Blades of Glory

Last Spring I bought a pair of used rollerblades off of Craigslist. I was eager to try it out because I often spot fit young chics on the Monon looking so cool gliding side-to-side rolling down the trail. However my fear of falling on my ass prevented me from jumping right into this young person's past time. After a year of my rollerblades collecting dust in the closet they made their debut today as I finally got up the guts to strap them on. I parked at the trail parking lot on 151st Street (Greyhound Pass). Not my usual spot I park for biking but I thought I needed to stay on the less traveled part of the trail to avoid complete humiliation. I opened the back of my car and sat on the tailgate and proceeded to put on my rollerblades, knee pads, wrist guards, and helmet. It is at this exact moment that I realize that no matter if I fall or not I already looked like a complete dumbass. I took my first few wobbly steps and started South down the trail. I got the hang of it right away and started to imitate that cool side-to-side glide. My joyfulness from this new found sport quickly turned to panic when I realized that stopping and turning were in my near future. When I saw 146th Street up ahead I knew that there was no way I was going to attempt to cross four lanes of a busy intersection on this maiden voyage. So I prepared to stop by tilting my right toes up and leaning back on the brake. My panic turned to horror when I realized that the brake must have been worn down a little from the skates' previous owner and were not slowing me down fast enough. I quickly had a mental flash of the existing scrapes on the knee and wrist guards and start to put all of the puzzle pieces together. Bad break=bad fall. Oh shit! I managed to wrap my arm around a sign pole and rolled into a bed of flowers (sorry City of Westfield). It wasn't pretty but I stopped before rolling into traffic. After regaining my composure and scouting for witnesses (there were none, thank god) I started skating North. I was practicing slowing down along the way and crossed 151st and 156th with no incident. I was having a blast swaying back and forth to the beat of my music. Bobbing my head from side-to-side while taking in the scenery along the trail. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of myself in a shadow and laughed out loud at how ridiculous I must look. Middle-aged suburban housewife jammin' to some tunes with A LOT of protective gear on. I should have had a mouthguard in just to complete the ensemble. Ha! I didn't have far to go and, thankfully, there weren't many people on this part of the trail. Especially anyone I knew! The paved part of the trail ends at 161st so I turned again and headed South. I waved on any drivers kindly stopping for me to cross the intersections because my starting skills weren't much better than my stopping skills. I approached 146th again and this time realized that the difficulty in stopping was compounded by the gradual slope toward rush hour traffic. Had I known this before I would have avoided attempting this obstacle the second time. I took a deep breath and tried to put on the brakes again but in a last ditch effort to stop before being squished by a soccer mom I "strategically" fell on my left knee pad and right wrist guard. Essentially doing a half split. I was embarrassed but I was alive. Another trip up to 161st then down again to 151st and it felt like a million bucks. In total, I rollerbladed six miles in one hour! Obviously I'm not ready to show off my skills along the canal in Broadripple where the trail traffic is hard to manage even on foot but this won't be my last rollerblading experience. I will keep practicing and trying to look cool while doing it.