skateboarding equipmentStanding ten feet tall with a smooth composite surface, stuffed in the corner of a local skatepark, the halfpipe was the only piece of the park that didn’t always have skaters shredding it. That was for one simple reason: no one knew how. The halfpipe is so much different from jumping a stair set or grinding a loading dock ledge. It is just as technical as it is scary. I stood over the coping, eyes down towards the vertical angle that smoothly leveled off into the flats before sweeping back up towards the opposite-side coping. I’d warmed up on the smaller quarter pipes dotting the park and felt confident in the drop-in. The hard part was sticking to my skateboarding equipment on the way up and down at the other end. Friends sessioned a small rail across the park, leaving me on the halfpipe alone. The stars were out but thick clouds kept them hidden apart from a window of clear sky here and there.

<--Insane Drop-In

Confident in my skateboarding equipment, I placed the deck’s tail on the coping and prepared to drop-in. My left foot rose towards the nose of the deck. “Go for it.” shouted a friend who had taken notice. I looked up smiling while my body continued to move forward over the coping. Over confident, I didn’t spot my left foot and it missed the nose of the board. At this point, all of my weight had shifted forward. I fell 8 or so feet straight into the bottom curvature like a sack of potatoes. Directly after the skateboarding equipment protecting my knee smacked the bottom, my torso came down hard, blowing every bit of air out of my lungs I hadn’t already exhausted in surprise. It hurt.

My wind came back and my joints apart from jarred felt intact thanks to the skateboarding equipment. My knees survived because of pads similar to the Protec Drop-In Knee Pads S/M sold within Bridge’s Outdoor World---found at http://bridgesoutdoorworld.com/. About 30 minutes against the fence watching my friends use their skateboarding equipment had me back on the halfpipe. This time I dropped in, made it up the other end and barely looped back underneath the coping for my first successful halfpipe ride. Skateboarding equipment kept me persistent which in the end allowed me to beat that halfpipe. How pros drop in on mega-ramps always blows me away. You will never see them without armored skateboarding equipment.