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A-Rod goes to new extremes
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Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found another e-mail from that bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California. We decided to pass it along again. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.

Chapter Three
... in which our hero takes the history of Los Angeles into his own hands.

If Alex Rodriguez winds up playing for the Dodgers next year, I hope he thanks me.

On second thought, he doesn't have to. Because I'll already have gotten what I want: The Alex Rodriguez/Ambassador Skateboards First Annual International Downhill Skateboarding World Championship and Celebrity Benefit to Combat Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

I'm going too fast for you. Have another beer. On me.

Last week about the worst thing that can happen to someone with my competitive ambitions happened to me. I broke the lens on my video camera. I'm not talking about the regular lens. I'm talking about the special fish-eye lens I use to capture all the Xtreme sports moves of my buddy Puker -- from sky-surfing to skateboarding. The fisheye, as any competitor knows, keeps the field of view wide and allows me to keep Puker in frame when we're both moving through space like bottles tossed from a moving car.

Keeping him in frame the night I broke my lens involved heading behind him as we inaugurated an entirely new sport that might wind up in the Olympics some day (soon, I hope): downhill skateboarding. Instead of descending on your back as in street luge, you head down on your feet.

Think about it.

We were boarding down Temescal Canyon Road from Sunset Blvd. to the PCH. It's a pretty straight decline for about a mile and a half. At the awesome speeds we reached, any slip off the board and you're road kill.

We made it to the bottom of Temescal and we were lucky on two counts. First, I shot some great stuff that I'll try to post for you to download soon if they ever figure out how to make this website work right. And second, we timed the red light, so traffic on the PCH was stopped while we shot across eight lanes. Puker made the Ollie over the divider and a car parked in the lot above the ocean. I didn't. I couldn't brake in time because of how badly I wanted to not stop filming. When I wiped out, I totaled my fish-eye lens. And suffered the fate any true Xtreme athlete knows. I skinned my hands raw. Like someone spread strawberry jam across the palms.

This made my job here at Lore's sports bar extra tough. Patrons don't care much for the server bleeding into their food.

But someone had a heart big enough not to mind. He was a sports agent who stopped in last night. This is his favorite season of the year, and mine too. Not Christmas season, baseball free-agent season. Everybody's coming through town visiting interested clubs. And this agent, a close associate of Scott Boras, was on the Alex Rodriguez case.

He'd been working real hard. Three Johnny Walkers hard. It all just tumbled out of him while he plowed his way through our new Extreme Nachos with Free-Range Pork.

"Alex Rodriguez is going to have not only his own skybox wherever he plays," this agent told me, "he's actually going to have his own corporate office at the ballpark."

"That's radical," I said.

"You can only ask," the agent said. "Everyone thinks we're crazy. We want a private plane, too. Who wouldn't want the use of that? So we ask. They say, 'fine,' so we ask for more."

"Like what else?" I asked, pouring him another.

"You name it," the agent said. "Stuff for his family. Cars for his parents. Health-club memberships for his wife or girlfriend."

"You just ask for that and they give it?"

"Mainly," the agent said.

It was obvious he was mentally exhausted from asking for so much. Because he kind of lowered his head and smacked his fist against the bar.

"I can't even think of what to ask for A-Rod anymore," he said. "I need to. To keep the bidding going. I try and try. But I can't come up with anything. I have no more ideas. I'm at the end of my rope."

He pushed the bowl of nachos off to the side and his head fell to the table. His shoulders heaved.

I've seen my share of broken bones. I've yanked dozens of dislocated fingers and elbows and shoulders back into place. I've even had a couple friends make me swear I'd kill them if they got hurt too far from adequate medical attention. But I don't think I've ever seen anything that tugged at me like this -- a sports agent facing the loss of his job. Kids unable to meet tuition payments at their private school.

"Well, I don't know," I heard myself say. "Maybe if a team wants a shortstop as great as Alex Rodriguez, they'll agree to ... to help sponsor a skateboarding competition ... down Temescal Canyon ... and they'll contribute part of the proceeds to make all Americans aware of the five early warning signs of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome."

The agent raised slowly his head.

"That's genius," he said. His eyes were suddenly dry and way bigger.

With the tip he left me, I bought a new fish-eye lens.



	ALSO SEE: Wheeler's X-Cellent Adventures: Chapter 2 Wheeler's X-Cellent Adventures: Chapter 1