Euthanasia/Reincarnation

I don't focus boards. It's immoral, and it's usually an embarrasing display of lack of personal control, or of cold, heartless disregard for a trusty old friend, like a man shooting his 17 year old pet dog in the face because it doesn't have enough pop anymore.

The problem was, this skateboard was invincible. Actually, not invincible, since I cracked through the middle on a ******* in Taichung, and since the tail has split into several pieces. We both knew what was up. The Black Bastard/Black Beauty/Black Behemoth/Black Bazooka wasn't going to go out like a rabbit, but instead like a cat, with an eyeball hanging down its face and half of its guts out of its abdomen. So be it.

We went to the three stair park, this skateboard and I. It's the spot where I learned more tricks on deck than ever before, or at least more variations. It was this deck. It wasn't because it's a good shape. It's a terrible shape. Really awful. But it was the second one in a row of the same shape, and that goes a long way. Tonight, I just wanted to say goodbye to an old friend, but the BB/BB/BB/BB had one more surprise in store: a ** **** to either *** ***** out or to ***** ** ***** out - it's such a weird thing that I'm not sure what it actually is. Weirdest of all was how natural it felt immediately. I had just never thought of doing it that way before, and within a half dozen tries, I was slidin and ridin em out. I tried to kill the skateboard on ****** ***** and so on, but it just wouldn't get ruined. The weather was neutrally hot, ie not bad for the tropics, and I downed a 2.5 L of water. This meant that  Icouldnt fit as much beer in my stomach as usual, and I had to skate basically sober. At this rate, I'll have a six pack by next winter.

I was kind of emotional about the trip out to the skateboard graveyard. The BB was cracked all the way across the middle, and the tail was competely delammed. Out of respect, I didn't try any more tricks after a street ******** put my heel through the middle. But it still kept going. I rolled all the way to the dog piss curbs and dismantled it there, finally, placing it's broken but unsurrendering corpse under the fence beside its ancestor.

Then I set up the new one, in a hail of mosquitos at Yitong Park. I skated it back home in flipflops. I am now as optimistic as I was depressed when I set out to say goodbye to my best deck ever. Godspeed, BB, godspeed.