Grok!

I went to the skate park in my town for a change yesterday. It was the first time I've been there in 2 years, and before that I hadn't been there in about 5 years. There was another blader there, which surprised the hell out of me. He was a newb but it was cool, he was asking me all sorts of questions about how to do stuff and I answered to the best of my ability and showed him how I learned to do stuff(stalls and simple grinds). The weird part is he would ask me if I could do a certain trick, and most tricks he asked about I had never attempted before, so I was just like, "shit, I don't know. I guess I can try." and then after a few attempts I pulled them off. It was very different from any other experience I've ever had at the skate park.

The most surprising thing though was the skateboarders and bikers were all cool to me. I think I've reached a point age-wise where all the kids there see me as an elder, which is probably the reason for them to treat me with at least a grain of respect. They would even tell their friends to get the hell out of the way when I was across the park eyeing up a ramp I wanted to hit.

Another thing, up to this point in this season(2010) I had been doing nothing but endurance skating during my street sessions. I mean sure I would pull 180's and 360's here and there but I spent hours upon hours skating back and forth on trails just to get my lungs conditioned. So while I was at the park I could take runs that were about 20 minutes long, just flying all over the park hitting any ramp I wanted to without taking a break. After about an hour of being there I think my dedication was being observed by everyone else because they all started taking longer runs, trying more tricks and took less breaks(as opposed to the first hour I was there where everyone was just sitting on the ramps while one or two people would try a trick then take a break).

Overall it was the coolest experience I've had at the small, shitty local skate park and I'll probably go back there more often now, maybe I can convince some boarders to convert to the REAL SPORT! :)