This exercise has been great. Trying to get a column down to 500words is agonizing--yesterday's was about 550, today's is like 670 (but I wrote a different incarnation that was 520).
Point being? Well, I am gonna try to write daily updates in more of a columnar style more often, so that when it comes time to apply for the daily, I will have many to choose from and I will already have gotten the style down. Plus, I think that writing this way forces me to write with a purpose and a clearer head.
Without further adeiu (sp?)....
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Pshhhhhhh.
Ca-chunk ca-chunk ca chunk.
Psssh�psshhh�pssshhhhhhh.
Ca-chunk ca-chunk ca chunk.
Truly this is what the urban landscape is made for. The form of transportation that will solve the ozone crisis, the epitome of human/machine technology. A way to get from place to place that allows exercise, a sense of danger, and the feel of the terrain to all come into play.
Yes folks, I have done it.
This twenty-one year-old has finally taken the old skool plunge.
I skateboard.
Fifth grade. Bartlett, IL. I had an old Nash board with a fake speaker in it that was dubbed by the manufacturer as a "sound board." The newly repaved streets made it possible to go so fast that I looked more terrified than happy. It was awesome. Or as some skaters probably said then, gnarly (Skate or die-ollie high!!). Alas, a move to a rural town sealed my skateboarding future. Forty miles and a whole lot less population density later, I found myself realizing that a "paved" road covered in pea gravel did not make for a good skate. I skated in the basement for a few, well, minutes, and hung it up.
I always wanted to be in that elite group. Skateboarders have this cool vehicle to carry around wherever they go. Scratched up, covered in paint and torn stickers, their boards are the zenith of cool. In high school, after I discovered punk rock and ska (two musically genre's heavily represented in the skate scene) I would often go to the Pit Skatepark in Rockford to see touring local bands (not an oxymoron-"touring" is what they did, "local" refers to how well-known they were). I was jealous between bands when the townies would ride the ramps to glory.
Enter Nate.
Nate has been my best friend since grade school. He was the one who introduced me to the punk/ska revolution in high school, and once we got to college, he did the unthinkable, partly due to his new college friends and partly because he was trying to be more and more the typical image of a punker.
He began to skateboard again.
Wow, said I. I can't believe that he decided to take up a hobby most seen as a pastime for twelve-year-old juvenile delinquent idiots. But he saw skating for what it was: fun, fast, and something to do with friends. He even had some stupid little gangsta kids threaten him once as he skated around Crystal Lake ("I woulda cracked their skulls with my board," he would later tell me. Ouch.).
Which brings me back to the present.
When I learned that Nate would be studying in Oxford for a semester, I jokingly said to him, "So, uh, can I take care of your skateboard for you while you are gone?"
To my surprise (someone lending you a skateboard, even a best friend lending you a skateboard, is like Danny Zuko letting you borrow Greased Lightning) (please note that that comment was by no means an endorsement for Grease, which I have said before is everything which is wrong with musical theatre) he said sure, why not?
I made many excuses for not riding it once I could. Some were good excuses (too cold and too much snow on the ground), while some sounded like my mother talking (I don't want to crack my head open). But eventually, at 3 a.m. on a night that I should have been sleeping hours before, I decided to give it a go.
And I found that my extra years had added extra coordination.
So now I have a new way of getting around campus. It creates this great energizing adrenaline rush from the combination of genuine exercise and healthy terror. Sure, my riding style is a little like trying not to break through a sheet of ice only half-an-inch thick. Maybe I can't stop on a dime, or turn sharp corners.
But I've only fallen once.
And I didn't crack my head open.
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Metraboy Online
"ambition makes you look pretty ugly
kicking squealing gucci little piggy"
--radiohead, "paranoid android"
