Entries this day: skate

skate

6:15pm PST Friday 20 December 2002

I'm about to get Scott from the garage where he's been sleeping, retrieve my skates and join the Friday Night Skate around SF. Nice.

11:57pm

Back at Wende's now. What an incredibly excellent skate!!

The short version is that no one else showed up for the Friday night skate, but I saw two trolleys driving by with Carolers singing and wishing people happy holidays and all sorts of positive energy flowing from them, so I followed them to Ghiradelli Square and hung out for a bit.

Left Wende's with skate on feet around 7:20pm. I found the streets quite wet, but not too slick, though some of the downhills were a bit tricky to slow down completely before I got squished by cross traffic.

I thrilled down Mission (?) toward the downtown area where Wende works, right down the lanes with the cars, and sometimes faster than them down the hill, especially if they were slowed down by red traffic lights, I'd zip between the cars to the front of the line, and sometimes skate across the red light if I could do so safely.

Awesome to roll along with traffic across a big intersection with several slick and slightly bumpy trolley tracks strewn across it. Navigating myself along within the cars, watching the street to make sure a skate doesn't get lodged in the groove of a track (mostly difficult in this case because I was mostly going right across them, not along them) and watching for pedestrian traffic that might be jaywalking (how rude!).

Dropped off Wende's apartment keys at her work (she has an extra set of all but the outside door to get into the building) in case I was still skating at 11 when she got off work.

Basically hauled butt down Market toward the Embarcadero, sometimes having to stop for red lights, sometimes getting to sail across the intersections, navigating people and sometimes jumping off the curb into the street if the sidewalks were too crowded. The streets were awesome because the rougher surface allowed my skates better grip and therefore greater acceleration and speed for me.

At what I presumed was the Embarcadero, where we were supposed to meet, I found no one. Well, no skaters. But then again I was 15 minutes earlier than 8pm, which is when people were scheduled to begin arriving.

I people watched a bit, skated around a bit (despite the no bicycles, no skateboards, no skates sign (could this be the right place, sporting such a sign?)) chilled out a bit. Talked to two people to make sure I was in the right place.

One person was John, a limosuine driver whose fare tonight was paid by like 8 or 10 high school girls celebrating one of their birthdays. The girls were all at the ice skating rink while I talked with John. He used to ice skate, but has never inline skated. His son can snowboard (and does it well, according to his friends) so John may go watch that sometime this season.

The girls all arrived, unfortunately all with long bread loaves that they used like swords and littered across the pavement. Not like all of them, but 1.5 loaves were left on the ground. I picked them up and threw them away.

It began to rain around 8:30, so I figured that no one would come skate with me. I took off up Market the same sort of way as I had come down it, but this time up the slight incline instead of down.

Around 8:45 it had stopped raining, and I headed back toward the Embarcadero just in case someone else was there at 9.

Nope.

But!! Two trolley busses drove by, and people all over them were all, "Merry Christmas!" and "Happy Holidays!" and singing Christmas carols and good stuff like that.

I watched them go past and then realized this was my chance for something fun to do tonight, so I caught up with them. All the girls in the back were all holding their hands out so I could give them five, and then a couple people up front were so I moved to the front of the bus to give them five as well. While I watched their hands, I couldn't watch the ground much; I'm so thankful that I didn't eat it at that point, so early in our newfound game.

I found it relatively trivial to keep up with them, basking in the girls flirting with me, "you're my hero!" ("aw thanks; you're my heroes.. wait you're my cheer leaders!") and "how far are you going to skate with us?" ("until I get bored or can't keep up") and "will you go to Ghiradelli with us?" ("Will you buy me chocolate?" "Yes!" "Whoohooo! Chocolate!!!!") and "where are you from?" ("I'm from Texas, Houston Texas.") and then, all in unison, "what's your name?" and then the game ender, "how old are you?"

I changed my speed to visit the lead trolley, and they were all, "do you have any requests [for Christmas Carols]?" "Rudolph!!" So they sang Rudolph for me and I totally sang with them and did gestures to represent the different parts of the song. Totally thanked them for blessing me with a song; it was so so great!

Stopped at an intersection where a bunch of open air restaurant places teemed with people (maybe not teemed, but sported several staff and customers) who all cheered when the trolley finished whatever song they were on at the time. One young boy inquired what I was doing and I told him, "I'm skating along side of these trolleys while they sing to me." "Really?" he asked with large eyes. "No actually," I looked up at his dad, "but I like to pretend they are!"

Turned another corner and then headed up a pretty steep hill, two blocks worth. I basically kept up with the trolley on the first hill, but was losing ground on the second hill. Fortunately we turned and I didn't have to haul butt up the hills. I basked in lots of cheers and kudos for having made it up the hill.

