In that time I tried skateboarding and didn’t have much more success so I decided to stick to road hockey. In addition to this, my family had moved to the states due to my dad’s job and I remember several times catching glimpses of rolling in major events like the X-games. I still didn’t wake up and my family soon moved back to the town we had come from: Parry Sound, Ontario. Of course, we were nowhere near civilization because my father had inherited a 200 acre farm which my parents were determined to keep going. (they failed) Somehow I met this asian kid named Caleb and he said he lived at a camp near by called Muskoka Woods, since his dad was the head chef of the kitchen there. He was into skateboarding and asked if I wanted to come and skate with him at the massive B3 skatepark that they had there. I was 12 or 13 at the time and this seemed like a cool thing to do, so I said yes. However, there was a catch. I had to bring my own equipment and pads because the camp had packed all theirs away for the season. I had my own pads, and I had the choice to bring a wal-mart skateboard or a wal-mart pair of skates. Something told me to bring the skates. I brought them and in the few hours we skated, I barely learned how to go up and down ramps. This was a huge achievement for me and I considered myself a rollerblader from that point on.
I went to Muskoka Woods several other times with a home school group, (yes, I was home schooled for a while), and we were taken to skate the smaller, crappier B2 park. This was the first time I had ever used aggressive skates and they weren’t in the best condition so I thought my skates were better. However I did learn to air out of quarter pipes and such. Suddenly, I started not being home schooled anymore and I stopped going to Muskoka Woods which lead to, two years with absolutely no skating. I didn’t miss it much though because I still hadn’t been given the full-frontal rollerblading treatment. Close to the end of this two year skateless period my mom got a job at Muskoka Woods as a housekeeper. This meant that me and my brother could go to a camp, which kids pay thousands of dollars to go to for one week, for absolutely no charge. I was 15 and had recently quit my boring job at Tim Horton’s so I decided to sign up for a week doing what they called inline skating at B3.
The first day rolled around and I reluctantly got out of bed nice and early so I could go to camp for the day. I honestly didn’t expect more than what I had already been getting out of rollerblading: going up and down ramps. When I arrived at the activity meeting point I heard my name called and turned around to see some guy who was almost shorter than me, almost as skinny as me, and he was wearing glasses. He was also wearing these really stupid looking shoes which I later learned were called footwraps for a skate called xsjado’s and that they weren’t stupid. Until then I didn’t even know skating had its own brand names. Anyways, I thought this guy was kind of weird at first, because the only cool skating type image I knew was that of skateboarders. The guys name was Roger Wilkinson, and I had no idea that he was going to take my viewpoint on rollerblading and turn it completely around.
We walked up the really long hill to B3 and Roger lent me a pair of skates that didn’t have a brake on them. I later on learned they were made by a company called, “Remz”. We got to the skatepark and I still wasn’t expecting much. I padded up and put on Roger’s smelly skates. We were given a quick tutorial about the rules of the park, and then told to go do, “crazy awesome tricks and stuff”. Roger had disappeared somewhere and I started rolling back and forth, back and forth on the ramps, thinking I was amazing because i had good balance. After about 10 minutes I got bored and went to look for Roger to see if he could roll back and forth better than me. I did not see what I was expecting. I turned a corner just as Roger aired a spine ramp, and busted out a front Royale across a long length of coping. I was amazed and stunned and confused all at the same time. Where did this come from? I thought this kind of rollerblading only happened on that goofy movie! Over the course of the week I learned to frontside and backside stall, and was refreshed with some old things I had been taught. Roger introduced me to the underground world of rollerblading, Chris Haffey, Aragon, Razors, Remz, Chris Farmer, basically everything I needed to know to get me intrigued. I went back for the last two weeks of summer in which time I learned about the different soul tricks and how to grind a ledge. I have only been skating for just over a year but I’ve learned a lot of new stuff and I am getting better and loving every minute of it. And that’s my story on how i finally found rollerblading.
Thanks Roger, you got me addicted!!!!!
