Skateboarding

I started skating when I was 13. I remember it was thanksgiving and my cousin had a skateboard he said he didn't want. Me being enveloped in the culture of skateboarding and having played a decent amount of THPS, I took the my new hobby pretty enthusiastically. It was a soggy board with crusty wheels, missing tail/nose, and no grip tape. I would practice how to ollie and heel flip in the grass next to the ramps at Blue Liquid while i watched the other local skaters drop in and stall on 6 foot ramps which looked like three story buildings to me back then. I remember my brother dropping in on those ramps with his aggressive in-line skates built for grinding and fast speeds. The cheap wood made for great splinter material. Brother couldn't get one out for almost two years when a bale caused his hand to slide behind him as he passed over a particularly spiked part. There were quite a few hand me down boards i went through before actually getting my first purple ATM deck from that same park i learned to ollie. It broke after only a couple weeks and i was devastated since i knew my mom would be pissed after i told her it would last. My stepdad had tools and scrap metal behind the shed since he did a lot of carpentry work. I drilled some holes into by board and cut two length of aluminum window siding. Then secured those pieces to the under side of my board. For the next few months I rolled around on a tank of a board. Sparks would fly when I would grind on the parking blocks we (BASS) would find around our tiny town. Their wasn't much for us to skate so we constructed a lot of our own ramps, rails, kickers (man that pyramid kicker!). Then in the exact same spot where the city would tear down our creations every few days or so, goes up a brand new complex...20 yrs later.