Skating with A at Quorn

I spent the Easter Weekend up in Quorn, in the lower reaches of the Flinders Ranges about four hours north of home.  The place we stayed at was a couple hundred metres from the town's tennis courts, probably the only piece of ashphalt suitable for skating for at least 30km in any direction.  Knowing this, I took my inlines with me, along with a scooter for my skate mate, A (4).  We got our chance on Saturday afternoon after an already busy day, so went and put on our 'gloves' (wrist protectors) and took the town's one main sidewalk along the main street to the courts. 

We'd gotten A a red Razor scooter for xmas and, even though it is still a tiny bit big for him, he loves it.  This to change up from the toy 'Thomas' scooter he'd been given for his fourth birthday by a family friend (still an old favorite if you just want take it easy and listen to (Thomas) music of an evening scooter skate).  He gets intense pleasure at pushing himself along at speed and keeping his balance.  Though often ending up in a tumble when he looks up to check his audience caught the glory he is definitely improving.  And knows it.

Usually we'll wear knee and wrist protectors, elbow guards in A's case, and our helmets.  On this occasion we satisfied ourselves with wrist protectors only because we weren't going far, there were no slopes let alone hills (ironic, considering we're in the middle of one of South Australia's most hilly landscapes) and we were on holidays.  A accepted this with good grace (he usually likes wearing all the armour he can) and I hoped the risks were worth it.  The meta-lesson, sometimes you can just relax the 'normal' rules you live by as long as you continue to use your head.  

Getting to and from the courts involved navigating a hundred metres of concrete footpath complete with an inch wide canyon of a crack running down the middle for its entire length, a similar length of footpath made from ancient tar that was smooth beneath it's thin surface of fine scree, the 'white dolamite' roadside verge, and the ashphalt main road itself.  The crack in the footpath brought A down a couple times when his wheel caught in it, and almost brought me down too.  The tennis courts themselves were four in number side by side and reasonably smooth for country tennis courts.  Their nets were still up. Only a few patches of dirt turning to dust along them, and practically no litter/stonees/bark/twigs/etc.  Well maintained.  Lucky.  So in the late afternoon we entertained ourselves for a few minutes, me doing a few figure eights and transitions (intensely aware that I had no knee pads on) and A going for balance at speed.

Being boys, it didn't take long for us to start a competition.  We'd race the entire width of the four courts, taking turns to count it down.  A'd go for straight line speed on his side of the nets, and I'd do a looping slalom in different configurations (eg. forwards, backwards, transitioning on the apex) up mine.  It took a little convincing for him to agree to me not going for a straight line speed skate, but he had the good grace to agree when realised that I was handicapping myself not as an insult to him, but to even up our technical differences (he's a proud one).  He went over two or three times in our four or five races, usually because he was laughing to hard with the excitement of looking to see where I was as he raced along and realising that it was really close or that he was winning near the end.  Each time, he was back on his feet and racing as soon as realised that wasn't hurt beyond the immediate shock.  Good stuff.

Apparently our score was 2 all at the end as, both satisfied and one of us with a few more bruises, we called it a good evening and skated back to our hotel before the sun set.