The X Games

I have survived the inaugural X Games foray into Austin.  Just barely, but I have survived.

They were held in L.A. for years, but have signed a deal to come to Austin for the next four years.  Why the hell not?  So when the tickets went on sale last year, I nabbed five wristbands for Saturday, thinking it would be a fun excursion with the kiddos and wife in tow.  While I would not call it a complete bust, it was a hard day to enjoy.

My main beef with the Games is the venue and the insane amount of space they put between the different events. When schlepping 3 small kids from xxtreme little car racing over to xxtreme skate ramping, walking for a damn mile with a couple thousand other people is very difficult and sweaty and unpleasant.  More to the point, I think it was entirely unnecessary.  To my untrained eye, there were open spaces available to set up the events closer to each other.  At one point, I jokingly asked a volunteer if an event would still be going on if we took the half hour to walk over to the venue, and she corrected me that it would definitely take longer than thirty minutes to walk to the venue.  What the hell?  But then she helpfully told us that for $75 we could ride an elevator up to the top of the big tower in the middle of the track.  Awesome.  No thanks.

Next, the heat and humidity combo was brutal.  It actually wasn't that terribly hot for Texas in June - I think it was 93 out there - but there is zero shade in the stands, which are made of reflective silver metal, which also manage to completely block the wind.  It was like being in a solar broiler.  When the action was happening, the whole crew forgot that misery entirely, but the events were generally late to start and frequently involved long delays throughout, so we spent a lot of time just broiling.  And our three year old just wanted to sit in a lap the whole time, so one of us got the joy of a extra little heater on our crotch.  I looked over at the older two at one point and the six year old just had sweat dripping off her nose and chin onto her wet shirt.  Ugh.

I was also disappointed by the fact that most events were happening one at a time.  So the entire crowd would go from each event to the next, instead of splitting up the crowd into more manageable chunks.  This was likely for TV or something.  When we walked all the way over to the Skate Park to see that event, there was no way to get a seat that would actually see what was happening.  Thousands of people had already taken most of the seats, and the remaining ones were useless.  The Park was built up about 20 feet high, so that you could not see anything at all from ground level and even if you were level with the top of the bowl, you couldn't see anything that happened once the rider dropped in to do tricks.  This was when buying those VIP passes started to make sense.

My old man whining aside, when the action was happening, it was awesome.  The kids loved it.  The adults loved it.  I totally get why you should do the X Games in person.  After giving up on the insanely long walk to the BMX dirt track, we watched the RallyCross finals, with each kid picking their own car to cheer for (generally based on the tragically unattractive paint job or color of the car's rims), and when the race was on the kids were on the edge of their seats cheering and talking up their car.  It was really fun to watch.  However, the racing excitement was deflated frequently by disabled cars.  When a car goes down, the race stops and a couple of wreckers drive out to get the car and pick up all of the little pieces of the different cars that have been left behind on the track.  For example, the first race started with five cars, but had to pause during the first lap to clean up a car.  After about 20 minutes in the solar broiler, the race restarted with four cars, which lasted no time at all before another car went down.  After the cleanup session, the final three cars raced it out.  And it was awesome.  We only lasted two races at that track before bagging it to try to cool off, but the boy wanted to stay and keep watching those races.

Same kind of thing at the Moto X Speed and Style.  When the action was happening, the kids were on their feet, amazed by the tricks and ability of those dudes to launch themselves up in the air and twist all over the place before righting themselves and landing.  There were apparently strong winds (although we couldn't feel it in the damn stands) that made the riders tone down their jumps, but for us, it was still a blast to see.

After about five and a half hours in the broiler, we threw in the towel.  All my grand plans for seeing music with the kids or hanging around to see the Big Air did not happen, but by that time I was totally fine with leaving.  A Sonic Route 44 had my name written all over it.