Skateboarding is a crime part 1
Thursday, September 11, 2008
I awoke very early Wednesday of this week, rushed to fill the entirety of a five gallon garbage bag with trash from the back of my car and started speeding south to Eugene, to take my 1987 Volvo 240 GL four-door Sedan to Alpine Imports: Exclusively Volvo. As I was driving through Springfield on I-105, I began to muse: What a joy it is to drive in Eugene-Springfield. In a matter of minutes you can be anywhere in the entire urban sprawl with little to no stress or fanfare. Whoever laid out these two towns was a master of urban planning, renewal, and development. He designed these civic areas primarily for automobiles. Then they put in the best and most thorough bus system I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching from afar as I sit comfortably in my Volvo listening to The Offspring. I think I’d like to ride an accordion bus simply for the sake of watching it bend from the interior. But then, I just like being inside things.
After I dropped off my Volvo, I was ferried to the Gateway Shopping center in an ’08 Volvo XC90 with a touring package. I took myself to a Chicken-Friend Steak breakfast, conversed jollily with myself about super-colliders, left a big tip, and skateboarded across the street to Best Buy. After realizing I would have no money after fixing my expensive Swedish car, I skated down the street and through the Gateway Mall parking lot to Big 5 where the only pair of shoes they had that were big enough for me were bright red and white; replete with the name of some basketball player on the side. Sports are not something I care about. At all.
Then I decided rather than making them come pick me up, I’d see what Springfield had to offer, and try to make my way to downtown Eugene. I took my Illenium shortboard with one Independent truck, one Destroyer truck, Doh-Doh bushings, 65MM polyurethane Spitfire classic wheels, Dooks risers, Lucky’s Hardware, and Swiss Bones Reds Berrings: I was off to skate across what, at the time, in my mind, was a virginal urban wasteland full of things to kill myself jumping over and sliding down: sufficed by a police force that couldn’t possibly patrol the entire cornucopia. Immediately upon leaving the shopping area I was treated to grainy sidewalks littered with trash. Cars zipped by me at upwards of 60 MPH. I took the first exit I could to what I thought would be a peaceful suburban area. But I was forced to stick to the main highway, while cars zipped by and side-view mirrors nearly slapped me in the back of the head. I tried my luck at suburban developments, but they all almost ended in cul-de-sacs or forced me out behind where I had started. In the end, I lost large amounts of time to those ritzy clone-house neighborhoods. I continued, never giving up and never surrendering, then the sidewalk abruptly ended and so did the shoulder on the road. I was forced to walk through dirt and brambles to make my way toward the Springfield city center. There were patches of sidewalk and sometimes patches of shoulder where I would ride, briefly only to hop off and jog a ways; this went on for a couple of miles. When a shoulder returned I was on a major highway: I-105 where cars zipped by me at 60-70 MPH. I turned off and finally found a sidewalk! Which lasted five feet. I was forced to pick up my board and dart across four lanes of traffic into a bike path in the median of this eight-lane hell-zone. This was one of the more smooth sailing parts of my trip: there was grass in between me and cars and the bike path was smooth and for the most part: clean. However, bikes came in a torrent and flury with force and whizzed around me on all sides, in packs of ten on their ten speeds. The few lone bums and gas-conscientious people that passed regarded me as an oddity: what is this young fellow doing on that plywood board with wheels? As I reached Springfield city center I entered the city blocks: stop and go traffic, stop signs, and crosswalks became an unhithertofore perceieved threat. These seemed to outnumber the few, if any, pedestrians. I made my way down a quiet-looking street and found myself under the city hall and police department. A gaggle of officers was outside talking, they moved for me as I skated by, some with mild curiosity, others with absolute disinterest. It was at that moment I realized that in two hours of skating I had yet to see a single no-skateboarding sign anywhere. And it seemed like it was for good reason. This turned out to be the least skate-friendliest city on the planet: hardly any good street obstacles to skate and it was always a hellacious endeavour to continue forward. And I was smack-dab in the middle of it. Sidewalks turned to ruptured cement whose top layer, long since worn off, presented layers of rocks that ground me almost to a halt. Patches of fresh, new, instant-mix cement that wasn’t from 1925 provided reprieves, only to steal all my thunder(and speed) as I either ran into more terrible sidewalks, grass, oil, and sunken blocks that would force me to ollie just to stay on my board. However, going so slow; I had the height to ollie over a fire hydrant, but not the speed to escape the blocks with my back wheels. I continued on my way to a pleasant historic neighborhood where I stopped for coffee. It was filled with the elderly and business people, and while the barista hit on me (she was pretty cute) I was the subject of stares and general dislike for the time I sat there drinking my coffee and reading The Register-Guard’s article about the Super-Collider (something effervescently on my mind). My skateboard left stains on the chair and the wall and the owner gave me the evil eye, and I wish I could say that I got away quickly. From here on out the sidewalks were nothing but construction, so I took to the streets, one of the more smoother ventures of downtown Springfield. When cars came, I ollied into grass and driveways to escape the wrath of Khan. I managed to make decent time after the construction cleared while still retaining the roads: I arrived at Alpine Imports in another half-hour; but alas, my car needed additional work and would not be finished for another four hours.
It seemed then that I had a mission, to make it to downtown Eugene to the Horsehead Bar (my favorite), even if it killed me.
And in the next part of this saga, you’ll see how it almost did. That what would’ve been a 10 minute drive, a 20-30 minute bus ride and an hour bike ride turned into a three-hour ordeal from hell that left me in a “last chance” saloon talking with a 90-year-old woman about Nascar.
That’ll be posted tomorrow.
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