Winter is in full-swing in the Mother City, Cape Town. The longboarding scene seems to have died down in the city center. I am not too sure whether it is because of my injury and inability to skate that has caused the other city-based longboarders to stash their boards until consistently warmer days arrive.
Major injuries are such a reality in my daily downhill skateboarding. I was sure that one day or the other I would be out of action for a prolonged period due to a major injury, which in this case is my broken left femur. It has been 6 weeks since the operation. Even though it is not ideal to suffer a bone injury in winter because the coldness creeps into one’s bones, I consider myself lucky that it has happened now, when the weather doesn’t allow me to skate anyways. This also means that I should be up and ready in summer to take up my urban wheeled struggle, skating as fast as I can from the unjustified and pointless possible persecution of me by those unapologetically illiterate defenders of our society- the police and gravy-train politicians. One would think that they would realize that we will find ways around their contradicting laws and by-laws, and that they will see us cruising on the same road they attempted fining us the day before for passively cruising on the shoulder on the shoulder of the road, making our way from point a to point b. Damn idiots!
With summer just around the corner, I can’t help but get excited at the idea of hours and hours of skating, hours and hours of shaping Alpha Longboards, the return of Marco from Europe, the dusting off of Andre’s longboard so that the three of us can go race down our local hills, and finally, my 3-week trip to Australia to visit my someone special and skate with some of my longboarding brothers and sisters down under.
This was just my day’s thoughts on what I predict for my and Alpha Longboards’ summer. No matter what goes down, all I want to do is get to skate as much as possible!
Take care!
Kent
