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03/25/2003 Entry: "my skateboard past and present"
This unassuming and thoroughly "1980"'s skateboard deck, was purchased at High Gear Cyclery in Stirling, NJ and given to me as a Christmas gift from my parents. The board had fluorescent yellow grip tape, pink wheels, and blue trucks.
That Christmas morning was unseasonably warm, and I rode my board down the wet street, feeling the smoothness of the road and the grit of the grip tape underneath my feet. My first ride was the beginning of a long path that I still find myself on, filled with late nights in parking lots, explorations through northern New Jersey looking for those perfect skate spots, and countless bloody elbows and twisted ankles.
On my left elbow is a purplish scar from trying a nose grind in light rain on a white marble ledge near my house. My left knee has a protruding bump just below my kneecap from falling on that same spot so many times. My right wrist aches if I try to do a push-up, coming from a boardslide where the deck broke and my wrist singularly absorbed the shock of the fall.
There's been weeks, and even several months sometimes when I have not stepped on a board, and there's been months where I've hardly missed a day.
During my sophomore year of college, I lived a hundred feet from an entire city block of marble ledges that were lit-up at night. I could see them outside of the window by my computer, and often looked out when I was stuck on a bug in a coding assignment in the quiet hours before the sun rose.
My last two years of college found me with a wonderful view, but few accessible skate spots. I skated less in those two years than at any time since I started.
Now in Portland, my skateboarding fluctuates. I've found a parking garage that keeps me going through the rainy winter. As it begins to warm, I've been skateboarding more as a form of urban exploration - riding down dark, empty roads in the industrial district, relearning kickflips on the smooth loading docks, and spending as much time walking down empty railroad tracks as skating waxed ledges.
Last night, I crossed under an overpass, through streets of rusting warehouses and cracked sidewalks, dirty in a way that comes when people don't walk there anymore. I started getting more consistent on ollieing to manual, and have nose picks down, practicing them on crumbling pieces of concrete that chip away each time my truck hits them. It grew dark, and the streets have no lights, so I pushed hard, feeling for cracks that I couldn't see. Sweating in the cool of the late March night, I kept my legs loose, pushing against the rough pavement, fighting against the slowing forward motion, pushing, always pushing ahead.
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