I just found out I have a broken arm. So I went looking for things I already had written to publish. As a one hand typist I’m an excellent dancer… I found this text I wrote about a year and a half ago when I went to my first city skate. Here it is:
“As I said I would, I went roller blading in the city last night. It was one of the coolest things I’ve done in my life. Writing about it now I can feel my pulse going faster, I can even smell the breeze. I’m listening to a music from Olodum called Gravity… it was playing in my mind last night when I arrived back at Circular Quay.
It was magic… there is no other explanation. Simply a group of around eight flying in the city. I felt like I was in the middle of a music video clip or an advertisement of an adventurous product.
The whole idea played with my imagination.
I learned to roller skate (at the time there was no roller blades) when I was eight years old and I lived in Paris in France with my parents. My mother is a physicist and was doing research there at the time. As the sun would go down even before 4 pm in winter and I was usually roller skating with my friends until around 5 or 6pm, I had the impression that I was completely free even at that young age, and could go around at night adventurously with my friends. I have recollection of dodging people, going down and up ramps and stairs, climbing over a fence and on top of an abandoned factory.
Since then I didn’t have the chance to ever do anything remotely like that. I always kept in my heart that experience of being able to do anything with those wheels in my feet.
In Brazil it is impossible to roller blade, there are really very few places you can go to do it. One of the first things I got when I arrived here was my first and cheap blades.
Last year I got my good ones, with it came a free lesson where I learnt to stop when going down hill.
But if you trust fate… it puts things in the right place at the right time. I’ve been training on and off to one day be able to do this thing but until now never felt it was the right time.
And suddenly, the idea came to my mind this week. I said. I’m going! I’m ready now.
I knew I was fit enough, I could stop down hill and got control of my movements, and most of all, when I thought about it, there was no fear of anything.
So I went.
It was two full hours of a full speed adrenaline rush! You can concentrate only on what you are doing and your mind feels empty of all doubts, all anxiety, all fear. There is no space for anything else except your senses.
Have you seen an advertisement from Nike where the woman is running and she is leaving behind all her problems…? I felt like that.
The view is amazing, we went around all the wharfs of king street… the pavement is mostly very smooth and you can speed like the devil is after you… well, maybe it is!
The night was absolutely perfect, the moon was smiling to me and the air was hot with a cool breeze. With the speeding the night was caressing my skin like a lover, I could smell the sea and admire the incredible sight that is Sydney at night. There was a ship entering the harbour and even fireworks to greet me.
My brain could only produce one single thought: I LOVE THIS CITY. These are my dreams coming true.
It was the most powerful sensation not only because of the act itself but of the steer it caused. Everywhere we went through and there were people around we caused sensation.
We had the quiet and perfect moments and the turbulence of being admired and screamed at by cars passing by, people in the pubs, walkers in the streets.
I felt I could do anything, although I was the worse and obviously last of the group; Still I felt on the top of the mountain, being part of a selected group. Like what you feel when you see people bungee jumping… I felt special!
It was great, we went down hills and up hills, we dodged people and crowds, there were up stairs and down stairs, all this in the coolest city in the world, looking at the harbour bridge and opera house.
It was a lot of fun seeing people unexpectedly being overtaken by one blader, and then two, three, four…. Five, six…. Seven, eight!
I felt incredible to do all that without any fear. To be able to do the whole thing, that I didn’t fall once, that I didn’t kill anyone or even went over anyone’s foot, that I got to the end…
When people said on pitt street mall: “roller bladers!” and I realized they were talking about me it was like when we are on stage. Your life just has some magical meaning.
I lived a lifetime in those two hours.”
(Orble Votes: 51)
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