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Old and Going Downhill Fast

By Ken Wright

Found in: | Outside | Skateboarding |

"Children took the ruins of the twentieth century and made art out of it."

- Skip Engblom, co-founder of Zephyr Skateboard Team

"The problem, of course, is the pavement."

This story goes to show that you can teach an old dog new tricks. It's just a good idea if he wears padding and a helmet.
Which I do, being an old dog, as I ride my longboard across greater metropolitan Durango on a cool early-autumn night under the dull monsoon-masked luminescence of the full moon. Or fool moon, maybe, for I am accompanied by a pack of my fellow middle-aged fools, passing three wee hours on a backcountry-style foray into the ultimate front country, the open slopes and trafficked glissades of our home town's urban neighborhoods.
We're kicking and gliding and riding our way from the east side of town, across the rich-scented rain-swollen Animas River - the soul of Durango - and then up, up, and farther up the rumpled network of streets that spill out from the foothills of Perins Peak. Tonight that sandstone monolith stands as a dim swelling above the highest threads of pavement rising from the glittering glow of town.
When we gain this uppermost reach of Durango's road system, a dark cul-de-sac in a narrow ravine, we stop, turn and stand to catch our breath and take in the scene. The lonely road leads into near-nothingness, since the moon has slipped deeper under the cover of the growing cloudmass. And it has begun to rain, lightly, but enough to already give the street sloping away at our feet a sheen of reflected city-glow from Durango proper, a galactic mass of light below us.
And we confront our task: to cruise and carve a series of long runs down through this tamed landscape, back to the river.

A new trick for me, this skateboarding. For most of the guys I'm with here, though, aside from my friend Jan, who has agreed to join me on this adventure in juvenilia, longboarding is an old trick. For the past few months, he and I have embedded ourselves in this band of boarders to get a crash (or, mercifully, so far, no-crash) course in pavement poaching. Tonight is our graduation party of sorts.
Even I'm surprised to be here. All my life, I'd never felt any interest in or need to try skateboarding. It seemed redundant: I was already indulging in plenty of other opportunities for injury and death. Besides, I didn't hang around with anyone who skateboarded. But about 10 years ago I fell in with this group of guys whom I seemed to have a lot in common with - fellow backcountry skiers, river runners and new parents - except for one peculiar trait: on autumn full-moon nights, they would bring their surfer backgrounds home to Colorado by taking ritualistic longboard rides down our region's highway mountain passes.
These tales always sounded insane to me, of course. And it took a decade of befuddlement in the face of their sick stories before I felt, for the first time, that I should at least sample what these otherwise intelligent people found so appealing in this modern madness for going really fast down paved hills on wooden slats attached to little wheels.
My son, Webb, was also an inspiration. At 13, he is a skateboarding whiz - a regular riding, gliding, jumping, ollying, kick-flipping, sliding and grinding skateboarding stud. Interestingly, though, he is not and never has been part of any real skateboarding gang; his impressive skill came from practicing, on his own, a lot - because whereever Webb is, there he trains. When I commented on this clever use of time and space once last year, he surprised me with an innocuous, yet wise, insight: "Two minutes skateboarding is a good two minutes," he waxed philosophically. So he whips it out ? whereever. When we get gas he's grinding the curb around the gas pumps. If we have to run into a store, he's surfing the fall lines of the parking lot. Last year, when we spent a few days at a condo complex at a ski resort, he was nearly as excited by the subterranean terrain of the parking garage as he was the mountain. "When I see something like that, I can't resist," he explained.
Pretty cool stuff. And enlightening: seen through Webb's skateboarding eyes, even the most developed of spaces revert to wild places - meaningful, rich in depth and texture, full of purpose and value, and ripe with potential for exploration. And I started to think that, as Webb and I sink deeper into his wild teen-age adventure together - which I'd like to do with Webb as more of a friend than a father, doing more sharing than shaping - maybe it's time I entered his world for a change. And maybe skateboarding could be that doorway.

