Ivan

__My life as a skateboarder__ The first time I started skateboarding was in July when my cousin came to my house. My cousin and I where bored so we went to the storage and looked for something. Then my cousin said, “What is that” and I said, “Let’s go check it out”. When we got it, it was a skateboard that was all dusty and dirty so we took out some of our time to clean it and make it look good. When we finished cleaning it we rode it. It was really hard at first but with time we were getting good so we decided to buy one skateboard for each one of us and by the beginning of august we could do the Ollie and the shove-it. The Ollie is a trick that makes the skateboard jump and the shove-it is a trick the makes the skateboard make a 180 degree movement while you are in the air.

When school started, I kept on skating but not that much as I used to skate when I was with my cousin. After a while I started to get better, I was making Ollie higher and then I made shove-it more often. The shove-it was really hard to land; I once almost broke my arm trying. This happened a Wednesday after coming from school, I was really exited to come and skate at home because my day at school was really boring and I wanted to waste all of my energies skating. I was trying things like kick-flips and really hard stuff without even knowing how to, so when I was trying the skateboard landed side ways and I landed on it so my ankle twisted and then I landed with my arm all bended and twisted so it almost broke, it hurt a lot and then I couldn’t skate any more for the rest of the week.

The first time I went to the skate park was the best, had fun and I enjoyed it a lot. I went with Juan pi and his brother Franco. They went in in-line skates and I went obviously, on a skateboard. When I entered the skate park it was like entering to heaven for a skater, it had half-pipes, quarter-pipes and much other cool stuff. Franco and Juan pi were really good skating and they could go down the half-pipe but I couldn’t, so I tried once and fell, the second try I went half-way down and then fell on my back, and then the third time I went all the way to the other side, but instead of going up I went directly in to the floor. Then after a few more fails I could, and I was so exited that I wanted to do something more extreme so I wanted to go down the big half-pipe, when I tried I fell and landed directly with my butt, it hurt a lot more than almost braking my arm, it hurt almost for an entire week.

When vacation came I was going constantly to visit my cousin in his house that is completely in the other side of the city, but even though I went. When I went I always took my skateboard with me and we always went like seven or eight blocks aways from the house even when my mom and my aunt told us not to because there were many hobos that could take our skateboard and cloth and many other things that I will not mention, but my cousin and I went anyway. One day when we were skating around there we saw a hobo, he was drunk and mad. The hobos said to that he hated us out of nowhere, like he just said it randomly, it was scary. My cousin that knew more about this type of situations told me to always pick up the skateboard and have it in your hand just in case some one attack us. That hobo was jus one of the ten other hobos we saw on our way back home. When we got home we were really bored and it was dawn, we wanted to skate, but all the workers of constructions went out at that time, but we didn’t care. When we were skating a worker didn’t stop watching us, not for second. My cousin and I thought we better go home now, so we went but we were even more far from home than before, we were fifteen blocks away. When we started going back the worker started following us, so we started to run as fast as we could. When we were near home the worker was still following us and what he wanted from us was the skateboards so we threw the skateboards over the fence into the home. When the worker saw that we didn’t have the skateboards anymore he went away, my cousin and I almost pee our pants of being so scared. The good thing of this experience is that know my cousin and I learned that we have to be more careful with hobos and workers.

When school started I skated with my friends more often and went more to the skate park. This time at school I learned how to do a kick-flip because I skated more and my friends and I taught each other better techniques of how to do more tricks. The kick-flip consists on flipping the skateboard totally around and then landing on it. The first time I landed a kick-flip was about half-year ago, it was really, really cool. Then I tried doing it on a gap but I couldn’t, but well I landed a kick-flip that is good enough for me.

A year has passed from when I started skateboarding. What I have learned is the shove-it the kick-flip and the Ollie; know I just need to learn a lot more harder tricks. The next trick I plan on learning this week is the varial, I thought I could learn it in a week, but it took like month of practice to learn it and land it. After a week of trying I got frustrate about not landing this trick but then I thought if I stop skateboarding until my frustration is over I will forget all of the tricks I know, I better don’t stop know. When I thought of it that way all my frustration went and I started trying again. After a month I could land the varial like 3 out of 10 times that I tried, again, that was good enough. But know I still try and practice the trick.

On the half of the school year I started to go to the skate park all the Fridays with my friends. Going to the skate park was really cool, I learned so much more. One day in the skate park I jumped over a huge bucket, it was like 3 feet high. Another day on the skate park I tried jumping over some stairs, they were like five big ones, but I couldn’t. That day in the skate park I didn’t stop trying to jump dose stairs until I was so tired that I saw everything darker and I was dizzy. I went to the shop in the skate park and bought myself a Gatorade to get some sugar to feel better. When I started to feel better I kept on trying. When I was trying, one time I almost did it, but then I kept on trying but I never could.

After trying to jump the ladders I tried do rail. Doing the rail was really hard. When I was trying to do it, I always fell. One day a guy saw me trying to do it and he told me to do it on the board slide. When I tried doing it this way it was really hard but even though I kept on trying because this guy told me it was easier. When I was trying I fell on my back every time. Then I though, “ushh, it doesn’t matter what this guy told me, I’m going to do it my way”. After I though of that I tried other way and the 50-50 way was easier for me, and then I could rail. It was really cool, it was almost like if you were floating on the skateboard.

My life as a skate boarder has been really cool; I have learned trick and other cool stuff like jumping over a barrel or railing and the coolest thing was street skating with my friends. All I have to say is that I have lived well as a skateboarder. Yeah!!!