Waiting for Lightning Page #7

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and the doctor says,

"Here are some pills. Take them".

Not with Danny.

"Look, you have some problems.

Here's a skateboard.

That's gonna make you okay".

Skateboarding brings

it all right to now.

There's a lot of times

I'm up there

and my head's

going crazy,

and every time I drop in,

it just dissolves all that.

Tim was out surfing

with some friends of his.

He was coming

back in on his board,

and he collapsed

in the beach.

He passed away

doing what he loves to do.

Danny felt a real loss,

and I think it brought back

feelings that Danny had

from other losses

in his life.

There's been a lot

of, like, trauma in my life,

and the only thing that's steered

me back on track is my board.

Some of us

use our pain

and our anger as a motive

to achieve things,

and that motive

is very, very powerful,

but it also is

a double-edged sword.

Skateboarders look

at the world differently,

but Danny's unique

because his gaze

is a lot wider

than most skateboarders'.

Leave it to Danny

to not be satisfied,

so I need something bigger,

I need something faster.

I need something crazier

because my head

is in a different place.

Whatever else is going on

in skateboarding,

that doesn't matter,

because this is what I need

to do with skateboarding.

I never imagined

anybody going that big.

That was the first time

anybody had even seen

anything like that.

That was a shock, I think, to

the entire skateboarding world.

He could very well

have built something

much, much smaller.

No one else would've

done it that way.

No one would've

convinced people

to put that much money

into building that,

and then somehow thought they

were gonna be able to do it.

Danny used

his entire skill set

to do the whole

megaramp movement.

His fearlessness,

his vertical skill set,

his street knowledge...

It's amazing.

It's a lifetime

of effort to do that.

He's the pioneer

of the gnarliest thing

there is to do

on a skateboard.

It goes beyond

skateboarding.

This is now

life and death stuntmanship,

True daredevil stuff.

You can die.

If you look

at the megaramp, I mean,

that's the result of Danny

being fed up

of having

to compete on vert

and saying, "You know what?

I'm better than this.

I'm gonna create something new

that's gonna jump everyone".

So, he created

his own event

on his battlefield,

you know,

like that he was

gonna excel at.

I really admired

and looked up to guys

like Danny Way,

guys that had

this completely other idea

that was, to most people,

crazy or insane,

but it was something

that worked in their head,

and they were able to start this whole

movement in this other direction.

They were able to start

their own sports.

The X-Games contest

is the gnarliest thing

I've ever seen

live skateboarding.

I felt like I was watching

gladiator or something.

Skateboarding

is just such a notch up

from a lot of sports

as far as how tough you have

to be to get that good.

I think that,

in a lot of ways,

it gives you strength

for the rest of your life.

In order

to achieve greatness,

you have to go through

a lot of pain.

You definitely

have setbacks,

but in order to achieve

that success,

you have to push through.

You're gonna have

to battle injury.

Oh, my gosh, Danny Way!

One to the world!

You kill me!

Yeah!

Why keep going? Is staying undefeated

really that important to you?

Naw, it's more... more my

passion for skateboarding

and part

of the challenge

sometimes is

battling the injuries

and, uh, you know,

it's always gratifying

to push the human,

you know, uh,

the human potential

as far as how much abuse

you can take

and come back from.

Danny! Whoo!

The very best guys

are the ones

that are willing

to push it past the limit

and take

those chances

to get

to that next level.

You have to believe

that you can do something

that nobody else

has done,

and somehow that concept

has to become reality.

From the very beginning,

it was totally

a different type

of experience, for sure.

It all happened

pretty quickly.

Danny was gonna

jump the Great Wall,

we were going

to shoot it.

I remember flying there

on the night of fourth of July

and taking off from LAX

and seeing all the fireworks.

There wasn't

a lot of information

about what

was gonna happen.

I didn't know anything about

the dimensions of the ramp.

We didn't know

what it was built on.

I hadn't seen photos.

We were all

really curious,

I think, to what exactly

it was gonna be like.

The week leading up to it,

it was pretty nerve-wracking.

These guys were just

working day and night,

so it was a definite rush

to make it happen.

The ramp was something

on such another level.

I would've never imagined

that it was gonna be

this 65-foot roll-in

built on top of a wall.

If something happened,

you'd just fall straight down.

This is

a structure of a size

that one man on the planet

maybe can do.

Now that's

a quarterpipe.

Now, that's what

we're talking about.

Oh, my god.

Jumping

the Great Wall is insane,

but then there's

a 32-foot tall quarterpipe

that he's gonna be charging

towards after jumping the wall,

and this thing's,

like, three stories tall!

He's gonna go 30...

he's gonna go

35 feet on this air!

He's gonna be

70 feet in the air.

Right here's

a good ten foot of air,

just rolling

down this thing.

Once you realize

that this is what you do

and this is who you are,

then you're like,

now I'm ready to really

put it on the line,

and now I need

to up the ante.

There's this quest

not so much for perfection,

but it's a quest

for significance or meaning

or that I contributed

or that I changed things

or that I mattered.

A guy like Danny,

he's only gonna participate

if he can offer something

that will change things.

To me, like,

that's honor.

I never would've thought

that I'd be here

to watch my friend

launching over the wall,

and it's hard

to even grasp, like,

the size of this

without being here.

This is bigger than the

megaramps... the super mega.

I remember going there

the first day and looking at it.

It was built

on scaffolding.

It was sketchy.

It took forever

to get up there.

It was definitely

not stable.

You could

feel it moving.

They would never let anyone

build something like that here.

You go up and you look down,

and it's just 100 feet down.

I was like, "Man, I hope

this is okay".

Like, "I really hope

this is all right".

This whole thing

is shaking around.

Don't move like that

and it won't shake.

But watch.

Literally, watch.

Feel the whole tower?

There is

an addiction to progression.

You get this incredible buzz

when you land something

the first time.

when you have

that mindset,

it doesn't matter

how successful you are.

You have to keep

challenging yourself,

you have to keep

doing it,

and at some point

that becomes a curse.

Danny didn't go

to the Great Wall of China

uncertain

that he could do it.

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