So that's how I ended up here tonight, standing at the tippety toppest of the highest paved hill in Durango, facing a mile-long run in the dark down to the first run-out. Which will be just the launching point for the next run. And so on. For many runs. It's not the hairpin turns and sheer drop-offs to bone-crunching boulder fields of a, say, Coal Bank Pass. But for a first rite of passage, it seems dumb enough.
When I hatched my plan to enter into skateboarding, I opted for the longboard route. It not only bridged me to my older boarding buddies, it also seemed more suited to my backcountry-skiing sensibilities.
I soon found that the skill of longboarding itself isn't hard. It was awkward at first: I had never surfed or snowboarded, so the whole standing-sideways thing felt unnatural and unwise for my telemarking and karate-trained body, both sports in which you get low and face your foe. But the theory common to all sports soon fit in: control your center, bend your knees, keep your upper body quiet.
The real trick to my survival at first, though, was to stay at speeds where I could resort to the jump-and-run method of self-arrest. I even deliberately at first wore no helmet or padding to be sure I stayed within my limits, to remove the temptation to let it rip too soon.
To let it rip, though, I needed to really carve. So I sought out some pointers from my experienced companions. Funny thing is, nobody could tell me anything. "Just ? go" was what everyone seemed to mumble, shrugging their collective shoulders. So I eventually forged my own tele-karate-skateboard form that my body could work with, and soon I could fly (it felt to me) down entire multi-block-long pitches in my neighborhood, getting long, loose runs that let me improve my stiff swaying and nervous swerving into somewhat confident - and increasingly speed-controlling - carves.
And once that happened, it was time to venture farther afield. It was my turn to just go.

I watch my companions push off, one by one, each picking up speed before leaning and carving - I can't help but make the comparison - lovely backcountry-skiing quality S-turns down the hardpan fall line, until they fade into the now-moonless gloom.
My turn. I push off and assume my personal "just go" position, then start making the hard turns I need to to keep my velocity tempered. This first run isn't steep, but it's steep enough. And long - that's the clincher. Even though this time I'm wearing a helmet and wrist guards, I make a vow that I'm not going too far over my head - as much as I'm enjoying longboarding, there's other things I'd rather die doing. And when I feel that point approaching where my speed is exceeding my maximum-runnable-velocity, I leap and sprint to a stop, and start over.
The problem, of course, is the pavement. Or, more accurately, my own intense awareness of that pavement rapidly scrolling by only a few inches under my feet. Gravity can work quickly or slowly, but given enough slope, it's gonna work. So even on a relatively gentle but non-stop hill like this, it doesn't take long for Newton's first law of skateboarding inertia to kick in: Once you pass the point of jumping-and-running, there's no natural force other than friction that is going to transform your moving body into a body at rest. You just hope that friction comes in the benign form of hard carves and, ultimately, a gentle run-out that leads to stoppage.
That, right there, is the aspect of skateboarding distinguishing it from other sports: fall and you are guaranteed to pay with the proverbial - and literal - pound of flesh. No way around it. And that absolutism is the way you have to go into longboarding in particular: I will not fall. So that line where you know you cannot leap off and survive is like a psychological sound barrier - you can almost feel the psychic sonic-boom in your intestines as you pass through that panting, near-panic phase where the primordial fight/flee debate becomes irrelevant and you emerge into that raw oh-shit-just-hang-on territory. Or, if you can abandon to that, this becomes that magical no-think-just-perform realm.
But, really, isn't this the point? Isn't that what we're seeking in all our extreme sports, or anything challenging? Abandon. And particularly, the willingness to abandon in the face of some seriously risky exposure. That's also the power - hell, the sorcery - revealed and bequeathed in these acts, whether it's on a rock face, a steep snowy slope, a rocky stretch of single-track, or even in front of an audience or classroom or workplace presentation - abandon in the face of some difficult exposure. And to do it well - with skill and style and even beauty - is what we call grace.
Tonight, the exposure is in a dose way beyond what I'd faced thus far in my month-long apprenticeship. And the abandon? It's coming ? slowly, but definitely coming, as I squat lower on the board (that telemarking/karate thing again) and lean harder into the turns. Grace is perhaps a ways away, but still something good is happening: Houses and driveways approach - faster and faster - and pass. The pavement becomes a wave across whose face I sweep back and forth rather than frightfully bulleting straight down. And as my technique grows more and more assertive, I'm finding that my board responds as it should to my improving, increasing abandon by keeping my speed scary but sane.
As I emerge into the streetlight-lit flat section of roadway that marks the end of this first epic downhill mile, my board rolls to a smoothly slowing stop. As my comrades in abandon greet me with high-fives and hoots, it strikes me that there just might be something even yet deeper to this skateboarding thing.

