#6 – 07/05/2009

Boarding down sand dunes on a plastic sledge does not work for me. Gutted. I’ll stick to skateboarding. Oh well. Despite this disappointing revelation, Sand Dune Dave’s Beach Birthday Bash last weekend was a success. The past six days have been so adventurous in fact, I feel like I’ve just done a 900° backside McTwist off a large bridge onto the top of a moving Ford Ka. Huge ups, exciting twists, adrenaline filled jumps, and rapid spins, all finished off by landing on the move. This, of course, is great! But it’s nice to now be curled up in my laptop’s warm glow listening to The Sonics [the pioneering 50’s surf rock band influencing everyone from the Sex Pistols to LCD Soundsystem] and the rest of the genre-spanning, collection-enhancing CD’s I blew all of birthday money on. I got so many in the record shop that when I got to the counter, they whipped out the scales and charged me in tonnage. I love CD’s!

Right. I’m trying to remember where amongst all the adventure and CD bingeing I actually fitted in some boarding. Ah yes! On the sixth day away from home, I was in Glasgow, and I had to get up very early for a day off. But I’m a morning person, so it didn’t bother me at all, and once I’d done the gentlemanly thing of walking my gorgeous girlfriend to work, I stepped on my board and turned my trucks towards good old Kelvingrove Skate Park.
NEWS FLASH!!!

STOP >>>>>>>>

REWIND <<<<<<

“I stepped on my board and turned my trucks for good old Kelvingrove Skate Park” ??!!!!
Aye. *Smug smile*. Your eyes don’t deceive you. I feel confident enough to skate along the city streets now, carving up the pavements; gliding the tarmac. And. It. Feels. AWESOME!!!! It’s something I never, ever thought I could actually achieve. It’s the freedom. It’s the speed. It’s the hip-ness. It’s the Marty McFly factor. It’s everything I wanted to get out of skating when I started out. To roll down past University Hill nonchalantly yawning and scratching my cheek. To coast along a damp Byres road on my way to buy presents for my friends at the OXFAM shop. To be able to do all that now is thrilling. It gives me SO much enjoyment to have achieved that goal; the goal that has been there from the very beginning.

However, like Lacrosse, Water Polo or [yuk] Football: just because you score early on in the match, it doesn’t mean you stop playing the game…