October has continued what September started, with occasional skate sessions at odd times of day. Well, they’re odd times for me.
Like I said in a previous post, with dawn approaching 8am and the weather creeping around freezing, my usual m.o. has been thrown into disarray. I have managed to get out here and there, though.
It’s still early today, so I’m hoping to skate a bit before the weekend crowd shows, but I did get out early enough on Saturday to run into others who hoped for the early grind without skaters and scooterers flooding the concrete park.
It was interesting to see my breath in the cold after a summer of searching for solutions to August sweat searing in my eyes, but I admit that I felt a certain nostalgia in the cold air with the season’s leaves scattered around the park.
Some of my high school days’ best times for skateboarding were during the fall. I used to love getting home from school just to pick up my board and skate around my neighborhood or the nearby college campus—maybe the cool air kept me comfortable and willing to shred, maybe the geographic energy was better. I like to think that as the veil becomes thin in autumn, people become more receptive, more open (of course, some experience the opposite).
Saturday morning, in the cold air and with brown and gold leaves beneath my polyurethane wheels, I felt good. Simple as that. I didn’t feel like I was building a foundation. I didn’t feel like I was struggling to improve or that I needed to improve. I just skated. I guess these fall sessions end up being the final skates of the year, and there is a sense, to some degree, of it ending.
I like to think that I’ll get out in the winter on an old setup that I don’t mind putting up against the cold, but, in all likelihood, I’ll make a minimal effort to balance on my board in the basement every now and then. So, maybe that nostalgia I felt is for the present, for the falling away of a daily (or semi-daily) practice. I hope not, but we’ll see.
Average Skater 