Just call me Tony Hawk...
When I was a young 'un, I loved skateboarding. This would have been back in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s - I read every issue of R.A.D magazine, collected cuts, grazes, sprains and muscle tears...you name it, I did it. My most prized possession was my Vision "Ken Park" deck, with Ranelli trucks and Santa Cruz wheels. I waxed the wood until it shone, oiled the bearings and religiously tinkered with it. I hated rollerskaters/balders with a passion and I and my best mate used to spend hours just faffing around.

Then I grew past 14 years old and the urge died - nothing dramatic happened, I just preferred learning my guitar, playing rugby at school and going to parties with girls than I did rolling along a car park on a wheeled plank. The beloved Vision deck grew cobwebbed in the garage and eventually was given to a cousin. I left school, went to Uni and never thought about it again.

Roll on until I am 25, my best mate and I have both just started new jobs, but kept in touch with out old colleagues, when one of my mate's new bosses mentions the fact he is going to the local skatepark.

When discussing this with friends over a beer, we are surprised when two of our old colleagues say they are interested in going too.

So, in order to spend time with my mates, I buy a new skateboard, pay £5 and spend three hours watching a group of unfit IT nerds fall over, whilst my mate's 40 year old boss spins like a top on the Vert ramp (turns out he used to be sponsored back in the day and still skates every day).

Rather than call it quits, we *all* spend every evening after work trying to get better on a skateboard... then going back to the skatepark and end up being either bored, embarrased, humiliated or, in one case of a brutal face-plant off of a 5 foot ramp, concussed and horribly bleeding.

This continued right up until my best mate changed jobs and suddenly realised he didn't have to socialise with his boss anymore. The skating stopped almost immediately and our group of friends carried on with our weekly mountain-biking trips instead.

Apologies for length, but it was 8 feet high and made of plywood...
(Chad, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 16:44, 1 reply)

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READ AND DESTROY!
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 17:19, closed)