When it came time for finals, the lapses of dry time had gotten smaller and smaller, making it near impossible to hold a contest. In addition to the rain, there was another issue at hand. Chris was the only American skater in the street finals. During his run, he slammed on his first two tricks, and ran into a photographer. He gave up the few remaining seconds of his run in frustration. The crowd reacted by booing and chanting, “Veado”, Portuguese for faggot. Chris, not being too pleased by the response, returned the favor by flipping off the entire Brazilian crowd. The enraged audience started chanting “Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein…” Then, during the practice session following, every time Chris would slam, the crowd would cheer. Random fans began yelling threats down from the stands. The whole contest had turned into a dramatic display of idiocracy. Brazilian TV reporters and the BBC radio team were in line waiting to interview Chris about the astonishing turn of events. Neal Hendrix was telling us we had better watch our backs because we were going to get lynched. The remaining two hours of the contest was as ridiculous as the whole Saddam Hussein episode. The rain, which had been teasing us during the whole contest, had reached a point of no return. It seemed pointless to even continue. The crowd of thousands had dwindled to hundreds. We stood in dismay as the moppers continued their valiant efforts in vain. In the end, the rain had saved us from the lynching that was promised by our new Brazilian fans. The contest was called to an end and the winners were chosen by their previous runs, Chris taking Fourth place.
 
The one good thing which came out of us being at the X-games was that we got to meet up with Chris’s friends Patricia and Vania. Patricia is a rad girl that organizes contests through her own company, “Chama Violetta.” Vania is this cute Brazilian girl that can do backside tailslides on handrails.  She skates tough and knows how to take a slam. Her two front teeth have permanently turned black from falling on her face.

Later that night, Toad and me left our apartment to go have a few more drinks. Earlier on, Chris had warned us not to go home with any strange women. Apparently, there were many cases of dudes being drugged by hookers only to wake up in a bathtub full of ice, with their livers missing. Liver transplants are hard to come by in Rio and expensive, so the black market had taken up livers as a commodity for theft. As weird as it sounds, many cases of such occurrences had been documented of travelers waking up in a bathtub, with a note that says, “We stole your liver!” After hanging around outside this club, we had been trying to ditch this hooker who was stalking us. She kept trying to talk to us, and since she spoke pretty good English, we listened to her bullshit to pass the time. She had a definite evil side about her.  I asked her if she had ever killed anyone, and she confessed to killing her cat in a fit of anger.  She had been taking steroids and was under a lot of stress. This girl was obviously whacked, so we quickly decided it best for us to leave and protect our livers from possible endangerment.

After spending the next morning at the beach, we headed out for Rio Sul bowl.  Toad and Chris were throwing down some serious flow and control in the bowl. The session was raging with Dave Duncan and Sasha Steinhorst showing up to shred with us. The next stop was at Flamenco skate park, which was one of the better spots we skated during the trip. It was a cement skate park with various hips, banks, corners, walls, and a spine, all with this rough granite coping that grinded like mad. 

Fortunately, the weather had made a turn for the better, promising sun for the rest of our days. We got a tip from a friend to check out this skate park on the outskirts of Rio. We spent the next couple of hours at the park, where we eventually met up with our new self-appointed tour guide, Andrea the giant. Andrea was this oversized Brazilian dude, and thus we named him accordingly. Andrea was a novice English speaker. He especially loved to tell us stories while driving. He would be trying to tell a story to one of us in the back seat of the car while driving and smoking a joint, looking back at us repeatedly and swerving across lanes of traffic. During one of his stories, we managed to make two laps around a huge lake before realizing that we had missed his exit off the freeway. 

Nearby our apartment was Apreador Bowl, located on a hill above the beach.  The bowl was one of the oldest in Rio, 12 ft. deep with tile coping and a cancerous bottom. There was also a sketchy spine that connected to a 4 ft. bowl. Local tales of Hosoi blasting 9 ft. airs blew our minds, since we were happy just to frontside grind the thing.