Youthful jaunts

We had been going to the PIT in Rockford for some time. For those that never skated that place in its heyday, sorry for you. It was absolutely insane..the shit even. You’d go, put a couple bucks in a envelope and put it in a box. Some on the honor system type shit..it was incredible.

Anyway, we went down there on a blistery cold winters day and I had just received my drivers liscense no more than three days earlier. I didn’t drive down there as I was a bit afraid of the freeway madness that was the drive to Rockford. We get down to our plywood paradise and as per usual, we essentially had the place to ourselves. For those who have never been to the PIT, it has two rooms; one has(d) a rad little street course and the other had a spine ramp and later they added a bowl. At this time there was merely a spine.

We headed directly to the spine and as Craig was ripping the spine, I was making a feeble attempt to learn how to skate tranny. Craig is a rad person…he’s still around probably ripping, although he lives in New Jersey nowadays and has a construction job, something he was always into. Be that as it may, he was skating, we were skating and in some sirt of freak accident, he tried to go over the spine at high speed and landed on his ankle with all his weight and basically folded it in half. As most skaters who’ve been skating for a while, he had hurt his ankle before, but this was especially bad. We were in a bit of a predicament…Craig needed to get to the doctor, Dan, our other comrade didn’t drive…it was up to the green horn..little lord crue and his three day old drivers liscense..this plastic was still warm. Not only did I need to make the unfamiliar journey back to Milwaukee from Rockford..AND a tremendous snowstorm had ensued. So here I was, driving to the hospital in Milwaukee in a crazy whiteout…I buried the needle on the pontiac 6000 le like we had a pregnant lady in labor in back.. it was nuts. I had no idea that the damage was essentially done and I didn’t need to risk life and limb to get him to a doctor. The young lord crue had never hurt his own ankle so he had no idea what it was like, all I knew was that WE NEEDED TO GET THE FUCK BACK TO MILWAUKEE!!! We made the hour and a half journey in 45 minutes.

It turned out that Craig had torn practically everything in his ankle and he would be out for some time. In the end it all turned out pretty good but I don’t think I’ve ever driven that fast again…in fact, I don’t think any 6000 LE has ever gone that fast for that long…that puppy had a top needle speed of 85 and i had it buried so far that when I took my foot of the gas, it took a while for the needle to reappear. These were the times..not to say that they are all that matters, but damn growing up was fun…