The next pitch takes us down another dark neighborhood. It's near midnight now, so there's little traffic. And I'm feeling good - I'm getting low, attacking turns, riding across the face of the road in sharp switchbacks, leaning hard into the right handers and bravely hanging my ass - protected only by a single layer of blue jean - over the road on the lefties.
There's something to be said about this.
Beyond the skill, apart from the camaraderie, aside from the inherent rewards of getting low and facing the foe of our primordial fear of head-cracking and flesh-smearing, there is one thing longboarding has given me that I truly didn't expect: the world. I mean the world that I thought had been already lost to concrete and construction and the generally urban/suburban pox on the land that I, being one of those weepy, hillbilly, enviro-meddler sorts, love and ache and long for.
And in these past few weeks, I found, through this mini-wheeled medium, landscapes - entire worlds full of detail and subtlety and challenge and even unique beauty - right at the end of my front walk. Right down the street - past the funky little steep alley, in the summer lined with feral sunflowers, that can give you a quick launch in three different directions. Right through the intersection with a different kind of tree on each corner - juniper, cottonwood, silver maple and box elder. Up the block with the yellow-plum trees. To where the road rises above town in an anomalous little steep-sided neighborhood with tall, thin houses - and where there's the postcard-quality view through a stand of blue spruces of the long line of the La Platas bursting above the foothills on the west side of town.
Something was coming alive as I looked around from the deck of my longboard.
Once I could ride those runs through town with some skill and that blooming enjoyment, my companions and I decided it was time for some forays afield. That's how we started exploring the subdivisions carved into so many of the foothill valleys around here.
When we could, we would - like on any powder day - gather in the morning with coffee and our boards and fill a car to capacity to drive to some development that had struck someone's curiosity or fancy or sense of challenge. And we'd enter it like we would any valley that we were approaching with backcountry gear: with a mental topographic mapping of the curves and rolls and pitches and fall lines of the land, and with a wider eye toward the grander forest setting and mountain backdrop and patterns of drainage. Then we would spend hours riding those places - places that became places for the first time to my backcountry-roaming eyes. Through those wild-seeking eyes.
And when we rode - a pack of us hooting and working hard and roaming around, then walking those long earn-your-turn jaunts back up those routes just run - I found the very things I'd always left town to find.
Here's what I find tonight: the warm yellow lights, like golden pools marking the crossings in the town's gridwork, interspersed with dark swaths of mystery and potential danger. The damp air rich, full of the scents of sage and soil and wet pavement. The chill of the misty drizzle on my face. The only sound the low roll and echo of my compatriots' wheels as they snake away in and out of the patches of light.
It ain't wilderness, but it is wild.

It's worth mentioning, by the way, that like most things good and cheap and liberating and intoxicating, this making domesticated landscapes wild again isn't legal. "Skateboarding is not a crime," skateboarders love to proclaim; but, alas, Colorado State Statute 42-4-109 states otherwise:

No person shall use the highways for traveling on skis, toboggans, coasting sleds, skates, or similar devices. It is unlawful for any person to use any roadway of this state as a sled or ski course for the purpose of coasting on sleds, skis, or similar devices.

