About two years ago, in the spring of 2007, I found myself working fulltime at a Wendy’s. That’s right, I was cooking chili, flipping burgers, and taking orders. Believe me it was a lot less glamorous then it sounds. I was pretty much the most diligent worker there and after 5 months they wanted to make me a shift manager. That’d be the life, telling useless teenagers to remember to ask if they want fries with that. I thought. God is this what my life is going to be like for the next couple of years! I was praying for a way out, and in a sudden turn of events rollerblading stepped in. It came as a call from a friend. A once in a lifetime opportunity, which would come to change my life entirely.
It was on a Friday afternoon, and my friend Brian Lofgren called me up. He had heard from a friend of his, Jen, that there was a summer camp called “Muskoka Woods” looking for someone to be an inline instructor. Brian couldn’t go because he had just moved out on his own and needed to have a job to pay his bills, so he instantly thought of me. It was a full-time position, which would entail me moving up to the camp for the next ten weeks to teach kids how to aggressive skate. It paid very little because they would take you room and board directly off your paycheck and give you what was left, roughly $110.00 a week. I didn’t really care though, because it was just the thing I was looking for to get away from Wendy’s.
That weekend Brian and I drove out to Kitchener to meet up with his friend to find out more about the camp. After hearing about how great the camp is, I decided to apply, and did so online on the following Monday. On Wednesday I had an over the phone interview, and on Thursday I received a contract offer via email. The only catch was that the contract started the next day! Sooooo I went into Wendy’s Thursday afternoon, about 2 hours before my closing shift was about to start, and quit. To say the least they were not happy about it, but it was an opportunity of a lifetime and I wasn’t going to let Wendy’s stand in my way. I signed my contract with Muskoka Woods and started to pack for camp. The next morning, I met up with Jen to hitch a ride to camp to start my summer as an inline instructor for Muskoka Woods.
My summer at camp was amazing. I would skate for 6 hours a day teaching kids how to skate and do tricks. On my free time I could skate more or flirt with one of the many hot girls on camp. The food was free and always prepared, there was a lake for swimming on the really hot days, and there wasn’t much “real” work to be done. I couldn’t have asked for more. My skating got exceptionally better, I got to take part in some crazy games and activities, and I met tons of awesome people, including my now long term girlfriend, Katie Demetrious. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because she has helped us at CanadianRoll by taking awesome pictures and helping us with filming and editing. Without Muskoka Woods I wouldn’t be were I am today, and it all came from rollerblading. Rollerblading was the only, and I mean only reason I ended up at Muskoka Woods that summer; and to be honest at times it seemed like I was just suppose to be there. The way I see it, I was simply meant to be rollerblading. All of the best things in my life have stemmed from it and it has made my life better. Sometimes I wonder what my life would be without rollerblading, and all I can picture is me standing alone in a pickup window wearing a gay uniform and head set, asking the fat guy in his huge diesel pickup truck with an engine that is to loud to hear over if, “He wants fries with that?”
- by Roger Wilkinson
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