked out the skatepark. Teun instantly skated the big bowl. Justin found a slappy ledge on a bank. Jesse found a flat ledge. Ziggy found his iPhone. Gnarly clips in the park.
13:00 Arrived at the street spot. Great bank/hip spot. A fucking enormous robotic dragon came out of nowhere and started spitting Fire and Water. Teun had enough and wanted to go home. What the fuck was happening. Justin filmed a nice line.
14:30 Next stop, the dragon was still there. Everyone filmed a clip. Really crowded spot.
17:00 Drove around Calais, not many spots but a lot of alcoholics. Teun found a gap over a fence next to some of the local outdoor drinkers. Got told to fuck off when he petted someone’s dog after another guy pulled down his pants. A naked woman looked at us from her apartment. Maybe the kickflip would have been easier if it wasn’t for all the beers. Or maybe harder??
18:45 Looking for a restaurant. Only found an empty skateshop named “Gate skeek”. One hour later we found a tourist-trap restaurant. Food 3/5, tall stories 5/5.
20:30 Turned the car around after Jesse saw a bump to bar from the car only to find out the bar was missing. 
21:30 Returned to the trekking hut. More beers and tall stories. Mastermovies references all over. Second shot at playing “regenwormen” but we continued talking about skateboarding gossip instead. Farting intensified at this point, but no smellers yet. 

Friday 18-08-2023 (Trip to Lille)

8:30 Teun hates banana pancakes.
10:00 Watched LuckyTV and listened to some nice music. Taking turns shitting & showering. 
11:00 Alright, it was Ziggy who drove. Jesus christ mate, take it fucking easy. 
12:00 Arrived at the first spot; banks with a metal edge and a whole bunch of other shit. We were sweating our asses off since it was very hot and humid. Everyone got a clip except Ziggy. Justin did everything really fucking easy, Teun figured out the spot quite fast and Jesse had a classic freakout. A local resident allowed us to keep the door open to the central hall of the building for run up. Fun times. 
14:00 Looking for more spots. The Krak app really helped us the whole tour, but let us down this time. Spots were hard to find, didn’t exist anymore or were skatestopped. Teun tried some shit but the cops decided he wasn’t gonna do anything. 
15:00 After Jesse took everyone to another bump to bar he wasn’t gonna skate, we went to a ledge spot. Lines for days and drug dealers for days. A bum lady shared her 8,6% beer with her dog, and Justin found a dead rat. Spot 4/5, surroundings 2/5.
17:00 Drove to the suburbs of Lille to skate some spots. First stop looked great, claimboarding sesh was insane. Next spot was a rough but doable volcano somewhere very residential. Some of the locals weren’t too happy with the noise we made skating and tossed a green pepper towards Justin’s face.
20:00 Final spot of the day; some really good ledges in the centre of a really small town. Everyone had too many beers to skate at this point, but it was, again, a really good claimboarding sesh. Too bad the “best” part of the spot was taken over by a big fun fair. The poke bowl we ate took about one hour each to make. 
22:30 Made a fire close to our hut. Good talks and good music. As soon as Teun put on the original music from the Star Wars saga, Ziggy showed us his lightsaber moves. This is what true talent looks like, something you might only see once in a lifetime. If you’re lucky. 

Saturday 19-08-2023 (Trip to Panne and Ostend)

10:00 At this point the hut started smelling quite bad. Not only did the farting intensify to the point of smelliness, but the sweat-drenched piles of clothing started filling the room with their odour. The point of making healthy banana pancakes was lost at this point, so breakfast consisted of instant coffee and old slices of bread with whatever laid closest to you. 
11:00 On our way to Calais. We all smelled before arriving at the spot, poor car. Sweaty hangover ride. 
12:00 Arrived at Knokke. The fresh seabreeze did us all good and took care of most of the hangover. The fish sandwiches we got knocked us down for about half an hour. Ziggy and Justin both skated the spot and even filmed a line together. 25% skating, 75% sightseeing and naps. 
14:30 Next spot was a really sick bank/wallie/ledge spot. Whatever you can make of it. Hard to skate, looks really good. Teun had to fight his inner demons to get this clip but after a meditative break he managed to land his trick. Justin, as always, took a more precise approach. Building up from a 50-50 to the trick he wanted, he got a nice clip at this difficult spot. We both ate fruit and donuts at this spot, accompanied with beers and water. 
16:30 Off to Ostend. Krak showed us three bump to bars on the map so Jesse almost had a stroke when they were in the same area. Unfortunately Jesse had to hop fences to find out they were all either demolished or had huge cracks, no luck this time. 
18:30: After getting more beers, the last spot of the day was a bank/flatgap spot in a big park in Ostend. Surrounded by trees and approaching golden hour, this was a relaxed way to end the day. Two clips down and a biiiiggg claim by Teun, the day ended peacefully with shit-talking about the skateboard industry. 
21:30 On the hunt for food. We had to stop by three restaurants only to find out the kitchens close after 9PM in Ostend. Had a pretty good kebab after driving around for an hour, poor judgement according to our intestines the next day. Off to the hut.
22:45 Beers at the hut. Figured our neighbours had left so took out the speaker and blasted some videos. We watched the Mastermovies masterpiece “Arie en Bastiaan”. Ziggy showed us his secret skate part on dailymotion named: Ultimate skateboarding compilation 2014-2016. He does nollie flips in it. Please check it out.

https://www.dailymotion.com/Ziggys911

Sunday 20-08-2023 (Final day to Brussels)

9:00 Sharp ankle pains, weak knees and rumbly bellies. How do people go on skate trips for more than a week? Oh right, that’s called being 21. Turns out the neighbours actually were home to enjoy Arie & Bastiaan with us. No more breakfast except for instant coffee. Nothing more to gain from the hut. Everyone packed their shit quite speedily and we were off to Brussels by about 10:00.
10:00 Listened to the soundtrack of Alien workshop’s Mind Field. Ziggy tried to get us to listen to a podcast. Ended up listening to the soundtrack of the DC Video. Top speed +- 200 km/h.
11:45 First spot in Brussels resembled a New York basketball court ledge spot. After rope jumping there was actually some energy left, but the spot just didn’t do it. 
13:00 Next spot was sick. Manny pad/ledge combo in the middle of a street. Great spot, but Teun decided to take a piss next to where we were sitting. We smelled his piss the whole session, thanks Teun. 
16:00 After looking for more spots with little success, we arrived at the agreed final spot of the tour. A tricky one, landing in a cobblestone bank and a dirty canal with floating condoms next to it. Despite the odds, Justin and Jesse still got a clip. Teun tried fishing for a while but unfortunately had no luck.

Photos and video by Ziggy Schaap.