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[Rio Ohki]

Scott learns to Skateboard: F is for FAIL.

Today has not been a success for Skateboarding.

I say this, for all I know they could have invented the hover-boards from Back to the Future 2 and the BBC website hasn’t announced it yet, but for me, today has not been a success.

Being that I recently took a couple of small holidays to Loch Lomond and Download Festival, I’d not had much time to skate and aside from a little bit of practice a few days ago, today was the first opportunity I’d had to get any serious skating done, starting with the morning skate to work.

The morning skate involves going forwards and flat ground. Nothing more, nothing less. Not taxing, unless you find that your sense of balance is absolutely gone. I Shit, I can’t even ride! What the hell is going on? In my head I’m clear and coherent, but in terms of co-ordination I’ve regressed to a mewling infant, a screaming lump that has a habit of pissing itself for fun like the junkies I have to kick-turn around to avoid. What the utter fuck?

I spent most of the morning in work, trying to figure out the problem. I can’t have forgotten how to skate over Download, because I skated fine two days ago. Is it because I’m wearing two pairs of socks? Did my body get accustomed to the extra weight gained at Download by not showering and living from burger vans? Is it because I have a shirt on?

Resolved to find out, I made my way to the Skate Park on my lunch break. My first couple of attempts to not flail like someone shoved a tazer down my trousers failed spectacularly, but I soon got back into the swing of things, at least to a degree.

Then it happened. They say pride comes before a fall, and I can honestly say I was quite proud of the fact that while I’d fallen off my board a few times, I hadn’t yet quite gone arse over tit. Years ago I had an 80’s skateboarding book, which wished the skater well, and that they didn’t encounter too many small stones that jammed their wheels. Thankfully since then, wheel technology has progressed, from Plastic, to Rubber, to varying degrees of hard polyurethane. Small stones are no longer the burden they once were.

Sadly, some little fucker had left a reflective cycle clip on the ground, upon which my front wheels, regardless of modern technology, jammed. My board tips up and forward, and I spin through the air like that fat kid who filmed himself pretending to be Darth Maul, and got spread about the internet like the kind of STI he’s never going to get the chance to catch.

After picking myself up, dusting myself off and offering a quick prayer to Steve Jobs thanking him for the fact my Ipod still worked, a friendly biker informs me he’d seen someone earlier tell the aforementioned ‘little fucker’ to pick the clip up, to which the ‘little fucker’ laughed and replied ‘safety first’. I am still unsure whether to find the ‘little fucker’ and smack him upside the head, or to bitch slap the friendly biker who saw this and didn’t pick it up either.

That said, some good has come of it. Once you do go arse over tit, you lose the fear of it, and of getting hurt. My left wrist might still be sore and a little lumpy, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not so bad. The next attempt saw me throw myself faster than before, with a grim determination and a very serious face. Also, I’m quite sure that ambidextrous masturbation isn’t beyond my capabilities, so it could be worse.

This also brings up the importance of safety gear. I don’t have any, and while I did consider buying a single wrist guard for my throbbing wrist, I reckon it looks too much like Michael Jackson’s single glove to be appropriate for a skate park full of children.

Happy Skating.

Scott.