Then we turned and went 1 block and then down the same hill, one block over. I put on mad brakeage, and made it down the first hill okay, but on the second one, I somehow screwed up and twisted and fell right beside the trolley as it was moving. I did a full 180 onto my butt and bounced my ass back up, simultaneously turned around forwards again, made it the rest of the way down.

Some cheers, some jeers for that. "You're still my hero!" ("thank you!!") and "Not mine; you ate shit back there." ("yeah, but did you see how quickly I bounced back up? That's where it's at." My cheerleaders had boosted my ego enough to deflect the jeer a mile away.)

We had arrived at Ghiradelli Square and several people said HI and one cat came up to me, looking like Johnny the German exchange student in OKC with dreads. Looked also like Leif from Canada sorta. His name was Jake. He asked if the Friday night skaters still skated each Friday and I explained what I knew. ("yes, but apparently not tonight, maybe cause of the rain")

A woman named Mary introduced herself as well. Cute face and smile with what I'll call a traditional fuzzy black Russian hat thing on. Like a fuzzy top hat looking thing almost.

Ended up sitting between Jake and Mary, as our seats spilled off the end of two small tables mushed together. Jake and two of his friends shared a sundae of eight scoops of ice cream, eight toppings, and a pile of whipped cream. Called an Earthquake. They devoured it in 15 minutes while Mary and I shared an excellent theological discussion, started by me telling her I am a youth advisor, etc ("oh, for what church?" etc)

I was impressed that she didn't seem to take "offense" at our lack of a set creed, and even tried to summarize it in her own words.

I found it difficult to hear her in the din, but I got that she believes ultimate sin exists with two results/causes: (wait, shit I'm getting this wrong) (!) God created the world with a bunch of set laws and (@) The Fall (Adam and Eve's misadventures in Eden) keeps people from being able to modify the laws that God has set.

My immediate question: "does that mean before The Fall that Adam and Eve were able to modify the laws?" i.e. as Mary summarized, "that they were equal with God?" Exactly. It was a question she hadn't yet considered.

I'm glad to have given her some thought provoking questions.

With the Earthquake devoured, people started to leave from the table. Said bye to Jake (didn't get his email address), bye to Mary (did get hers)

Bye to the matriarch and patriarch of the table (as introduced to me by Mary, much to the chagrin of the mom) and thanked them for having me join them, etc.

Several byes hollered a half block away once I got outside and the original carolers saw me as they got into their van.

- - - -

Now. Where the fuck am I?

I finally found Ghiradelli on the map. Fortunately I knew it was close to the bay, so I just looked along that edge. I had basically gone 180 degrees around the circumfrence of the city. I could either retrace my trek and stay on quite small inclines, or bust up this steeep ass hill right here and go straight back toward downtown.

Up the hill.

After a few particularly steep hills, I recognized I was at Hyde and Lombard, right at the top of the proclaimed curviest street ever. No way am I going down that (and waste all my potential energy after climbing this hill)..., as I went past the street.

Then, what am I saying? this is my only chance to *skate* down Lombard on a wet rainy night! so I went back to skate down.

Oh shit this is steep. And slick. The road is paved with slick red bricks. Slick.

I can almost say I only fell once while going down the hill. It was more like I fell once or twice at every curve on the hill. I was basically sliding like Bambi on ice, on my kneepads and wristpads for most of the time. If I went down forward, I could see where I was going, but my kneepads would slide down my leg, revealing skin for the bricks to chew on. If I slid backwards, the knees would be fine, but I couldn't see where I was going.

So much fun!!!!

Exhilirated at the bottom. I just slid down Lombard!!!!! "Whoohooooooo!!" into the night sky.

Then I tried to skate *up* Lombard, but no. Too slick. Totally fruitless. So I stepped up the steps on the left hand side of the street going up.

Made it basically to Wende's apartment, kinda twisting my knees trying to slow down enough going down the hills, then realized her keys would be with her at her work.

I repeated my path to her work, and it seemed more dangerous this time, and I can't really say why. Was I just tired? Same streets, right? Same amount of traffic, right? hmmmm.

Got to her work, chilled outside a while, then she saw me and let me in while they closed down all the registers and computers.

Walked (skated) Wende home and while crossing the large city-sponsored lighted Christmas Tree, some cat was all, "you can't skate up here (on this plaza thing)" So I was all, "I'm walking her home. Can I walk like this?" and made like I was walking in my skates instead of rolling. He allowed me to come across, just asked that I go straight across and not fool around there. No problem.

Got home and Wende made us some dinner of tomato, avacado, tortilla chips, cheese. So awesome!!!! So thankful.

What a totally fantastic night!