A rule to always remember is the third rule of Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
      We depart LAX one beautiful sunny morning, being taken by my dad and his additional commentary regarding how shitty Los Angeles sports teams are. James Sawyer, Daryl Angel and I fly out to start our European Gigolos Tour via Canada Air and American Airlines respectively.
      Quickly zipping through the boring flight stuff, and getting right to the meat of this first update, I get a frantic call from James when we switched planes in NYC.
      "Dude I got bad news, basically, I won't meet you in Paris. Canada Air has delayed our flights, and I have no idea what I am going to do."
      Then before I know it or can recommend an advice, I'm cut off and forced to turn off my phone to depart. I stressfully nap my flight away and wake up to a "bonjour" with crappy stale bagel chips.

      Wondering how I'm going to fix this one, Daryl and I land in Paris at 10am and with an extreme amount of unwanted jetlag. The time clock was ticking and we had less then 6 hours before we depart onto our secondary connecting flight to Milan, Italy to meet with Derek Fukuhara. Our options are: One, Do we leave James and have him figure it out a train way to get there, OR Two, forfeit our 100$ flights and wait for James to arrive and leave as a group. Considering that it took us 3 hours to even find a way out of the airport/metro terminal, and adding the fact that I actually have been to Paris before. All of this made me realize that my very extensive travel experience hasn't made me anymore knowledgeable in the slightest. So we opt to stay and wait for James flying in tomorrow.

      This gives me time to introduce our first mate on the trip, Daryl Angel. I have worked with Daryl before during the Filmbot Video. But as anyone knows, when you travel with someone, you get to know way more then warranted. This trip was the first for us and maybe the last. He has more energy then a little gremlin on speed. At 17 years of age. the kid has a severe case of A.D.D and cannot stand still for more then 15 mins, much less sit in an airplane for 12 hours. But on the positive, the kid could have his own TV talk show. I mean, there are very few people who can keep me laughing for hours on end, and Daryl is one of them. If the kid wasn't so goddamn funny and a complete skate ripper, killing every spot we went to, I would have left his ass in Paris.

      Zipping directly back to our drama, our main France contact was Genevieve who I have been calling "Gen" even before I met her. She is a replica of your super hot 2nd grade teacher who you want to hump before you even knew what humping was. Plus she is Canadian too, which automatically makes her cooler and down to earth, then these stand-offish French girls. Thank god she let us stay at her house and gave us all the great accommodations that any Best Western would. I would like to pre-thank her now for all the hassle we have put her through, plus the additional teasing we gave her about the guys she would meet.

      So next day in, I head to the airport and get James Sawyer who is incredibly psyched to be here. His flight was supposed to be from Los Angeles to Montreal to Paris and unfortunately a very typical Canada Air didn't allow enough time for him to get onto his Paris bound flight. So during the time when Daryl and I were flirting with Gen, he was delayed and stuck in crap Montreal hotel. To top it all off, he felt bad that we missed our flight and said that he would pay for our train tickets to Milan. Awesome! Upon arriving home, Daryl who had been pacing back and fourth, pounces and gets us to go skate immediately. We have a great skateday, and prepare for Italy tomorrow.

      Our second travel mate; 24 year old James Sawyer is my long time friend, and was invited on this trip by yours truly. He currently works as a manager at CompUsa, which I aggressively utilize probably twice a week. And boy... this guy can really talk; I mean there is a reason his photo is repeated month after month on the "monthly best sellers" plaque at Comp. We labeled him as "the noisy American guy" for our trip, because no matter where we went there was no person talking louder then him. Otherwise he beautifully complimented the trip, with his great passive attitude, no complaints and little handy cam, which was brought everywhere. Though, he couldn't stop talking about food, so he always made us hungry.

      To truly give this next tidbit an accurate feeling, let me first detail you in our travel-bag situation. First off, James decides to bring a duffel bag (non roller) to Europe. Who does that? We are not the 80's anymore. This bag is stuffed to the brim, as if he was carrying a blue marshmallow under his arm. Daryl's bag was large as all hell and you probably could have stuffed a body in it. My roller bag was small and light, only because I chose to be a scumbag and wear the same clothes almost everyday. Though the downside was I had a large camera bag that weighed about 45 pounds, which was my main true backache.

      What really dragged us through shit, was this additional skateboard bag that had ALL our boards in it. Now that bag was filled with about 10 - 12 decks and was guarenteed heavier then placing 4 cynder blocks in the bag. We quickly got the clever idea to put one filmer board at the bottom and roll it along, but once it picked up some speed, it took some effort to slow it down. I sucked having to apologizing to old ladies with fresh blue ankles from our boards, especially in English. They looked at me with angry stares, probably thinking, "No wonder the United States are getting daily terrorist attacks."

      Ok now since you have that laid out in your head, imagine us carrying this luggage down long metro hallways, up stairs, down stairs and cramming inside a tiny metro car with 50 other people.
      Continuing on.
We, um err I made a mistake and took us to the wrong departing station. I know, I am this supposed expert guide on this trip, but everyone fucks up, so sue me.
      Swapping our tickets for the same train leaving the next day was really easy, lugging our bags back to Gens house was not. But that gave us another day to skate around and see a bit of Paris.
      Meanwhile, Derek, who is expecting us two days ago had to stay additional days with 4 Italian speaking skaters that he met on MySpace and who rarely spoke English. I could probably feel his pain.

      Smarter then ever, we leave four hours early and get there with plenty of time, ahhh. We get our own little cubbyhole on the train and enjoy a nice 8-hour trainride to Turin, Italy; where we will meet up with Derek.

      Our Turin contact; Alberto Kime, he told me to get off specifically on Turin PN exit. Now before I break the "not so surprising breaking news" about us missing the train exit, and you're thinking, "Those Filmbot guys are idiots. Honestly how hard is it to get off a damn train". I recommend you to travel from country to country and see how much smoother your trip goes.

      Our train stops at a station labeled Turin SN, which was obviously not Turin PN. Rushing to ask a enlarged conductor if the next stop is a Turin PN exit, he gives me a non verbal reply's with a quick waving hand inches in front of my face and a whistle blow. The train doors close and starts moving, so without option we are stuck on the train. I look at him with two palms up and a blank stare. He glances at me, then walks off without any concern. Two hours later, we arrive in Milan without Derek who is still stuck in Turin. Reflecting back, "Honestly, how hard is it to get off a damn train?".

      30 euros more and another 2 hour train BACK to Turin, we are greeted by Kime (a Mikey Taylor clone) and Derek in Pajamas at 2 am. Now the story doesn't get any better, trust me, I wish it did. But all our Filmbots are finally together! Since Derek's MySpace buddies live in the smallest closet in probably all of Turin. We are forced to menagetrois and sleep 3 to a bed. It was either that, or hardwood floor under a coffee table. And finally I think they are breeding mosquitoes in Turin because I left with 15 more bumps on my body, which meant I couldn't really locate my real nipples if I tried.

NEXT: Update # 2 / From Touring in Turin to Roaming in Rome.