It’s been a hot minute since I've written one of these Tyson’s Thought’s columns, but I felt like I needed to bring it back this week for a good reason.
If you’re wondering, I’ve mostly been resting my body since the high school wrestling season ended a few weeks ago. I haven’t been wrestling, I haven’t been running, I haven’t been doing anything active at all. It’s hard to explain, but basically, I've just been finding it tough to want to get up and go workout, so I hadn’t really bothered trying.
That changed recently though when I randomly got the urge to go skateboarding. Now, when I woke up that morning, I didn’t know I was going to go skating. I had my regular breakfast of oatmeal, answered emails, and then when I went to look at the weather outside, I noticed it was warm and very dry. The next thing I knew I was grabbing my skateboard from the hall closet and tossing it in the car.
Feeling the urge to go skateboarding is a pretty rare occurrence for me these days as I haven’t skated outdoors in maybe three or four years due to injuring my knee at the old KSM Skatepark while trying to land a trick on the ramp.
I ended up in the Port Hardy emergency, where a locum doctor thought it would be wise to jam a large needle into my swollen knee and drain it without giving me any painkillers beforehand. After screaming in agony during the procedure and then having to wait months for my knee to fully recover, I decided I’d had enough and it was finally time for me to retire from the sport for good.
But when an athlete says they’re going to retire, does it ever really stick? It certainly doesn’t for me. Every time I’ve ever “retired” from a sport I’ve always ended up going back to it after taking a good long break. Skateboarding was no different, and I had a good laugh about it as I drove over to Port Hardy’s brand new skatepark and went for a rip.
I'm not going to say I skated great. My timing was off, I was struggling to boardslide the rails, but regardless, it was still an epic afternoon spent relearning all of my old tricks. In fact, I had so much fun skating the new park it made me realize that life’s too short to stop doing things I love just because I’m getting older.
Sure maybe I can’t skate as good as I used to when I was younger, but that’s okay. I’m 40 years old. I can just skate like a 40 year old hobbyist and still have fun.
There’s a message "buried" inside this tome, and I hope it's an easy one to find.
Tyson Whitney is an award-winning journalist who was born and raised in Port Hardy. His family has lived in Port Hardy for more than 40 years. He graduated with a degree in writing from Vancouver Island University in 2008. Email: editor@northislandgazette.com
