Skootboardings in Cranberra

As you may or may not know I have a habit of rolling down hills rather quickly on a rather expensive piece of wood. I thought it may be fun to give a brief outline of the local speed and steeze junkies that I spend some of my time with and the general radness that we get up to on a semi regular basis.

For some reason this form of skateboarding has a rather high proportion of older participants (rather than the ratty teen demographic of regular short boarding) which can cause confusion at first. "A middle-aged man on a skateboard?!" I hear you hearken from your lips. "Surely skateboards are but toys for children, youths and low lives?!" To which I say no. I hate that people assume that just because something is fun that it must be childish and therefore for children only. Why should children have all the fun? It seems that far too many people are scared to have fun once they pass a certain age for fear of what people may think, saying things like "I'm to old to be doing things like that anymore" and that is why longboarding is great. I can go out and have a swell time with dudes that are just looking to get the most out of life. In one session of skating I could be riding with an 18 year old still in college, a 25 year old entrepreneur who's always cooking ups some crazy money making scheme, a father of 2 and dude in his late 40's with a gimpy knee that gives him trouble pushing his board. Its all just fun to these guys and they don't care what others think and that, I think, is great.

Father, graduate, working stiff and student sharing a hill.

Sure we may not be very GOOD but what we lack in skill we make up for in enthusiasm! Compared to the rest of Australia, Canberran skaters aren't that great. We rarely attend races (we do if its close enough) and people never really come to skate with us from interstate. What we do instead is make our own little races for Canberra riders only (well we only tell people in Canberra) in order to make our selves feel better about our skill levels. Sadly last time this was ruined by a semi-pro rider visiting from southern California entering our race and taking all our money. He's a nice guy and all but he was far to good for our likings... A video of the race can be found over here.

Last week we got really enthusiastic and donned some cow hide to ride some hills out the back of Canberra. It was a lovely sunny day spent at speed on public roads on which its probably illegal for us to skate. The day ended in us doing a run down Discovery Drive to get coffee and ice creams at the moon rock cafe at the tracking station, where we spent half an hour watching the satellite dish re-align and Owen yelling at magpies. It was a pretty swell way to spend my day off. I should hope to do it again some time soon.


Anyhoo, none of that really makes sense but a re-cap for you all the same: Lots of people skate and have a good time. Canberra aren't very good but still have a rad time. Skating is rad.

Other videos of what we get ups to:

C.D.D.H
Shred 'till ya dead
Ditch ya missus, come skate
Fuck you, come skate
Have a thrash with the 'tache
Shred ditches, get bitches
(I wonder why we don't get any girls skating with us?)