This is, of course, absurd.
Aside from the myriad spiritual and philosophical and physical rewards cited above, the skateboard is also eminently pragmatic, as I see every day walking around both town and the Fort Lewis College campus, where for many people the skateboard functions as a cheap, portable and eminently effective means of transportation. Hummers should be the crime before skateboards.
Since skateboards are of little harm to anyone but those willing to risk them, we can see, perhaps, a prejudice behind skateboarding's being a crime. I cite as an example one of our own city councilors, who, when Durango was seeking to approve a new downtown skate park, sounded like the elected representative of the Flat Earth Society when he said that if it were built it would need "a full-time security guard" armed with "a police radio." Stating his intention to oppose the project, he added: "Anyone that thinks the park will be a healthy outlet for children probably still believes in the tooth fairy."
Absurd. When my family and I spent two months last summer driving from Durango to Alaska and back, we looked for lots of cool things: lakes and mountains, towns and wildlife, hikes and fishing spots. And we looked for skateboard parks. As we approached towns, even on remote stretches of the Alaska highway, we could refer to our travel guides and find towns that boasted their skateboard parks. Those are the towns we chose to stay in. At first, we stopped just because we knew Webb and his sister, Anna, could use the break and exercise; but we soon were surprised to find that by taking our kids to these skateparks - wonderful, huge, creative creations, and all free of charge - we also got to meet some great people. Young people. Teenagers.
In particular I remember Haines, Alaska. Sitting at the end of a highway in the southeastern part of the state, the town recently built a beautiful year-round sheltered skateboard park - which the town's teens were actively involved in both designing and maintaining. The kids we talked to were clearly proud of their park and their involvement in making it happen. We ended up turning our planned quick-visit to Haines into a week-long stay in no small part because we felt safe enough to let Webb venture there on his own to hang with his new acquaintances - an experience he still describes as some of his most treasured on our trip.
A tribe, I tell you. Yet another organic connection rising like a weed and rooted in sharing something powerful, legal or not.
And they're everywhere. I mean my friends here, of course, but I also mean the old doctor we found walking his dog on one of our subdivision expeditions, who stopped us - we expected a scolding and eviction - to reminisce with us for half an hour about surfing and taking his kids out to skateboard the aqueducts in California. Like the woman who stopped her minivan to share her excitement over her and her family's having just scored a bunch of longboards cheap off eBay. Like the 10-year-old who stopped and sat on his skateboard to watch us padded-up old-timers riding through town, giving us high fives as we rolled by. When Jan and I went back up after and asked him for any pointers he might have, he shrugged and said, "Just go."
Of course. Because that's what this tribe does.

By the time we arrive near the river, it's raining pretty good. But we're feeling it now, and even Jan and I are riding some slides in our hard carves. I finish my run with a face shot in a deep puddle that I part with a big wake.
This old dog likes his new trick.
Why am I doing this? It's not, I can assure you, to "be young," or "recapture my youth." I don't need to recapture my youth: It's right here. It's in my vow that even if I die old, broken, blind, and decrepit, I'm going to die young. And tomorrow morning, when I gulp coffee and babble excitedly to Webb about this night and my new-found skateboarding enlightenment, he's going to shake his head solemnly and say, "Dad, I been telling ya ?"
I'll promise to listen more.
He is not with us tonight, though. It being the middle of a school night and we being out breaking the law and all. But the next full moon is on a weekend, and I think it's time we take on one of those mountain passes, together.
But tonight's not done yet. While we stand around yakking under a street light in the middle of the night, a Durango cop car approaches. Its inhabitants are invisible in the night, but I can feel their skeptical scrutinizing. Until, that is, either the gray hairs or our middle-age full-body armor overrides any alarm the skateboards might have raised. The cruiser slows, but rolls on by.
After it passes, somebody suggests a route back toward home. It's a bit roundabout, but it has some runs he'd been eyeing lately. All agree. The morning is young, and so are we.
We push off in a pack, like a pack of old dogs, and just go.

Ken Wright always wears a helmet in Durango. He is a contributing editor to Inside/Outside Southwest.

Friday, April 24, 2009
at 12:42:16 PM

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pcjones says:

Ken Wright has to be the coolest dad ever! Anyone know of any good hills in Durango to Long Board?