Sidelines
THEY'RE all going to die. They're going to come smashing back to Earth, limbs flailing, bones breaking, settling at last into a twisted heap. And they're going to land on me first. I just know it. Extreme sports take
you for a rideI have come here, to the Blazin' Circus at Blaisdell Arena, drawn by commercials for Doritos and Mountain Dew, to see the "extreme sports" for myself. I don't follow "extreme sports," the skating, the blading, the biking, the tricks. I don't get them. They do nothing for me. I change the channel. I don't call people "dude!"
It hits me all of a sudden that I am the oldest person here. Perhaps not chronologically, no. An older guy whizzes by beaming, his gray hair and whiskers frizzing maniacally, Bruce Vilanch on a skateboard. No, there are plenty of older people here, but not in spirit, I'm sure.
For example, I walk. I have no Heelys, no wheels. I haven't brought a skateboard with me just to tool around the exhibits. I have no crash helmet. I'm not displaying a souped-up race car, complete with a photo of the same car and a scantily clad young woman proudly displayed on the dashboard. I have never, ever, not once in my life had any occasion to use the word "vert."
I have reached the point in my life when falling down is a bad thing.
A video is playing at one of the booths, and in it, skaters zoom through city streets and over flights of stairs, jumping, twisting, turning, sliding. Crazy, sick, disaster-taunting antics, stopping only long enough to give the finger to friendly, smiling cops. They swoop, like flying monkeys out of "The Wizard of Oz." They are inviting tragedy and they finally get it, a young man landing so suddenly, so chillingly awkward it makes your heart stop.
He lies there, on the screen, face down, his body convulsed by sobs. Or laughter.
Is this a sport? I don't know. But "circus" certainly fits. This is the high-wire act, the flying trapeze. It must be like watching someone stick his head in a lion's mouth. "The Crocodile Hunter" on wheels.
But then the warm-ups are over, and here come inline skaters up and down their ramp, and the real thing is much different than that.
They soar. They float. Up, up, up. Into the rafters. Into the heavens. The announcer tells us to make noise, but we don't. We can't. It's impossible to shout when you're holding your breath.
They fly overhead, pausing for that split second the way they do before gravity yanks them back, and at that moment you think you might just understand.
"It's a rush," says inline pro Cesar Mora. "It's the flow, it's a beautiful thing."
The looks on their faces say it all at the peak of these flights of fancy, at that precise second they look back down to Earth and know all. As Mora says, "Everything we do now is brand new." And I watch them in awe.
We've felt this feeling, we think, if only once, if only in a long ago and sacred moment. The perfect wave. The highest ride on the swing and letting go and jumping off, that magic second before we hit the grass.
But this, this has to be even more so, to feel it all the time, to feel it like this, to take others with you just by watching you fly.
"These guys just go so high," one skater says admiringly. "It's gotta be a different feeling."
It is. Ask Japan's Takeshi Yasutoko, ranked No. 1 in the world in inline skating (whatever that means). The announcer tells us that yesterday he touched the ceiling twice, launching himself off that half pipe and into legend, and today he is so high it looks like he's going to bump his head. He feels it, as for just a moment he stops in mid-air, Wile E. Coyote, but without the sudden panic. No, his realization is something else entirely.
"Very ...," he starts to say, his eyes telling the story but his tongue betraying him. "Ahhh!" he says, smiling with frustration and joy, grabbing the helmet he still wears on his head. "I can't speak English!"
No, he can't describe it. But he doesn't have to. If you've watched him you have some small idea. You know you've had just a taste of it sometime in your life. And now he's given you another, just a little bit.
Leaving now, I have to fight the urge to elbow that kid, the one with the cast on his arm, and grab his skateboard for one quick, stolen ride down the small ramp. There would be skinned elbows in less than a second, to be sure. But before then, freedom!
But I don't, still the oldest man in the room. No, I still prefer my sports without "attitude." I have no craving for Mountain Dew. But maybe I get it now, after soaring with Yasutoko as he hung there in the sky.
I'm going to the park today and I'm going to swing on the swing. And then I'll leap off, and into the air.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com