for almost as long as i
can remember i've had a skateboard.
it took till i was about 12 for
me to realize that i wanted it to
rule my life. i clearly remember
goin down my first hill, getting super
bad speed wobbles and sliding my little
body to a stop face first on the asphalt.
it was the most pain i had ever felt...
that pain where you see white noise, your
teeth clench, and you stumble to your feet
hands on knees hunched over...just buzzing
from adrenalin. starting at yer head you go
down your body evaluating the damage. if your
lucky it's something like shoulders, elbows,
palms, and knees. sometimes the worse the slam
the longer the blood takes to ooze out... you
see the white fatty meat first then the blood
creeps out. the colder the weather the worse
it is.
after that first slam i remember hosing
off the blood in the side yard and limping to the
back door. but as soon as i got in the house i
had to smooth out my strut and pretend all was
good... hide the blood and hi tail it to my room.
at night mid sleep you go to turn over in bed
and learn about oozing wounds sticking to your
sheets..like peeling off a band aid,you make it quick.
i needed the skateboard in my life and was willing
to hide its inflictions no matter what. if wounds
where ever seen by the the parental guidance units...
damage was always blamed on my bmx bike. cause at
that time every kid had one and it was not as frowned
upon as the skateboard.
and the next morning i'm on top of the hill again
wondering where it all went wrong. this time scanning
for a small patch of grass or bush or shrub shaped like
a catchers mit, knowing if it gets bad i'm gonna aim for
one of those things to soften the blow.
evrything i've ever loved causes pain at some point.
people included. i'ver heard it said:
"NOTHING COOL IS EASY"
and it's the truth.
31 comments:
Amen!
praise the board; your right
B&B #2 good one, seen Tony M hit that pool and I said to myself what a crazy night in brooklyn at that bar hooting with the owls ...
Merry New Year
Well Said Brother !.........well said !
Già! -_-
Nothing better eh 4Q?
Livin' in Manhattan Beach, kinda sloshed skatin' home to my "home hill" down to my beach rental. Bud can in hand. Carvin' good but see right where I need to have a perfect turn is a big puddle of water. Oh shit. Just commit and hold on. I hit the water, skid out, go flying, hear the "ooooohs" from the people walkin' on the pier, see my can go flyin' by me as I'm in the air. I swear it was all in slow motion. I hit hard and come to a rest, can now next to me, still full of adrenaline and jump up and slam the rest of my beer to the cheers of whatever crowd was there. And then i strut around the corner and just collapse outta view of the crowd. Bleed in my bed all night stuck to my sheets. Fuck that hurt. Oh well, at least those 10 or so people that witnessed it probably thought I was the man. Or not.
Whatever. SKATE!!!!
The photo says it all.
a toast! too 4 wheels
For Max: http://skatefiles.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#8142782625349969051
ken' oath.
max, your words paint pictures...
yeah i cant think of a better way to express it. the first time you really take a slam you realize how real everything is, it hightens your sences. i remember my first really good slam. 9 years old skating down the hill to this loading dock that we made a make shift mini ramp in. BAM! didnt see that manhole cover. spilled all over the street, pretty bloody, some old lady come running out of her house and of course in all that pain and chaos i just stood up and said i was perfectly fine. skated around the corner and fell on some persons lawn in pain.
never looked back since haha!
thanks a bunch for writing this max, really thought provoking.
truth.
so true.
So many people that cant relate to that story... never will they know the true fealing of love and devotion for something so hated by others. I love my skateboard and the pain that is gives,and will still have that love the day I die.
Yeah i remember taking the skin off every knuckle, butt boarding off a kurb with my hands grabbing under my first board- first weekend.
Walking around the house with my hands firmly in my pockets just so they wouldnt see the state of my hands and say "i told you so".
inspiration for living the dream.
wonder how
many didn't get back
on the horse?
kids just wheeling the honeys. don't bail and ruin the appeal!
I think this is my story too, nearly to the letter, blame it on the bike, never admit never show, never wince. my only problem was when I finally made it down the damn hill and bombed through the red light to the screetch of on coming traffic, sucked for me that one of the pickup trucks skidding to a stop belonged to my grandpa. busted.
