Significant Event

Four Wheels, For Life

            April 2, 2011. A beautiful and breezy sunlit day. Another perfect day to do what I love which is the semi-extreme sport, skateboarding. The whole day was filled with awesome skate sessions and classic shenanigans with my good friends Joe and Theo. We were all riding all around the city of Ventura until we reached one of our many regular skate spots. This one in particular happened to have everything we liked; stairs, rails, gaps, ledges, pads. The one peculiar thing about this spot was the fact it was a school, Portola Elementary School. We would often be told to leave by stressed and aggravated teachers who came in to do their paperwork on the weekends. In some cases we have even had the cops called to kick us out. However, April 2, 2011 there was nothing that got in the way of a great day of skating. The only thing that could have made the day a bummer would have been a broken board from the gratuitous amount of skating we got in.

            Being sixteen at the time, I was still stepping my skate tricks up to the next level. As I warming up, I was doing faster and cleaner flip tricks as time progressed throughout the day. We were having a great day and decided to start doing tricks off the set of stairs they had in the main entrance of the school. A set of four that was perfect for doing simple flip tricks off. Every time I would roll down the hallway entrance I followed the sketchy wheel marks from previous skaters just because it was just the routine way to hit the stairs. The echoes from are boards were getting louder each time we would each get a trick off because the skate session was getting intense. Finally, I made the decision to make this the day I really pushed my skills on the skateboard.

            Although I was decent at doing stairs on my skateboard, I wanted to do something big that would show some of my skills built from my years of practicing. I rolled up to side of my friend Joe and told him I wanted to do the monster stair-set. He knew exactly what I was talking about since he and I were the ones who gave that specific stair-set its infamous name. The reason for it having this monster name is the fact it has ten stairs, each about one foot in height. He replied to me with, “I bet you can nail that by now.” However, he had this look of doubt after when he looked toward the monster. I was fully motivated and determined to do something as notorious as this; since at the age of sixteen I had been taking skating seriously for about five years.

            Moment after moment I looked down from the top of the stairs. I was looking for good landing points and looked at all of my surroundings to see if there were any poles that I could potentially hit out of carelessness or obliviousness. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon now and the clouds became a bit denser than they were earlier giving me a bit more of an uneasy feeling about doing the trick. This stair-set was by far the biggest obstacle I have ever had any thoughts about doing. The time came as I put my board down roughly fifty feet from where the leaping point was. My front foot was on my board feeling the sandiness of the grip-tape hugging the waffle grip of my Nike’s. I boosted forward as I pushed with my back foot only hearing the sound of the uneven wheels of my skateboard rubbing the concrete at a high speed. The thought ran through my head of my friends’ expressions on their faces, giving me a little more confidence into doing the trick. By the time that I finished that confidence boosting thought, it was time for to bend my knees to prepare to pop my board up from the top of the monster.

            My back foot popped the board up and my front foot helped lift and straighten the board out. My entire body was in the air for a good two to three seconds giving me a lot of time to think of what the fall might feel like. I came extremely close to hitting the ground so I braced myself for the impact. The wheels of my board landed even with each other and I bounced a little and had to catch my balance. That was it; I had done something I thought I could have never done. But with that being said I got overly excited and also did something I had never done before that day too. My mind got the best of me and I wanted to up the difficulty on the already oversized stair-set. The first time all I did was a simple Ollie, a jump. This time I wanted to add a kick-flip. I found myself in the same scenario as the first attempt. My friends were at the bottom of the set; this time probably talking amongst themselves saying what a bad idea it was to add some difficulty to an obstacle that was already difficult. I gained a lot of speed, more than the first time. As I came closer to the stairs I prepared to pop my trick. My back foot went down and my front foot went out toward the air. The atmosphere was so quiet I could hear the sound of my shoe being scraped by the grip-tape. I brought my front foot back to catch the board that had successfully flipped. There was an issue with the way I caught the board though. I had my feet too far apart and when it came time to brace for the impact of the landing, I was not ready this time. I slammed the ground extremely hard making the concrete leave its mark on my left arm and hand. I got up just as if it was any other fall. This fall was like any other, but on a bigger scale. I though all was well, but about three hours later, it was night now,

Instantly, I knew something was definitely wrong. I could feel bones touching one another when I moved my index and middle finger. This called for an immediate hospital run. Soon after x-rays were taken, I found that I had fractured my scaufoid bone. This is a bone in the wrist. The break required surgery after months of examining the healing process. Did this stop me from doing what I love? Absolutely not. Actually, it encouraged me more to continue doing my favorite hobby.

Not only did I only did it overcome a challenge, it fueled my love for skateboarding even more and to this day I still skate when I can. Besides, I have a wicked scar from this accident and a cool story behind it. Some may see this story and may not see the significance behind it, but to me, the trick, the confidence I gained from it, the accident, this break was caused by overcoming something I thought was difficult and to me, gives it significance.