I started my day by driving around town for 20 min looking for a smooth, mildly inclined, long and wide strip of relatively uninterrupted pavement. The skate park here in town is too small for cruising, though at 8AM on a Sunday, the park was empty except a couple of 10 year old girls and their spectator moms. Lucky for me, the local shopping center parking lot is so unnecessarily vast for our community that I found an empty, out of the way area to practice.
I have a few tricks to get people to leave me alone during practice: 1) go to the spot early enough in the morning when no one else is there 2) it's so early that any cop/security guard will see my dedication and diligence, thus hopefully won't ask me to find a new spot. 3) I'm a girl on a skateboard--rare sight but not miraculous and somehow this makes me less of a trouble maker? 4) I practice alone, most won't bother me except with a morning greeting. But if I had a crew with me, some would say it's bad for business and we'd be asked to move along. Since none of my friends cruise, I don't really have a hard time finding places to ride .
Today I was a bit ambitious and started from a higher altitude than I may not have been ready to tackle--yet. While going downhill rather quickly, my board was tilting left and right uncontrollably. I was certainly pushing myself. Thanks to my diligent practice with balance, I didn't fall off (!!) despite the [kinda] high speed bunny-hill bombing. But, I was also really lucky because there were no cars were around me. Had a car approached me from the front or back, I would have hurt myself for sure.
Video on the right is another example of skateboarding. I cannot carve like these girls (I don't really intend to either) but I did catch a few shots of cruisers, thus proving I am not the only girl on this planet who rides one.
Big takeaways: baby steps are not a laughing matter--skate at your skill level! Practicing on short 1/4 mile strips of road is a lame substitute for distance cruising.
