The Big One

I went out to Neihu Sports Park with a buddy, and we found a about a dozen guys skating it. I'm not a big fan of parks, but I was happy to meet some new people and skate terrain I'm not accustomed to. The most popular part is a deformed miniramp. There's also and 8ft section, and a bmx/rollerblade style section on the other side. At least, I've never seen anyone skating the steep 20 stair hand rail with six feet of run up. I'm not saying it hasn't been done though. I mostly practiced ** ****s and rolled away from a few. Then I spoke with a filmer who grew up on the west coast, and the lights went out. We all kept talking, and eventually started to skate back to the MRT station. It's usually a 20 minute skate, but we went a slightly different way. We were debating about crossing over the busy eight lane road so we could cross the levee to the river park, but just kept going down the sidewalk. I was leading, and came to a place where you have to pop down a curb and then back up. I was lazy and tired, and pushed switched after that. The sidewalk is narrow and cement tiles, but the bumps aren't too bad, and I got back up to speed and then the Big One happened. I went from casually rolling to everything going black with just enough time to realize I was going to hit my head. Then my face bounced off the tiles. Crumpled like a car crash victim, I was pretty sure, as the world came back to me, that I had broken my nose and lost a few teeth. I kept saying holy fuck, for a while, and I remember fm leaning over to check on me and saying, "dude, you hit a pipe in the sidewalk." I could taste some blood, and was surprised that my nose was pretty much normal, minus some skin. My mouth was swelling, and I kept wiping my tongue over my teeth, thinking I was so fucked up that I couldn't tell any where missing. But no, they were fine. I eventually got up, and yes, I had hit a two inch tall, one inch wide vertical plastic pipe, sticking out of hte sidewalk. Skating is fickle. You can go a long time without consequential slams, and then smash your brains out because of a fucking camoflauged pipe in the sidewalk. I talked to fm for a minute (I think he was concerned about concussion; he said he thought it knocked me) and then he got me and uber and took me back to the station. I'm not really in the mood to write all this, but lzyk says I have to write something that makes sense or she's taking me to the hospital to get checked for concussion.