Learning to skateboard

I've always wanted to learn to skateboard. When I was little, I must have been too uncoordinated to learn, because I never advanced past the technique where you kneel on the board, like so:



As a child, I could get away with such retardation, but as a grownup, such indulgences are inappropriate. Also, my knees would start to hurt pretty quickly.

As it so happens, Wellington has a really nice and new skatepark, here captured in prententious black and white glory by Francisco:



Fortunately, I was not alone in my desire to learn to skateboard. Allen has also recently been bitten by the bug. However, he had had some informal lessons the weekend before, so here he is working on some sort of "stand-on-the-board-and-jump-and-make-the-board-flip-then-land-on-it" trick:



In another stroke of fortune, some of our friends who already know how to skate came out to give encouragement and tips, provide social company, and in Ken and Brenda's case, to take photos. Here's Ken, photo by Allen with Ken's camera:



Brenda also had a camera, though it was the barbaric, non-digital variety, so nothing from her here. But here's a photo of Brenda and me, being blown by the wind on our boards:



For completeness, since Brenda and Taisuke are an item, here's Taisuke talking with Oberon (Oberon is Kevin's three or four-year-old; we'll come to them momentarily):



As just mentioned, Oberon is our friend Kevin's little boy. He and his wife Lesleigh are expecting a little girl in about a month. Kevin used to own a tattoo shop; that's how he met Lesleigh. Lesleigh likes to paint Oberon's face:



And here's an unflattering picture of Oberon's dad (click here for a nicer picture of Kevin, who in reality is actually quite handsome):



And that was basically our skating posse this past weekend. Here's a couple more shots of me skating, photos by Ken:



and more wind-skating:



Oh, and I didn't fall at all at the skate park. My goal had been to learn to stand on the board and kick, which I achieved. Of course, when I was skating home, I did fall on my ass while trying to stop by kicking the front of the board up and dragging the tail. An older couple witnessed this, but somehow, they could tell I was fine. Probably because I got right up and bowed.