I'm once again holding in my bowel movements to write. I realize that is a little too much information for anyone, but I find this theme amusing. Anyway, I have a story.
So, one night, we decided to borrow this asshole's skateboard to get cheeseburgers. Well--we wanted cheeseburgers, but at twelve-thirty in the morning and no car, cheeseburgers were completely inaccessible. And damn it, we had written off Denny's terrible cooks earlier that night.
So, we decided to borrow this asshole's skateboard to get... something. It was a longboard, made for traveling. Gene had his own. It was this shorter skateboard meant for playing tricks and going off ramps and doing ollies and kickflips--all the things neither he nor I could do. A couple of kids from Southern California that couldn't skate, skating downtown. There's something there. I'm working on it.
So, we decided to steal this asshole's skateboard and I say, "It looks like we're having an adventure!" We head out into the night, towards downtown Olympia. Our skateboards are noisy. The sidewalks in this neighborhood are not made for smooth skating. The cracks between the cement blocks go ka-thock! ka-thock! ka-thock! and make our two-man escapade sound like a fleet of trains. Trains being derailed every five minutes. We fall (or at least I do) at just about every corner.
We reach our first checkpoint. Going down an alley parallel to 6th, and approaching Sherman, he points to an orange plastic-mesh net fencing off what might have been a house or a pool or any another piece of conquered land. Leaning horizontally on one of the poles was a large wooden board. "KEEP OUT," someone had written. Fuck them, we go in. He holds the net up for me; he's a sweetheart.
It's a huge ledge of a cement foundation hanging over the Deschutes Parkway, which is gently wrapped around the vivid reflections of downtown Olympia in Capitol Lake.
Phenomenal. I'm going to live for spots just like this, I tell him. He lists off a few more. I thank him.
I won't forget that.
