Push, Carve, Grind!

I pushed off extra hard to get more speed as I banked down and left, crouched low, head tucked and arms extended forward. Bring the speed on! I imagined that I was in Santa Cruz on my final down hill run in some fantasy contest that existed in my head. Light violently flashed through the gaps in the tree canopy as I continued to gain speed on my little Sports Fun skateboard. The sounds of kids playing and birds singing made up the natural ambient echo that my rolling wheels highlighted with the hum of urethane grabbing ground greedily.  For some reason I never thought about the wooden bridge at the bottom of the hill that made it’s way across a small creek. My adrenaline was flowing at an all time high. Then in the next instance, poof! As if by magic, my memory came back to me as soon as I reached the point in my run where cement ended and wooden planks began. This unexpected but preventable event brought about my first skateboarding moment of truth.   As I floated upside down in the air facing the route I rode from, and then in the next moment seeing and feeling the wooden bridge as it’s splinters reached out to introduce themselves to me very impolitely. Either I would quit, or I would smile at the stinging scrapes on my elbows, and splinters in my arms and legs and shake it off. “I would never quit”, I said to myself rising up off the ground with fresh abrasions and splinters sticking out of my flesh. I then smiled as I continue to do today.

As our ramp building progressed, so did our skating skills. Our young toned bodies were guided by brightly focused young minds developing around skateboarding, for skateboarding, with skateboarding. Hours upon hours of skate sessions really kept us safe inside our skateboarding bubble from the other things that were going down in the neighborhood in which we lived. As young men our energies were tied to the thrills and the rush that a board and four wheels hanging off the ends of skate trucks can only provide and satisfy. Where my wheels out? How high out the ramp was I? Was my arm completely extended? Did you see how gnarly that was? I can’t believe I pulled it off! Stay on! Make it! That was so rad! Yeah! These were the types of things you got used to hearing during a skate session. It was just our group with an occasional visitor, that pushed each other to get better and better. No ESPN2, no X-Games, no team videos to study, no recognition beyond our immediate skate peers. We skated and continue to skate because of our undying love to push, carve, grind. We were self-fulfilling skateboard motivated and we didn’t care what people said about us.