Night Skating

I love skating at night. I just skated home from our birthday bbq, and I'd completely forgotten the rush that you get skating in almost total darkness. It's kind of zen, if that doesn't make me sound like too much of a wanker. During the day, you're constantly, automatically scanning the track ahead of you. If there's a nasty little gravel patch up ahead, you've registered it and subconsciously planned some evasive action well before it becomes a real threat. You're aware of upcoming surface changes, you can see all the cracks and bumps -- basically, you can plan ahead.
At night, all that changes. You have to feel every change almost before it happens to be able to react fast enough to deal with it. It's kind of like that scene where Luke Skywalker is training with his lightsaber on the Millenium Falcon and he's got the blast shield down: if you wait to the point where you can consciously think 'Hey, that feels like a big enough chunk of gravel under my left skate to chock my wheels completely, better shift weight to the other--oops! Seed pods, shift back again--' then you'll be faceplanted and painting the pavement with skin before you can say 'When did they dig up that patch of asphalt for the new drain?'. You have to be your skates. You have to be one with them. And you have to do it all while you're pumping it so hard that you're lungs are screaming and even if it were daylight you wouldn't be able to see for the sweat blinding your eyes. I love it.

My apologies if all this comes across as a total toss, but I had a long, boring day after too many other long, boring days that I would rather have spent hanging out with Tash and Iola,
and my skate home kind of brought me back to life.