Severe Foot-in-Mouth Disease on the First and Last Ever 'Eleven Parks to Parkes Mechanical Snowboard Tour' 2013
PART FOUR
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My Foot-In-Mouth affliction was becoming worse the drunker I became, and at this point of the night, I started to get pretty pissed. More people arrived at The Cambo. The boys from earlier came back, saying that all the chicks are now headed here. “Sweeeeet!” I thought, licking my lips and rubbing my fingers together in a sadistic, squinty-eyed squat.
In my head, anyway. In reality I didn't say anything. I just sat there, continuing to eavesdrop and make people fall off the snowboard.
One group came on pretty early on and they all sucked except for the black guy. He was showing off and acting all aboriginal up there – doing the emu dance on the nose of the board and stamping his feet. His friends all laughed and as they did, I said in a light-hearted nature: “Trust the Aboriginal bloke to show you guys up at something hard, huh?” There was an extended silence. Followed by an awkward pause, which was followed by a moment of pure nothingness. I sat frozen with my elbows dug into my hips, staring slightly upwards at the balcony but barely focussed on anything at all. The weird grin remained on my face.
The black guy said: “Are you serious?”
In this moment my training came into action. I needed to quickly avert all attention to my foot-in-mouth fumble. The quickest way to do this is with a compliment.
“We all know you black fellas are good at everything, don't we?” I Looked at all his white mates, who all probably thought that pissing off the single indigenous dude in their group wasn't worth the hassle, so they all just laughed in agreement and the situation was back to being slightly more than okay.
For the next couple of hours I chatted with various locals and girls from out of town. I let anyone who was willing to control the snowboard have a go at it, and I ended up sitting there talking and drinking more than I did whilst actually operating the thing. I even started to get a personal drink service, with the girls doing the glass run coming over and
asking me if I needed a fresh beer, to which every time I'd reply, “yes,” and hand them my empty schooner and the sheet of paper for them to sign.
One girl held onto the controls for at least an hour. She was quite ugly, but her friends weren't, and she was keeping them around. The Dumb, Ugly, Fat Friend kept on trying to spark up a conversation with me, where I was more interested in her hot, little friend from Newport. She was a student from CSU in Bathurst and had recently moved to the country. A short brunette wearing a funky, fabric scarf and black pants with big, wide brown eyes and a cheeky face. I thought she was a babe, and I just wanted to keep talking to her but her DUFF kept hassling me, asking me questions about how to control the easiest machine to control in the world, and how long the drive from Sydney was. At one point I dropped my clipboard and as I lunged for it, her cat-like instinct shot her hand from the controls straight onto my balls. “Whoops,” she grinned, and I gave her a look that screamed: “I AM NEVER GOING TO FUCK YOU!”
The girls left me to have to do my job for myself, but I was quickly joined by another couple of local lads. These guys were nice fellas, one of them shouted me a drink and didn't expect one back which is something that you don't often get in the city. I can't for the life of me remember what we were talking about, until, of course, my foot suddenly found itself in my mouth again. I was telling one of the guys about the situation with my license and because of this I was sticking to the speed limit on the drive up. “Fuck people hate you if you go the speed limit out here, don't they?” I said. “Pretty much the whole way after Bathurst I'd be getting tail-gated like a motherfucker, even if I'm going 5-10 over.”
“Yeah well, you know what mate, I've chucked about two-grand into my v8, and when I take it out on the weekends, mate, I wanna open her up. I don't wanna get stuck behind some cunt doing the fucking speed limit!”
We both laughed at this. He was kind of calling me a pussy but I didn't give a shit. I've done so much stupid shit in my life already, speeding included, that I don't need to prove myself to some petrol-head. But then I said, “No wonder so many kids die on the roads out here.” Again, I'd said something to stop someone in their tracks, only this time there was no mistaken case of intended meaning. He heard me loud and clear, and I expected him to fire up. Instead he got visibly upset and walked away. I told myself to stop speaking; just stop talking to people and you may get out of Parkes alive.
At half-past midnight I looked at my phone and saw that I'd been operating the snowboard for half an hour too long. It wasn't the worst thing though, I'm sure the client and the punters really appreciated it, but I was dying to pack the bloody thing up and smoke a joint. An Aboriginal family had all been
taking turns, so I let them have a couple more before turning it off. The oldest of them, a solid bloke wearing a pink, sparkly top-hat, was a bit miffed, but I stood my ground and told him I'd kept it going for almost an hour over time and he backed off. I was in pack up mode, and in fifteen minutes the thing was packed away nicely, ready to be chucked back into the van in the morning. Went straight up into my room and rolled a nice long J. I opened up the window, aimed the pedestal fan at it and lit up. I'd brought a schooner up with me as well. I thought about passing out then and there, having a quick wank, smoking more weed and hitting the hay, but the thought of the girl from Newport got me back downstairs. I got another beer from the publican and sat at a table near the main thoroughfare. I usually hate being at a pub on my own. It's so boring, and I just sit there staring into my beer. But sitting here I was constantly having someone stop to talk to me or being called over into another convo.
“Oi, snowboard dude! Come over here!” or, “So ya came all the way from Sydney?” I was never too lonely that night in Parkes. One bloke who sat down next to us was a concreter from out of town. We talked shit for a while before he asked me if I had any Panadol. The guy had a headache, and I responded by telling him all I had was weed, valium and mushrooms. This pricked his ears up a bit. I ended up selling two mushie caps to him for $60 and he and his mate went on their merry way. I have no idea if he knew what the fuck he was buying off me, but he didn't seem too stressed and was adamant that they'd be scoffing them down that night.
Now that I think about it, that dude could've easily been a cop. He was the one asking me about drugs. The only reason I assumed he was cool was because he was pissed, but you never know what the cops get up to out in somewhere like Parkes.
“Go for it,” I thought at the time, glad to finally get involved in a conversation that didn't end in a foot in my mouth or an unwanted hand on my balls.