Texas Longboarder

The Waco Longboard club showed mucho hospitality for this alum. Here's a couple of the lads in the parking garage.

For any of you who followed the old version of my Bob’s Trick Tips site from back in 1999, you will no doubt remember my friend Fletcher. At the time I met Fletch, he was only 12 years old, but already a master of many flip tricks and a rad skater. He started skating at 9, so that explains a lot.

Me, ruling the garage.

This weekend Fletch is graduating from the University of Texas at Austin. I couldn’t be more proud of him. I was lucky enough  become friends with his family, and they are just such good people. Like — the best people you could know.

So on Friday I took off work a little early to head south, for his graduation ceremony on Saturday evening.

Warp in the space-time continuum.

First stop, after getting a nice iced mocha drink for the road and getting through downtown Dallas was Waco. Specifically, my alma mater of Baylor University, home of the Waco Longboard Club.

I pulled into town right at 5pm, called a couple of the guys, and within about 10 minutes the lads were showing up. We spend a little time talking and cruising around in front of the gym where I practiced flatland freestyle 22 years ago, and then headed off campus to a “new” Baylor parking garage.

The garage is 4 stories, and actually sits on the former site of Mark Twain apartments, where I lived during my last summer in school there, and my wife lived for much of the time we dated. We boarded the elevator, rode to the top floor, and whipped down the garage. This particular garage is nice, in that each level has a downhill center section, and parking on both left and right. In other words, on each level you can turn either frontside or backside. The Gravity Bamboo Spoon was my weapon of choice this evening.

Hoodie tied around the waist, Hosoi style. WIN!

Not the fastest garage ever, but a lot of fun, and at least on Friday night practically empty and no traffic. Killer. We took a lot of runs, and finally a university cop showed up on the top deck to check things out. It seems the boys have a good relationship with the campus cops, as this fellow simply said “be careful” and went on his merry way, leaving us to continue the session. Very, very cool!

We took a few more runs. In between I told them a few old Baylor skateboarding stories, and explained a little about doing 1-footed tail wheelies.

As 7pm approached we were all hungry, so I went with two of the guys to the Penland Hall cafeteria, where I ate many, many meals as a freshman and sophomore living in that dorm. The dining hall has been updated a bit with a mexican food area and a few other “fancy” things, but overall it was about the same. I opted for the classic college cafeteria hamburger. You know, the one where they take the meat patty out of a tray of meat patties, where they swim in some sort of “burger liquid”. Good stuff.

Authentic Penland Hall hamburger.

Afterward we said our so-longs for now, and I headed south, to the fine city of Belton, and the home of my friend Mike (the artist formerly known as “Grumpy Ol’ Bastard”) Moore. The Moore family has a very nice compound, and a spectacular guest house where I’ve stayed many times. Awesome composting toilet. Makes taking a dump an adventure. I ate some Mexican food, visited with Mike and Dana, then retired to the guest house, where I sit now writing this blog entry, drinking a Coke, and listening to some metal music. After a quick deposit in the compost bank I hit the sack.

All in all, a good day. I miss my wife and cats.

Looking forward to tomorrow: Austin, the Lil Surfer Ditch, the Newk, and Fletcher’s graduation.

More later.

Tags: baylor university, longboarding, parking garage skating, Waco longboard club

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2010 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Road Trips, Session Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.