Close Call

[BoMan]

I was riding my long skateboard down a gentle hill and practicing carving turns. After sliding down the quarter mile run, I picked up the board, jogged back to the top and did it over and over again. In time some teenage boys took notice and called out, "Go get it, man" which was music to this old guy's ears.

I started to go faster and make LOW crouching turns, completely ignoring my surroundings - the cars parked on the side of the road, the curves in the street and the sound of approaching vehicles unable to see me. To be safe I only had to stand up...but no, that would ruin my perfect turn.

Then it happened. A pickup truck caught me from behind and honked, knowing that he couldn't stop. I heard the warning and sprang off the board in an adrenaline rush. I landed on the hood of a Camry and rolled safely on to the lawn behind. Lucky, lucky, lucky, and stupid, Stupid, STUPID! I've never done anything like that in the water or on my skateboard - even when I was a kid.

Feel free to lecture or share another close call.

[Big H]

Hahahaha....you went and "got it" alright....

I've done alot of stupid things....most confined to my misspent youth.... :LOL:

...I'm still here and glad to see you are too............keep the stoke!!!

[oldmansurfer]

I bet David Flanagan could tell you some not so lucky stories about skateboarding. For me as a kid I was riding down this steep hill where normally I would go with a bunch of kids and we would post sentries to warn us of oncoming traffic and possibly stop the traffic as a last resort. I wanted to skate and no one else did so I went by myself and of course three cars were all coming at the same time so I jumped off the board and my legs hit the road and I did a flip landing on my back and getting a huge road rash on my back

[Big H]

Quick skateboard misadventure story:

I was 9 years old. Had a tree that sat on a hill in our small front yard. I found some pieces of plywood someone had thrown away down the street and laid them on the hill under the tree. I climbed the tree with my skateboard to a height of around 10ft. I jumped out of the tree with the skateboard with the full intention of landing on the plywood with the board and riding down the hill into the street. I hit the plywood with the board under my feet and then just as fast was flat on my back and the skateboard in the next zip code. I spent the evening in the emergency room getting X-rays. Nothing broken.

Good times!

[pmcaero]

What you just describes is what makes me not ever want to skateboard on a street. I go at the bottom of a side street in brief spurts with my penny board, but always making sure there are no cars behind me.

[BoMan]

I did a flip landing on my back and getting a huge road rash on my back

I wouldn't get up from that, so I wear ALL the pads, the gloves and the big frickin' helmet. I look like a dork but they saved me from a few bruises yesterday.

[BoMan]

I hit the plywood with the board under my feet and then just as fast was flat on my back and the skateboard in the next zip code.

Johnny Knoxville would have been proud!

[BoMan]

What you just describes is what makes me not ever want to skateboard on a street.

I'm not giving up. Cruising and kick-tailing down gentle hills is just too much fun! It keeps the stoke going between surfs and helps me practice a skill or two.

I go at the bottom of a side street in brief spurts with my penny board, but always making sure there are no cars behind me.

I definitely need to watch for vehicles snaking my hill!

[drowningbitbybit]

I did something similar recently...

I was checking the surf out at Snapper and I'd skated there from where I'd parked my car a couple of streets back. Skating back towards my car, I was going down a gentle hill, and I was on my Smoothstar skateboard (with the moveable front truck, so hopeless at straight line speed) I was winding my way back and forth across the whole road, confident that if a car turned into the road, I could loop around it without either crashing into the car or getting too much speed to control. Well, a car didn't turn into the road...

...a dumptruck did.

I had enough room to get around it in theory, but having to go that far down the side of it in a straight line would've built up much too much speed with the danger of being chucked under the dumptruck's wheels.
This wouldn't have been too much of a problem, I could just scrape off some speed and then jump off...

...except I was in bare feet

Split-second decision - round the truck or off the board in bare feet? The first option seemed a bit all or nothing and possibly involving being dead, so I went for the second option... I still have the scars on my toes

[BoMan]

Split-second decision - round the truck or off the board in bare feet? The first option seemed a bit all or nothing and possibly involving being dead, so I went for the second option... I still have the scars on my toes

Thank gawd my wife likes to read Pinterest and not Surfing-Waves.

