I can’t remember the last time I have been on my board…not a good thing. Oh wait, actually I do remember now…hmmm since I don’t know who might stumble upon this, lets just imagine myself rolling around inside somewhere on some hard wood floor just desperate to be on my board and then suppose the floor was a bit dusty/dirty and well, I may have slipped out and fallen on my ass. ha! šOk, here is a little background. I skate for 7 years during my youth (ages 13 to 19)…well, it was probably more like 12-19 but it’s hard to say when I was really committed to the sport. I loved skateboarding, I lived it 24-7, I would dream skateboarding and when I woke up, I wanted to skate before school and then once I was at school, I would be dreaming of learning new tricks and would play with my homemade finger board (none of those fancy techdecks you can buy now). No way, this was 2 or 3 ply cardboard with real grip tape on top, I don’t remember what we used for the trucks, but the wheels from hotwheels cars made great skate wheels! š So, I think skateboarding faded out of my life sometime during my senior year of high school where cars and girls seem to take the place of my little wooden toy. It was 1992 and skateboarding itself was dying out too. I remember all my friends that skated were no longer obsessed either. The one thing I used to say I could never imagine quitting, I did. I never got rid of my board though, I kept it in the trunk of my car…it was a Black Label John Lucero. It was the last board I had bought off a friend who was quitting skateboarding, probably to just hang out with his girl…we were all so lame that we couldn’t seem to juggle skateboarding and girls and friends who didn’t skate. Oh well. So, I went off to college in Arkansas and my skateboard came with me, although I truthfully only remember riding it to the barber shop once and some really crappy road. Many years and many colleges and cities later….I’m 30 years old in Williamsburg, VA with my beautiful wife Suzanne and our 2 year old son, Jake. I had just lost 55 lbs and seemed to be doing some sould searching and for some reason I had this urge to go skateboarding…I had heard we had a park in town that was free and I was going to do it. Of course I was nervous being old and having not really skated in 12 years. I tried some ollies in the driveway and was still able to do that and then I attempted a kickflip and was able to land a couple kickflips on my old school deck…so I knew from there on that I still could skate. I was so embarrassed about skateboarding though, so I hid it from everyone until a month later, I ollied up onto a ledge at the local skatepark…the ledge had just been painted over becuase it had graffitti on it and next thing I know, I land on the ledge, my board slips out and I land on my wrist and break it. I lied to everyone including my doctor saying I slipped off a ledge at the gasstation. I cannot believe how embarrassed I was….well, eventually I came clean with everyone and told them the truth…that I had taken up skateboarding again. Everyone seemed to be okay with it and some even thought it was cool. Of course there were also the ones who thought I was way to old to be skateboarding and thought I should be out playing golf. My response, golf if f*cking boring. Well, I’ve never played except for Mini Golf, which I love!
Well, I skated alot from 2004-2006, 2007 and 2008 have been a little dry as I’ve had some family troubles and plus I broke my foot and was in a cast for 13 weeks! That sucked! So far I have broken my right wrist when I was 13, my left wrist when I was 30 and my left foot when I was 33. The broken foot really hurt myself and my family buy not allowing me to work my second job that I needed to pay all the bills. So, currently I haven’t really been skateboarding since I broke my foot…I think I need to invest in some supplemental insurance like Aflack!! But I do miss skateboarding and can’t wait to hit the skatepark once again, but right now, I’ve got some other things to take care of before I can hop back on my board.
