Entries this day: skate_Woblong_Roberta

skate Woblong Roberta

Friday 1 July 1994

Skating last night started out lame, but ended with wild new adventures for me. I hung out at Party on the Plaza with Karen who only remembered me after I reminded her that she was the first person I talked to after I sliced my thumb and smeared blood all over my NO FEAR T-shirt. I was wearing the shirt last night, as I always like to when I skate.

From the Plaza, I joined a group skating to Fuzzy's, a bar that has lots of police department type stuff- badges, lights, pictures, and even a banged up HPD vehicle door. No one was doing anything there, so I joined a group that was skating to a bar called Heads Up. The name of the bar was unfamiliar to me until I remembered that it is right in the middle of the gay bar part of Houston, near where I live. Dude- I was kinda wary of going in there, but with all of us together, I felt better. There was probably about 20 of us clompering up the steps into the bar. There were about 4 or 5 people already in the bar, so safety in numbers really worked for me. We hung out and I talked to Susanah, who it turns out that I met her on 4th of July last year, which was the first day she had ever skated. That was kinda cool. While we were there, someone sang over the intercom,

 I hate you
 you hate me
 I shot Barney in the knee
 with a thump he fell to the floor
 no more purple dinosaur.

We cheered. About 15 minutes later, someone shouted, "Let's Skate!!" Within 1 minute the bar was empty except for the original 4 or 5 people still there.

I skated with a group of 6 people back downtown to Fuzzy's. Ed, who is *really* good on skates was there, and he had skinned his elbow. He said that he was trying to do 180s (180 degree turns in the air) over a box they had set up by a ramp, and he toasted twice in a row. I had him wipe some blood on my shirt. A ramp at the Plaza, eh? So we skated to the Plaza and Adam had his new ramp out there and everyone was jumping it or watching. One guy could get about 5 feet of air off the ramp- that was wild. The ramp was about 1.5 feet high and 3 feet long. I scoped out the situation, and didn't feel too happy about the box being there, so they laid it on its side and I jumped it that way. No sweat actually. I jumped it about 5 or 7 times and only needed my pads once. I did good pads, so that was cool. "Good pads" means one used his/her pads well during a wreck. A cool thing was that there was actually a female jumping with us. I had not met any women who would do ramps with us. Her name is Sonja. Adam put the ramp away and 5 of us bunched together and skated in search of water. We went to Brewery Tap and drank two pitchers of water in about as many minutes. We cruised to go do some parking garages. At this point, we had 9 people in our group. Roberta brought a new kind of frisbee called a Woblong, which I had never seen before. It throws really weird compared to regular frisbees. We were crazy skating down the street chasing after the disc all around cars and buses trying to drive. One time, I threw the thing and it veered left and I chased it up onto the sidewalk and I ended up sitting on the sidewalk with my back against the building. Roberta came flying by along the sidewalk and I scrunched my leg up just in time to get it out of her way. We had big fun Woblonging all the way to Allen Center parking garage. We rode to the top of the elevator and then clanged up the stairs to the seventh level, the very roof of the building. There we had a 150 X 150 foot playing area, nice and smooth, with no cars and a four foot wall all around the perimeter, except at the ramp to drive/skate down.

We threw the Woblong around, performing the graceful chaotic dance that I never can describe except that its pretty much random as we skate to get the disc while barely avoiding each other.. The pattern would be quite an interesting one to see from the air. I learned how to throw that thing while we were up there. At one point Matt and I both committed ourselves to recovering the Woblong where it lay, and we both knew the other was coming at a right angle, but we both didn't veer off course. BLAM!!! we smashed into each other and bounced all over the place. Neither of us snagged the disc. We got up and verified that the other was okay, and I shouted to everyone else, "dude! Wasn't that cool? How did that look?" and one guy said, "it looked like you both ate it." Heh. We skated up there for probably 30 minutes and the we chilled by the wall before skating down. Once again, I found the garage to be not as wild as the first time I skated it, so I made it harder by swerving in and out of various obstacles and such. At the very bottom is a weird part of the garage that is almost like a 1/2 pipe built just for us. We skated it a few times and I was able to scrunch right up near the very top of it where the ramp was only 4 feet below the ceiling. That was cool.
On the way out of the garage, I successfully accepted a challenge to jump over a chain about two feet high and land on the ground on the other side about 4 feet below the chain. The ceiling above the chain was only about 5 feet higher than the chain. They all clapped politely impressed after I did it.

Then we went to George R. Brown Convention Center to do the 18-wheeler access ramps. This time we skated on the *other* ramp than the one I did last time. This ramp does not lead straight into a street where you barely have to turn to exit, but forces one to make a tight right turn within the width of the street that it dumps onto, which is about 4 or 5 lanes wide. We hiked to the top and the first time down, I raced one of the guys. Last time I did the other ramp, I just coasted down and that was lame. This time, we both pushed down pretty much as fast as we could. As I was about half-way down, I thought, "no way. No way I can make it." So I braked hard and must have braked while skating 60 feet or so before I got off my brake and made the turn at the bottom. He won by about 20 feet. We coasted 2 blocks and then turned around to skate it again. The hike to the top was definitely higher this time. He didn't want to race, so I went first and really hauled-ass all the way down. No braking for me at all. I was flying down and had to use the entire width of both the ramp and the street to make my turning radius as wide as possible. As I entered the street, I noted that 4 of the people in our group were sitting on the curb with skates in the street. "Oh shit!" I yelled and cranked my turn harder and

We skated back toward the Plaza and our group slowly broke up as we reached our respective vehicles. I gave them my phone number, and I really think we might skate together again sometime.