Life Turns

When I was a teenager skateboarding was everything to me. Even after I spent several months in the hospital recuperating from getting hit head-on by a car, the result of foolishly crossing its path after disengaging from holding on to the back bumper of another vehicle, I rose and slept thinking about becoming a better skater. This was the late 70s, and of course we didn’t know it then, but the East Coast Toke Team, as we dubbed ourselves, was pioneering a culture that would evolve and prove its durability. At the time we all simply felt ourselves on the outside looking in, alienated from the norms of the high school experience, stoned most of our day and disinterested in joining much of anything. But man could we skate. Downhill gave way to banks, which then evolved to vertical; and once we discovered that, actually skating straight up walls on ramps and empty swimming pools, nothing was the same. We were obsessed.

Yet and still, fact is, I was cursed from the beginning by my own physique when it came to skating. Tall and getting taller, my size 15s hogged the 30” board, taking longer than my peers to establish the right position when shifting from move to move. Worse, I was the anti-gymnast, which meant I was wholly ill-suited to many of the contortions necessary to take my game to the next level; I simply wasn’t built for it. Finally, my lanky frame and big feet made running out mistakes far more challenging, and that meant meeting unforgiving pavement more often. Many was the night I tossed and turned, vividly reminded of the day’s miscalculations… a sprained wrist here, scarred thigh there. Having already paid a lifetime’s worth of dues recently, I developed a dread for falling which would do much to inhibit the progress only hard knocks could secure.

All of these limitations would conspire to create a moment of truth a couple of years later. We were skating yet another hastily constructed half pipe, this one located in the Annandale VA woods, when I realized it was no use, I wasn’t going to be able to keep up. What was fast becoming the bare minimum in terms of an acceptable quiver of tricks I didn’t have and wasn’t willing to donate the skin necessary to get. The summer before I had been introduced to surfing, which fully complemented my love of the ocean and only had drowning as a hazard to be avoided; I could live with that. Right then and there I checked out from skateboarding. Though I would skate intermittently through the next decade, and astound new friends with abilities they couldn’t imagine a 6’6” 200 pounder possessed, that was it for an obsession that once defined me.

The East Coast Toke Team went on to attain a cult following and legendary status within the East Coast skating scene. They became ruling locals at the Cedar Crest Country Club ramp, perhaps the East Coast’s most famous skate spot, and while we grew apart, my roots are with them, which I believe they appreciate. I was there at the start… usually that’s enough. I am certain each of my buddies, who allowed their passion for pools, ramps, anything skatable, to resist the responsibilities of adulthood for an extra decade, harbor some regret for doing so. How much more prosperous and comfortable they would now be had they, like me, headed off to college and turned the page, is something each may ponder… or not. Who’s to say but them. Yet and still, passion has its own price tag. The injuries I refused to endure they absorbed well after the luxury youth provides to recovery. We had a reunion now near ten years ago and the toll was evident to any eyes that noticed. Additional years will do nothing but enhance cumulative suffering.

All of which brings me to my hero, Dan Heyman. He was a year younger than our core membership, actually the little brother of an acquaintance. One day he just started hanging out and that was that. From the start he was ahead of the curve, always the first to attempt and perfect something new. Willing to suffer for his progress, old pictures show him in a leg cast here or a bandaged wrist there, he nonetheless most always appeared effortless and developed his own style, that while mimicking West Coast idols, contained more than its share of his own originality. There was never a doubt Dan was imprisoned by his talent, and would take his place in the evolving 80s DC-area skate scene as far as it would lead him. Why not?

Now he is 55 plus and still doing it! Which makes him more than extraordinary. Of course it no longer determines his life; he is happily married and works for a living. But he can often be found in an empty pool doing what he did 40 years ago, a bit more carefully, but with no less intensity. I am not at all surprised by this, but it’s incomprehensible nonetheless. Skating concrete pools in one’s late 50s really has no valid point of reference. I suppose playing Rugby gets close, but that’s still done on soft grass, immeasurably more forgiving than cold concrete. To watch Dan Heyman take his stoic turn among a gaggle of shredders, some now young enough to be his grandkids, defines what life is supposed to be about. Bucket lists are for those unsatisfied with what they are doing; Dan doesn’t seem to have such concerns. Why would he? He’s Peter Pan, still employing the gift god gave him without apology; and he still has the courage to pay the price it demands, with a body ever mindful of decades worth of previous insults. He never was much for exhuberance, but his determination not to abide time’s dictatorial outreach, implies boundless passion and commitment most of us can’t even imagine.

Dan and his wonderful wife Kim recently purchased a beach flat in downtown Ocean City, MD, within throwing distance of the town’s skatepark. The idea of spending retirement snaking runs on the park’s halfpipe in the morning and hitting the beach or links by afternoon strikes me as utopian and blows me away in its utter manifest destiny. I want nothing more than to hang out and watch him do it…. and I’ve told him so. But I’m sure to Dan it’s simply a no-brainer… what else would he do? This is what living life out loud looks like. BC