sup. I'm Mario, I'm 14, I live in Arizona, and I skate vert. Well I skate everything but vert is what I care about. My friend Noah's dad built a halfpipe in their backyard two summers ago and I've been over there pretty much every day since, except when it's 115 out, and then we skate at night with a shop light clamped to the fence.

On June 27, 1999, Tony Hawk landed the first 900 ever done in competition, at the X Games in San Francisco, and I watched it live on ESPN with my mouth open. I made this page that week. It's about that night, about Tony's whole career, and on the second page there's his tricks explained plus my own vert log so you can laugh at me.

WHAT'S A 900?

OK so on a vert ramp, when you do an air you go up the wall forward and come back down forward, which means you turn around 180 degrees. Now spin more. A 540 is one and a half spins. A 720 is two full spins. A 900 is two and a half spins in the air, 900 degrees, and you have to come back down onto the ramp riding forward and roll away.

Think about that. You're way up over the top of the ramp, you're spinning so fast you can't see where the ramp is, you have to keep the board stuck to your feet the whole time, and then you have to land on a wall you can't see. Tony has been trying it for YEARS. He's slammed trying it a bunch of times. Lots of people said nobody would ever do one.

He did one.

THE NIGHT I SAW IT

It was a Sunday. The X Games were in San Francisco this year, and the vert Best Trick contest was on that night. Best Trick is where everybody just goes for the craziest thing they can do and it doesn't matter how many times you fall, you only need to make it once before time runs out.

Me and Noah and Chase were at Noah's house in front of the TV because his is bigger. Tony started going for the 900 and slamming. Over and over. He'd spin and spin and then come down and fall and slide down the ramp on his knee pads, and get back up and climb up to the deck and go again. Noah's dad came in to watch and stayed.

Then time ran out. And they just let him keep going. Nobody wanted it to stop. All the other skaters were up on the deck yelling for him.

On his eleventh try (I counted eleven, Chase says twelve, we're never going to agree) he spun two and a half times, came down, and RODE AWAY.

I don't really know how to explain what happened in Noah's living room. We were screaming. Noah's dad was screaming. The dog was barking at us. On TV all the other skaters ran down the ramp and mobbed him. I don't even remember what Tony did after that, I was yelling too hard. He's 31 and he's been pro since before I was born, and he did the hardest thing anybody has ever done on a skateboard.

Afterwards we went out back and tried 180s on the ramp until like midnight because we couldn't sit still. Nobody tried a 900. We're not stupid.

TONY'S CAREER

Some people at my school think skating is just messing around. Tony Hawk has been doing it for more than twenty years and he's still the one inventing the stuff. That's not messing around.

OTHER SKATE PAGES

Kickflip Kyle's Skate Page. Kyle skates street mostly but he's cool. He has trick tips and he's trying to get a real skate park in his town. Go sign his petition.