Damn man, that was putting flash backs into my head the 1st time I was being pulled behind a car on my 1st skateboard. Then I realized I was heading towards a curb, jumped off, and of course I couldn't run as fast as I was going. I ended up doing a full superman penguin slide on the asphalt. Wouldn't trade that memory in the world for anything. Thanks Max. Happy Holidays.
this is absolutely wonderful.
Hill bombing. The ultimate humbler. Anyone who calls them self a skateboarder can relate to this story. Personaly, its the hill bombing that I cant get enough of. Full of danger and action packed. The closest skateboarding gets to motorcycle riding.
Anyways, everyone can appreciate this video of myself and some friends charging some local hills. Dope riding and extra epic slam at the end. Turn down the volume because the song sucks.
http://vimeo.com/6955299
Mercado
yeah reading this does make you think about early slams,its just as bad watching your buddy slam too, we were trying to get away from the cops one time and my buddy was in front of me and he looks back at me he must of hit a rock or something and totally slammed hard, but we couldn't stop cause we were on the run. good times!
This hits so close to home. I was 7 or 8, would make the year 1977-78ish, I swan dived to full frontal splatter going down the big hill in my neighborhood and shredded my new Jaws t-shirt to pieces, I was terrified my mom would find out( I guess the full body scrapes and eventual scabs were not enough hints) so I hid my t-shirt under the bean bag in my room. Suffered in quiet agony and went back the next day to retry. I have repeated this scenario many times over the years, sans clothing guilt and bean bag.
This is so familiar to me. When I first started skating I took some bad downhill death-wobble slaps. The first was a typical "tumbler" which resulted in grazes to face, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees. Basicly every angular part of my body seemed to get bitten. To top that I couldn't bend my knees past 45 degrees for a few days. The second saw me thrown onto my back shirtless on a super smooth new cycle path. The bitumen was so smooth and clean that I slid along on my back for some distance (like I was going feet-first down a slide with my feet up in the air). Then - and this is no word of a lie - I put my feet down, and had so much momentum that I stood straight up out of the slide. One side of my back was untouched. The other was one huge graze from neck to lower back. The icing on the cake was that it was high Aussie summer and I was living in the back of a wrecked old van with another homless skate bum. When he came homed drunk a few nights later and pissed in the van, I swallowed my pride the next day and crawled home to my folks place (promising for the hundredth time that I'd get a job this time. I didn't). I was a very accident prone skater. Now at 41 I'm just a big pussy!
This is so familiar to me. When I first started skating I took some bad downhill death-wobble slaps. The first was a typical "tumbler" which resulted in grazes to face, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees. Basicly every angular part of my body seemed to get bitten. To top that I couldn't bend my knees past 45 degrees for a few days. The second saw me thrown onto my back shirtless on a super smooth new cycle path. The bitumen was so smooth and clean that I slid along on my back for some distance (like I was going feet-first down a slide with my feet up in the air). Then - and this is no word of a lie - I put my feet down, and had so much momentum that I stood straight up out of the slide. One side of my back was untouched. The other was one huge graze from neck to lower back. The icing on the cake was that it was high Aussie summer and I was living in the back of a wrecked old van with another homless skate bum. When he came homed drunk a few nights later and pissed in the van, I swallowed my pride the next day and crawled home to my folks place (promising for the hundredth time that I'd get a job this time. I didn't). I was a very accident prone skater. Now at 41 I'm just a big pussy!
I've been down that road a time or 2. Here is my most recent brush with disaster on a hill. copy these links to your web browser to read the stories and see some pics.. I sill haven't hung up the boards either.... Glutton for punishment.
http://theangrycracker.blogspot.com/2009/08/well-ive-really-gone-and-done-it-this.html
http://theangrycracker.blogspot.com/2009/09/ouch.html
kudos
nice............
awesome post :)
I feel exactly the same, I've owned a board since I was about 6, getting on for 30 years now and though I don't get out as much as I used to, I still can't ever imagine not skating.
Great!
I remember trying a hill I knew I couldn't make. I knew I was going to eat shit but something made me try anyway.
Those scabs were nasty.
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