[IanCaio]

Your close call reminded me of one of my skateboard bails. I was about 14 or 15 I guess, and went to a birthday party of one of my dad's friend's daughter. I took my skateboard with me, but when I got there the house was in top of a really steep hill, so there was nothing much to do there. Then my dad's friend came close to me and said "not going to do anything with the skateboard?". He said it innocently, not in a bad way, but I decided I had to do something, so I decided to go down the hill.
So there I was and all the kids from the birthday party watching as I went down! I gained lots of speed, suddenly one small seed in the ground locked my wheels (small skateboard problems!) and I went flying, probably did lots of rolls (unintentional ones of course!) and got up to see all the kids at the top of the hill with their hands in their mouths like they just watched somebody die .
Remembering now I was lucky to have falled, because the hill suddenly turned left (so I would probably hit a wall or a gate once I got down there) and not much later a car turned to get up the hill (so there was also the possibility of me running over the car )

I got some big road rashes on my knees, my elbows and my hands. My pants got completely ragged and my dad's friend bought me new ones, he felt kind of guilty. Well, guess the "crowd cheering effect" makes us a little more stupid sometimes, I also went down a 20 set stair with a bike (obviously it didn't work out for me ) because other kids were watching when I was around 8 years old. But that's another story..

[oldmansurfer]

When I was a kid I rode my skateboard down the big 3 tiered slides in the park. You know one of those slides where it goes down then flattens then down and then flattens? I actually made it all the way to the bottom then crashed when landing on the grass at the bottom. Of course everyone wanted to try that and none of them got to the bottom flat spot standing.

[oldmansurfer]

I also went down a 20 set stair with a bike (obviously it didn't work out for me ) because other kids were watching when I was around 8 years old. But that's another story..

I went down a whole flight of stairs in a wheelchair in the hospital where I was getting my tonsils removed cheered on by another kid getting his tonsils removed To my surprise I made it to the bottom.

[BoMan]

I never got hurt skateboarding as a kid though it wasn't for a lack of trying.

I grew up in Kensington, CA which sits in the hills above UC Berkeley. The roads were steep, crowned and badly paved. As we worked our way downhill, my friends and I loved to ollie the potholes, grind the street curbs and powerslide to a stop....sometimes! My labrador retriever, Bonnie, was the biggest obstacle. Delighted to be off the leash (how smart was that?) and with a bunch of boys, she ran in circles pausing regularly to stop in front of us to make sure everything was "cool." Through all that, there were no injuries until last week!

Here's a Kensington view of the Golden Gate.

[oldmansurfer]

I started skateboarding on the only available skateboard which was red and had metal wheels. Those were dangerous and difficult to ride anywhere other than flat and smooth. Then they came out with clay wheels which were really fantastic but wore down quickly so you had to buy new wheels at least every year. It has come pretty far from that. I mostly was into hill riding, I couldn't do much but could do a perpetual 360 spin for a few times around anyway. I did sliding turns on steep hills to slow down or popped the front up and scraped the back edge along the road to slow down. I could do 180's going fairly fast down a hill but mostly I loved the speed. I learned to jump off my board on the side of the road and start running in mid air and could most times keep from getting injured (doing that to suddenly stop my run) but minor injuries were almost a daily occurrence. I almost learned to kick flip but was getting into other things (surfing) so laying off skateboarding. Then my neighbors kid rode down a steep hill on his hands and did all these other fantastic tricks and that made me not want to skate even more since I was a putz compared to him. My wife had a skateboard when I married her and I briefly started again but in my old age the ground felt like it was a lot harder then it used to be so I quit skateboarding for the last time.

[oldmansurfer]

Here are some guys skateboarding back when I did it. You can see the guys doing pirouette 360's. I was around this skill range back then LOL but I liked to go fast.

[BoMan]

My wife had a skateboard when I married her and I briefly started again but in my old age the ground felt like it was a lot harder then it used to be so I quit skateboarding for the last time.

If I lived in Kauai I would quit too. I'm jealous of your aquatic life OMS!