Westsiiiide...whoa.

The ocean wind on my face, Orion's belt peeking through between palm trees gently swaying in the breeze as they pass by above me and my swiftly moving skateboard. the streets, only barely familiar to me, revealing themselves to be somewhat inconsistent in the quality of the concrete, yet consistently quiet and dark.

The excitement of knowing I have brought myself to this place, that this is what I wanted, and I now find myself finally doing what i had pictured in my mind. Skating Venice at night. just blocks from the ocean, where large and perfectly formed waves crash in the dark. In a few hours, the sun would rise in the east and light up the water, for my first free Saturday of surfing. All is good. I am drunk and doing a pretty good job at flowing along despite unseen cracks and holes everywhere. I am a good skater...dude. I can still olly, and every now and then i land a kick flip. I rule.

Suddenly, the street disagrees with me. It's like "brah, your 35 years old...suck it". my board stops as it hits a deep pothole and the wheels get caught. my relaxed stance of uber-confidence is suddenly horizontal and my right ankle rolls over the tip of the board as i splay out my arms and slide into a concrete home plate located somewhere under a parked pick-up truck. pain seers through my leg as my usually pretty athletic ability to fall, politely and quietly, declines to come to my aid in this moment of need and catharsis.

Defeated, I get up off the ground, look around at the uncaring trees around me and the empty, yet mocking street under me. I pull my abandoned board out from under the truck and try to skate away from the whole embarrassing scene of come-upence. But the ankle has another idea. It decides it's going to stop functioning for a month or so. It's like "dude, we're done". Take a seat, son.

The next day, I woke up to a big mortadella salami instead of a foot and hopped to a taxi to get to the hospital in Santa Monica. on a side note, best emergency room ever. there's a large flat screen TV there to watch, but i didn't get to watch it because before i could even get my paperwork done, I was "fast-tracked" into the doctors office, handed a bottle of Vicodan and given x-rays. an hour later i was back at home with the knowledge that there was nothing torn or broken. just my icarus-like hubris.