Skate Detectives

Prologue: We took some friends and clients to eat extremely expensive hotpot. There was pork, steak, chicken, and duck. There was a massive square yard of seafood, including abalones, clams, scallops, six types of shrimp, two types of languines, and a pair of gigantic spined lobsters that I spiked my finger with while eating. There was another 10 lbs of parrotfish, and the regular assortment of duck blood, greens, corn, mountain medicine, and so on. I tried to eat all of it, but failed. In fact, our friends finished theirs about an hour before we did. Taiwanese people have a talent for eating massive amounts of food.

I had planned some skating with IS but as an unreliable person, I didn't show up on time at the appointed spot. But I eventually showed up, at main station, and the first spot was a no go due to hobo. Also, they (not hobos) had erected a massive tent complex around the spot, so I kickturned on it and we left.

RegentP was the next spot. It's another classic but it was covered in little hand grenades that had fallen down from the trees. If you hit one at even a slightly reasonable speed, you went down on your leading shoulder. IS did, but it was far from his last.

Even several hours into it, I was so full that I couldnt stand trying my 37 ********s. We tried a third spot, the tiny hubba on Zhongshan Bei. Security were milling around some scooters, inexplicably, so we were forced to beer up and wait for them to leave. We downed the beers and they kept standing there staring at us and the scooters. So we pushed north.

I had grinded out some *******s, but at this piont the session got a lot better. We went by the old stoop and skated flat in front of the family until a security came out and we left because he kept coughing at us. We visited a fantasy spot from years ago, only, it had been waxed and skated.

At yuanshan, we skated a curb and then IS announced his intention to ***** **** ***** the bank to marble ledge. He slammed on the hip and again on the arm and upper body, but left with it in the pocket. I've never seen it attempted there.

Two skaters passed us giong the other way through the park, but they were too cool to say hello. Call it generational differences.

We skreeeched through the club area at triangle and ended up with more beers by the green stairs. Then we started skating again. IS got locked into a battle. We had had too many beers and he had had too many slams, but he kept coming at it; hoes and more and more hoes pouring out of hte club like spilled honey, stumbling, talking on their phones, voicing joy about what we were doing. Well, what IS was doing. I was drinking and watching by that point. Of course, he made it. There was never any question.

We parted ways, in the rain, and I skated through the taxi lanes. The sun came up quick. It had started in the sky as we split up, and by the time I turned east, a few blocks south, the purple clouds had been lit up from beneath with gold. I tried to film it as I skated home. Filming things sucks, because it kills the real memories.