Entries this day: skated_Beltway_8_overpass_with_Marcel

skated Beltway 8 overpass with Marcel

4 June 1996

Back in about mid-May I had a super awesome skating adventure. My friend Marcel had called me to say basically, "Hey- they're almost done building the new Tollway down near my house. Let's go skate on it before it opens!" Excellent idea.

I picked him up after work and we cruised down to his (& Kayse's) apartment. We goofed around on his computer a bit (cause we're computer nerds at heart) and then we drove out to the Tollway.

It kinda felt weird parking blatantly by the toll booth plaza, but hey, what could be more convenient? Certainly any cops would understand that. We put on our skates and hopped over the wall onto the Tollway.

Skating on a giant shimmering expanse of fluorescent lit concrete is unique. Amazing what details we freely experienced that thousands of drivers would soon pay to whiz past. Unfortunately, most of the details were relatively bumpy grooves across the whole highway, and not designed with skaters in mind. We had a goal, though, and it was still two and a half miles away.

So we kept on skating, eventually up and over a small hill--an overpass I believe. It was nothing compared to the overpass looming ahead.

Before reaching the looming overpass, we found a giant jungle gym / monkey bars in the middle of the Tollway! They were only six feet tall, but easily sixty feet long. The steps were too large for a child to climb, but I was able to carefully(!) clamber up to the top, amazed at the thickness of the steel, and the size and number of bolts holding the whole thing together. Marcel and I guessed we could get 15 or 20 thousand dollars if we could just get the thing to a recycling center!

We reached the start of the exit ramp that sailed up and up and up and over Interstate 45. The thing was big. No question in our minds about whether or not to skate it. We examined the area for any potentially disastrous accident sources, and found none. Well, none except the large piles of guard rails in the middle of the lanes. At least they were easily visible.

On the way up, we encountered more guard rails in a pile, which were also not yet doing their job of keeping us on the highway. We had other incentive to stay on the ramp though, so we did. The wall on the edge of the highway on which the rails would eventually be attached was just a rebar skeleton, like a giant snake ribcage stretching for miles across the overpass. The ribs were spaced far enough apart to allow a skate between them, and just tall enough to catch a careening skater at the knees, inducing several seconds of freefall gymnastics.

From the top, we could see three searchlights dancing lazily across the clouds in the north, and one brightly twisting in a parking lot just south of us. Marcel wondered how many we might see from an airplane. I suggested we could see the most searchlights from an airplane if it were a foggy night below us.

We were way up there. Below us were four layers of highway, with presumably 16 or 18 feet between them, and each at least 4 or 5 feet thick. That would put us about 100 some-odd feet high. We had to be higher. It seemed we were at least ten thousand feet in the air.

For several moments, we experienced the view, commenting that we would later be paying motorists, privileged to shout, "we climbed it! We skated it!"

We skated slowly(!) toward the inner edge of the turn, which was fully 3 feet lower than the other side as the curve was banked. I gripped the rebar ribcage as I looked over the edge to spit... Wow. It fell forever.

Back up to the center of the roadway, we were all, "Dude?" "Dude." We gave each other five and started down. I pushed myself a bit faster down the hill into the darkness, then I just let gravity do its work.

I could see essentially nothing as I careened faster faster fasterfasterfaster .."yyaaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!" I growled out loud, praying not to hit a stray bolt that would send me tumbling, sprawling straight to the hospital. I rocketed past the pile of guard rails and toward the bottom of the hill. I was fully crouched, with my arms pointing forward, ready to grind my wrist pads to dust if necessary. Past the guard rails at the bottom of the hill, I began to stand up and slow down. Heart excited, adrenaline racing, I safely stopped and turned around to find Marcel. He was nowhere in sight. Hmmm.

Uh oh.

Then I saw him skating smoothly down, doing amazingly well for one of his first times on skates. "Excellent!" I greeted him at the bottom.

We skated back to the truck and went home.