A Step Into The Future

Posted by Bling on Feb 11, 2009 | 4 comments

Friday 26th Dec. 2008, Skateimpact put up a session in Cairo to finally take the BIG step to improve the Egyptian Skateboarding Scene by meeting up with the ‘’Redbull’’ company and the ‘’OTV’’ TV channel.
Cherif & Omar Herrawi chose the most potential skaters of Alexandria crew to come along and make history. I woke up 6:45 AM after having 3 hours of sleep and I got ready and brought extra skateboarding gear in case someone breaks his board or any other skate gear, At 7:30 AM we met up in Zahran Mall and the excitement was unbelievable, Ahmed ghoneim, Karim Alexander and myself skated for about 10 minutes, afterwards Cherif & Omar gave us the new Skateimpact stickers to put on our boards and we had an early group photo before we left.

At 7:50 AM, we got on the mini bus and started our journey to Cairo, we were 9 skaters and it was hell. At first there was noise mostly by me but then we started saying Jokes, for an about half an hour we kept laughing then Cherif decided to put on his ‘’Sleeping eye cover’’ and his ear plugs so he sleeps tight but Amin and I kept waking him up, then most of the skaters slept and I took pictures of them, it’s kind of a habit(lol).At 8:30 AM  We stopped at a gas station to buy our needs, have breakfast, cup of coffee or tea and go to the restrooms as it was extremely clean and the smell was amazing (lol), I was speechless.
After we finished, we went off to Cairo without any more stops. Omar brought with him a ‘’Skim boarding’’ video and it was really sick especially a skim boarder called ‘’Paulo’’.
We arrived at 10:35 AM and then we went to ‘’Tiba Mall’’ to sk8 until prayers, when we came down then mini bus, Ahmed Ghoneim, Mohamed Ibrahim and Ziad Ashraf were so excited as it was a spot they never saw except in skate videos such as ‘’First Impression’’. We kept skating for about an hour and then Amin broke his truck but I had an extra truck so I gave it to him, and then he broke something in his wheels along with his bearings but I was there to rescue him (lol) and then ‘’Oozy’’ joined us, the Alex crew greeted him and then we put our boards aside and went to pray in a nearby mosque.

After we finished prayers, we went to ‘’Tiba Mall’’ to sk8, 45 minutes later 2 women wearing Redbull shirts and carrying a huge shaped Redbull can bag joined us, they gave everyone Free and unlimited Redbull and that gave us too much energy, every skater did his best to impress them so they can know how sick and good Egyptian skaters are, later on ‘’Hazem Mishriki’’ arrived and he seemed pumped up and ready to sk8. We only skated on the 4 sets, Karim Alexander really nailed some awesome Pressure & Tre flips on the 4 sets. Amin rida as always landed some gnarly first attempts Hardflips on the 4 sets as they were as easy as ollies to him and also made some perfect Heelflips. oozy impressed everyone with his HUGE BS Flip on the 4 sets and his Nollie Heelflip so as Mohamed Ibrahim with his BS Flip. Ahmed Ghoneim made high levelled Kickflips on the 4 sets and I nailed it Fs Flip, Switchflip and Heelflip also Ziad Ashraf attempted to do an Ollie to Manual to Ollie out on the 4 sets and it was AMAZING, Mahmoud Bakr landed some awesome Heelflips that left us all speechless. Hazem kept impressing each skater with his high tricks on the 4 sets especially his Fs Kickflip.

At 2:00 PM, Men with a huge camera came and turns out it was ‘’OTV’’ if you’re not familiar to it, it is an Egyptian channel that hosts Arabic series and films special events, anyway they came and filmed the skaters skating on the 4 sets as Cherif was filming and photographing us and he did a job well done, Omar was with the Redbull crew telling them about skateboarding. OTV then took an interview with Omar, Cherif, me, Hazem and finally Amin. Karim Alexander would have been interviewed but he had camera fright. ‘’I don’t even talk to girls that much because I don’t know what to say to them, imagine what will I do I talked to a camera or an interviewer’’ Laughed Karim.
After we finished the interviews, The camera man gave Cherif their camera because they wanted Cherif to film Hazem a line, Cherif agreed and filmed him, ‘’its so heavy its 8 kilograms like the man said, I feel like my arm is lighter’’ said Cherif. Also the montage director of the OTV interviews decided to ride a skateboard and well, it didn’t even last 2 seconds (lol).

At 4:30 PM we left Tiba mall and went to the ‘’Cairo International Airport’’ known as the ‘’Airport’’, we met with the Redbull crew again. When we first arrived we found a local skater called ‘’Maysara’’ AKA Masman skating there all alone, and that impressed me because most of the skaters don’t like to sk8 alone, afterwards Yehia ,Amr Badr(Arto), Hani Mostafa, Nader Maslic and other locals arrived. We kept skating on Cherif’s Rail that we brought with us and all the skaters kept nailing gnarly tricks try after try.
Surprisingly Ahmed Ghoneim Tried the hubba a Noseslide but failed but he was this close and at least he was brave enough to try it, Karim, Amin and Myself attempted the ledge gap beside it and Ollie and nailed it on the 3rd try.

At 6:30 PM we took a group photo and then we were off to Alexandria, we were kind of sad because we wanted to stay more but we had to go to eat at ‘’Dandy mall’’, Karim Arafa joined us to the journey back and when we arrived at ‘’Dandy mall’’ we all spread out to eat in ‘’McDonald’s’, ‘’KFC’’ and ‘’Hardees’’, we ate there and we were so comfortable but then Karim Arafa, Karim Alexander and I grabbed our boards and skated in a big free section beside the parking.

We left there at 7:30 PM and turns out that Ahmed and Ziad bought a thriller movie called ‘’House of wax’’, half of us were terrified and our reactions were hilarious, after the movie finished we watched the ‘’Skim boarding’’ movie again and at 10:45 we found our self’s in Alexandria.
We thanked Cherif and Omar for the awesome trip and session. I went back home, I was very tired because I didn’t sleep at all but I slept like a baby and was proud to be part of history in Cairo.

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