Sk8r Boi

Some of you may remember my last effort at “Extreme Sports” when I bought my skateboard however it was quite short lived because of my many wrist issues. Well I’ve hit the extreme circuit again and this time I’m going hard at it! My body is currently hurting like its never hurt before but I still feel great. This time round I’ve taken to inline skating as opposed to skateboarding (although I pull out the board every now and then) seeing as I’m already decent skater because of my Ice Hockey experience and skating weekly back in the day.

It all started on Sunday afternoon when instead of going to the ice hockey as planned I received a phone call from my mate Burt asking if I wanted to come down to the Yarra Glen skate park for the arvo because it was such a lovely day. Thrilled by the fact I haven’t skated in over three months I jumped at the opportunity for a skate. The Yarra Glen skate park was really well set out with an awesome grind bar which is a good size for beginners, my goal for next time I go down there is to be able to grind it.

We skated there for roughly an hour and a half until we received a phone call from Niki and TigR saying that they had just finished work and they wanted to skate too. So instead of making them drive all the way up to Yarra Glen (there wasn’t much day light left) we decided to meet them at the Croydon skate park because it has lights. By the time we arrived there were still people skating and the fact that most of us were either first time skate park goers or just simply can’t skate we waited until they disappeared. Croydon skate park was really we set out also, it has some nice smaller ramps to start yourself on. At Croydon for what ever reason I had a lot more confidence (maybe it was stupidity… we’ll never know), I was trying heaps of random stuff with out the fear of stacking. I fell over a few times which is expected, but I only had one really bad painful fall. I basically pulled some muscle in my neck after I face planted into the ground after coming down a really steep ramp, this ramp is now known as my Mount Everest, one day I shall conquer it. We skated until 10.30pm under the lights and we all had a ball, Niki got on and a skateboarded for the very first time and by the end of the night she was able to go down a ramp un-aided which isn’t the simplest thing to do for a beginner, so to be able to do that after just a few hours is a great achievement.

That wasn’t the end of the adventure though, Niki decided she must own a skateboard of her own that evening so we made a trip to the 24 hour Kmart in Burwood. I had a slight sense of de-ja vu as this is exactly what I did when I first wanted to skate. She bought an awesome looking board with a cute little picture of a teddy bear in a blender, she named her board ‘Victor”. By this time it was around 11.15, Burt, Niki and I all decided that we would have enough time to deflower her virgin board at Croydon before the lights get turned off, we got there and found ourselves with about 10 minutes left to skate before lights out.

My Monday evening was very similar, we all ended up back at Croydon skate park just after dark before going to maccas to get a free meal from our friend Amelia. After the maccas we all went back to the skate park where we set up some tunes and skated until late in the evening.

All this skating has left me very sore but it’s worth it, I have missed doing stuff like this and living a fairly active lifestyle. I feel like I’m a teenager again, hanging out at a skate park after dark (not that that’s what I used to do, it’s just how it feels) bumming around with mates, it’s a strange feeling, but a good one to say the least.