I'm so grateful that I grew up with skateboarding in my life. When I was about nine years old one of my best friends that lived up the street started skating and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I remember at that age, that's all I thought about, skateboarding. All I wanted to do was learn new tricks and learn how to ollie up the curb. When I was about twelve years old, my mom was okay with me leaving the neighborhood and going skating.
Skateboarding was great because each day I would go further and further with my friends and that's when I really explored this town that I lived in. I got to see every single piece of it, every detail, every pothole, and I picked up my street smarts around this age. I really learned how to get around in my own environment and I never had that anxious feeling of being lost ever since.
In college, my skateboarding became an outlet to ease my stress, to forget about school for an hour, for a day. And I still explored, that's all I did on my days off, I would just take the buses to nearby cities and skate around until my legs were numb.
I remember on this particular day I found the nicest surprise, after skating around downtown Hayward I decided to go a little further west to an area that I'd never been to. On B street which was only about three miles from my house, I found a skatepark tucked away right by a elementary school and in between a huge park. I literally lived only fifteen minutes away on my board. This became a regular spot for me. I was always known as that guy with the really bright beanies. I remember taking this picture and sending it to Xavier because I was just so excited that this was in the same city as us.
If it wasn't for skateboarding, I would've been a mess in college. So stressed out all the time that I couldn't even function. I still feel this way until this day, the feeling of being so relaxed and so free while just riding on my board. Also I don't stress about skateboarding anymore, all I have to do is just cruise and ollie up a few curbs here and there and I'm one happy camper.
1 comment:
This is really cool because today as I was skating with Enrique in between band practice, I was thinking to myself that I hadn't seen you skate in awhile and it got me thinking about how you started skating. So your timing was perfect! Awesome.
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