About Skateboarding Essay

Do you like danger? Do you like thrilling and exciting things that get your blood pumping? If you do, then skateboarding may be your thing. Skateboarding gives you an exciting and thrilling sensation, while at the same time giving you a true feeling of accomplishment. Although skateboarding is dangerous and exhilarating, through skateboarding can come new friends, seeing new places, and can just be a lot of fun. My life is filled with music, sports, and very many activities and hobbies, but to me skateboarding has taken me the farthest as a person, and has been the most exciting and fun. Something that skateboarding lets you do unlike other sports or hobbies, is traveling and exploring. For vacations, my friends and I will travel to various cities or sometimes states, with only one purpose. To find the famous spots that skateboarders from all over come to skate. For example, recently, my friends and I, (Ryan H. and Paul R.) traveled to Philadelphia. We had read about a couple of famous skate spots on the Internet and we decided they would be fun to look for and skate in the city. My mom drove us up for the day and we had a lot of fun. Another fun, out of town trip that my friends and I voyaged to, was a trip to New York City. In the skateboarding world there is a very famous place called Brooklyn Banks. Brooklyn Banks is ironically located directly under the Manhattan Bridge, and it is a spot that brings skateboarders from everywhere to skate. What makes this spot so amazing is that it is one of the very few fun and at the same time legal spots in New York to skateboard at. What Brooklyn Banks is exactly, is a tunnel like area made out of bricks. The sides of this tunnel are banks that are curved at the bottom, giving them the feel of a quarter pipe ramp when riding upon it. Also, along the floor, skateboarders have put up grind rails and boxes to skate on, making it like a skate park; and if you’re lucky you may actually see a pro skateboarder there skating it for fun. Who would have known that you don’t have to captain a ship to be an explorer? You can do the same on a skateboard. It gets a little boring skating the same spots every single day, so sometimes we go on adventures exploring through Annandale, Falls Church, and Alexandria just searching for fun spots to discover. One of our most favorite places to go to is Washington D.C. We skateboard in D.C almost every weekend, and we oftentimes explore spots there. In fact, we’ve gone to D.C so much, we now know our way around the subway system and city pretty well. Exploring new spots is fun because when you find a new spot and skate it, more people will come to it, and you’ll feel like you sort of claimed that spot and founded it just like the explorers of the past. Another fun thing about Washington D.C is that you meet a lot of cool people there who you see a lot and skate with a bunch. When you’re in D.C there are some spots that you know for a fact a bunch of kids will be skating, and if you ever get bored you can just meet some new friends and skate there. Some people enjoy calm activities, board games, and picnics, but to me there’s nothing better than the feeling of throwing yourself down some stairs or rolling up to a huge drop and getting that thrilling sensation like you do when you skateboard. One of the best things about skateboarding is that you can always progress with it and get better at it. There’s nothing better than learning a new trick or landing something harder than anything else you’ve ever done. I remember the first day I learned how to kickflip. The kickflip is the trick that finally brings you from that beginner level to the stage of improvement. It was one of the best feelings I’ve felt in my entire life. It was the same feeling I got when I ollied my first stair set. (An ollie is like jumping while on a skateboard) Another thrilling factor that skateboarding brings is that some of the best spots to skate are in sometimes bad parts of town or neighborhoods. Knowing that you’re in a dangerous neighborhood adds to the thrill and feeling of accomplishment after leaving. One of the biggest, yet thrilling aspects of skateboarding is knowing how, at any given moment, you could fall very hard and get hurt. This makes it all the more exciting when you land that one trick you’ve been going for. Earlier this year, I was skateboarding and I severely sprained my ankle. After I recovered, I made it a goal that I go back and land that same trick that I got hurt on before, so I could feel that excitement and conquer my fear from that certain spot. Thanks to skateboarding I have met many friends that I see almost every weekend and skateboard with all the time. Now-a-days, most kids just sit at home bored playing video games and not having anything to do on the weekends. This leads to a lot of kids doing drugs and getting into bad habits. A lot of people associate skateboarders with druggies and bad kids, when actually, in a way, skateboarding is like an anti-drug, which keeps us away from those bad things and always gives us something to do. What’s also good about skating is that even when were not skating and we’re just talking, we always have something to talk about or relate to. One of the best weeks I’ve ever lived was at a summer camp called Woodward. Woodward consisted of 18 different whole skate parks, BMX courses, gyms, and is the number one extreme sports camp around. At Woodward, every week of camp, new pro athletes come to do demos and skate the parks with the campers. The entire experience at that camp was amazing and I can’t wait to go back next summer. Skateboarding has opened up the door for some many amazing opportunities for me, and with out skateboarding who knows where I would be.