Pushing my luck: Why I'm taking up skateboarding at 40

In skateboarding, a 'push' is to move forward. It's the act of stepping on the ground with your back foot to begin rolling, your other foot still planted and balanced on the board.

This is fundamental to everything skateboards were designed to do, and some of the things they weren't but do anyway. To push is to begin to ride.

To begin, I am working with a $30 board I bought years ago at San Francisco. Not the city, but the mall novelty store, which disappeared after the owner pleaded guilty to counterfeiting safety labels on knockoff lamps.

In skateboarder parlance, this is considered a "Walmart board" or a low-end model likely to break. I feel mine is probably a few steps down from this.

At my skill level — which is to say "none" — I feel that any board with some wheels on it should do. I am wrong about this, but I'll get to that later.

A 'youthful conveyance' 

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that considered more of a youthful conveyance?" said Ted Blades, host of CBC's On The Go, when I skated into work at the CBC one day.

Everything you do on a skateboard is terrifying, because everything is based on the ground being pulled out from beneath you. That's a phrase usually used as a metaphor for passing out in shock.

I really don't know why I'm getting into skateboarding at 40 other than that it looks fun.

I like the idea of active transportation on my commute, at least as long as the snow agrees with me. A bicycle would be an easy ride, but St. John's and bikes have only an uneasy truce at best, and then there's always storing it when you get where you're going.

Walking seems like a waste of time without my dog, and she agrees.

But a skateboard? With that I could just elegantly glide to work each day, deftly carving around cars and potholes, and then just stowing it under my desk until it's time to head home. Convenience itself.

In fact the "youth" at the skate park aren't even on skateboards anymore. For the most part, the kids have moved on to scooters. But as it turns out, there's a lot of people my age who used to skateboard as kids and are now getting back into it, for one reason or another.

It's just I'm the only weirdo starting out now.

Walking the plank

Then there's the "active" part of active transportation. I have never been the active type, and I'm reaching the age where that will become a problem that my joints and metabolism can no longer overcompensate for.

And let's be honest, we are not a province that handles our health well, frequently topping lists of high rates of heart disease, obesity and lack of activity. So clearly I need to make a change, but maybe I've just been waiting for one to come along, and probably that wasn't the right way to go about things.

For many like me, I suspect we already know how to make a positive change in our lives. A little less of this, a little (or a lot) more of something else. But sometimes it's not enough to know how we should be living and the steps to get there. We need that inciting incident; an inspiration or intervention, or perhaps a scare, that kick-starts change.

A push.

I didn't get that moment. Most don't, so we have to make it up for ourselves. Now, staring at midlife and wondering what it's all for (and how I can keep it all going as long as possible) I am alone in a parking lot on a cool morning, hoping no one notices, standing in front of a plank, as though Captain Hook is prodding me in the back to make me walk on it just like all the other lost boys before me.

Everything you do on a skateboard is terrifying, because everything is based on the ground being pulled out from beneath you. That's a phrase usually used as a metaphor for passing out in shock.

Worse, in skateboarding your job is not to stop this horrible thing from happening, but to use its momentum to get around and hopefully look cool doing it.

I'm a child of the '80s. I grew up with skateboards around, but also with popular media telling me that things happen to you more than you just making them happen. Joseph Campbell's "call to adventure" isn't really compatible with self-starters.

Luke Skywalker did not by his own motivation look at a galaxy full of social problems and decide to work hard to make positive change. He would still be farming moisture if Obi-Wan Kenobi hadn't given him a push.

Similarly, I would still be on the couch watching these characters on TV if I weren't standing in front of a plank on wheels, attempting to not break my neck.

Grinding that midlife crisis

If there had been an Olympics in 2020, it would have included skateboarding for the first time. But most Olympic skateboarders are half my age.

I keenly remember having my first real crisis of age at 27, knowing I was no longer full of potential and had swung toward the kinetic. That whatever I was going to be, I had already somewhat become.

That was over 10 years ago, and now I'm standing in a parking lot learning how to be something I've never been before. This is my midlife crisis, I guess, a life stage which normally isn't known for great ideas. But at its core there's an impulse to avoid stagnation, to continue growing and reclaim some of that potential energy. A crisis doesn't have to be destructive, it can be revolutionary.

Today, I am in front of my crappy skateboard. In a few seconds, I will slam into the asphalt and skin my elbow.

In a week, I'll give up on the San Francisco board and get a real one. In a couple of months, I will commute to work under my own power and maybe in a few more, if I don't give up and quit, I can learn a trick or two.

But right now, I shakily balance with my front foot on the board, set my back foot on the ground, and give myself a really hard push.

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