A few years ago a skate park got built across the road from my house. I'd always wanted to skate, but never learned how. With a skate park within a 45 second stroll, I figured I had no excuse not to take up a hobby that I'd been considering since childhood.
So I bought a skateboard and started skating. As you do, I started out really slow, both literally and figuratively. My first several sessions of skateboarding involved gingerly placing my skateboard in the middle of the living room and hopping up onto the board to learn to keep my balance on the thing. I consumed a bunch of excellent Youtube videos about how to skate, partly for the practical lessons and partly for motivation and inspiration. Eventually, I braved the outdoors, and fell flat on my back at the first incline I encountered.
You can only improve from there, so I've kept at it. Nowadays I try to skate regularly. I don't anticipate ever learning any cool tricks, not with deficiency of dexterity, but I do enjoy the act of skateboarding for precisely 5 reasons. Here they are.
Skateboarding is good aerobic exercise. I go to the gym weekly, but I focus on weights. That's great for muscle tone or whatever, and for general health I guess, but I've been cognizant that I've been ignoring any kind of aerobic exercise. I tried getting on a treadmill one time, and instantly got bored.
Skateboarding is never boring, I guess because you're actually travelling somewhere, even if only around a skatepark circuit or up and down your own street. Actual things, like trees and fences and frustrated dogs in their yards, zoom past you. And you have to be alert. You can't just jump on your board, make it go, and tune out. You have to be aware of what's coming up. It keeps your mind active, and if you're a hyperactive hyperfocused obsessive like me, that's hugely important.
Much like the act of walking, skateboarding can get you places. It's a little faster than walking, but also more fun.
Unfortunately, skateboarding can be problematic on certain kinds of terrain. When I skate to my weekly Tales of the Valiant game, there are sections of the journey that are just too gravelly for my skateboard. And I definitely don't attempt to skate up the hill to the house where we play. But the footpaths along the main road are pretty good, so for at least part of the journey I'm able to roll rather than walk.
I grew up with skaters as friends. I've always felt an affinity to the culture, even though I didn't have the money or courage to engage in the hobby. It's strangely comforting to have some of that culture back in my life as an adult.
The town where I live now is very accepting of skateboarding. But I've lived in many places in the past that low-level criminalised skateboarding, to the point that my friends couldn't even carry their skateboards without being harassed by authorities, essentially for appearing as if having the intent to skate.
Skateboarding in the happy little town where I live now doesn't do anything to normalise or "support" skater culture. Nobody cares that I skate, which is great. But in my own mind, at least, I enjoy the feeling that skater culture has largely "won" the battle. I know it's still not allowed everywhere, and probably sometimes for good reason, but skateboarding was in the 2020 and 2024 summer olympics (and is being inducted as a mandatory sport in 2028). It's, like, mainstream.
I travel a lot, and have since I was young, and to my mind there are 2 kinds of travel. There's the kind of travel you do where you start in one place, and end up in another. And then there's the kind of travel where you start in one place, end up in another, but you've travelled for so long that even after you've stopped you feel like you're still travelling. It's a little disorienting, a little disturbing, and extremely familiar to me.
When I skate, I start in one place and eventually end up basically back at the same place. Either I'm doing a circuit, or I'm skating down to the shops and then back home again. But invariably, after I've stopped skating I feel like I'm still travelling. It's a physical rush derived from, I think, both physical exertion and movement through physical space. It's a long-lasting rush, similar to the burn of going to a gym but unique. I think of it as a signal from my body that I did a thing and a signal from my mind that I've seen things you wouldn't believe. I've skated past the attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I've skated past sea beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. You get the idea. Skating is liminal, an impossible mix of hyperfocus and nonstop distraction.
A friend bought me a t-shirt that says "Skate or die", which I wear ironically. I would not choose death over access to a skateboard. But as long as that's not the choice I'm facing, I'll skate every now and again, just for fun. If you've ever thought about trying out skateboarding, I encourage you to try it. It's only about a third as scary as you think it is, probably as dangerous and as challenging, but if you do it on your own terms and just to the extent that it remains fun for you, it can be really rewarding.
Photo by Lukas Bato on Unsplash