Chewed up in 彰化

It's a 20-30 minute walk up the hill to the brilliant DIY spot the homies here have built. The first spot you encounter isn't much of a spot. It's a three stair drop onto asphault so rough, it might as well be a bed of nails. I always skate it for a second just because I can't wait to get to the better spots. On my first ollie, I stuck the front wheels in the bed of nails and gave myself a stigmata. It bled until the end of the session.

When I got the DIY spot, two guys were folding up the ramps (they designed it all so that it stacks down into a cube for storage, so as not to piss off the thought police. fucking geniuses). They unstacked it even though they didnt recognize me, jsut so I could skate. They have narrow little kicker that I (tried to) roll into off a box and i must have put my wheels over its edge because suddenly, I was rolling off another fall. No matter, because now I pissed, and that helps skating. Right?

Before the entire army of 彰化 skaters showed up, I was trying the longest ** ********** on their box that I ever went for. It's no longer hard to do, just a question of staying on. Right? I did a few and was pleased with msyelf. Then I sort of started to lose my balance on one, but not so much that it would have ended badly if I had just rode it out at another spot. 

This spot is deadly: the surface is painted slick. The boxes are maximum wax. And the whole spot is on a downhill slope. All of this contributed to me trying to ride out the ***** and landing on my back wheels and just when I thought I had made it, smashing myself down in an unsavoury way and wrenching my vertibrae apart. It wasnt the end of the session, but I didnt really do anything after that. Total elapse time stigmata fall : five minutes. 

彰化's skaters get better every time I see them. It's a big happy friendly crew. This time I met one of their homies who's been living in Sydney for a few years. There were too many people there to be politely sociable, but I managed to say goodbye to everyone (I think) before the 10 minute hill bomb back home. The streets were deserted, by Taiwanese standards, but I hopped off a few times, because after three slams, I reckoned the fourth one would be death. Also, I'm a coward and some sections of it are terrifying.