It's gone. In the blink of an eye, it's gone. Not a blink exactly. More like several blinks since this saga began. What's gone? Quite a bit of my strength and stamina is just flat missing, that's what. Three or four months ago, I was skating at least 8 1/2 miles a few times a week and on some days, as much as 11 miles. I felt great afterwards. I was energized and ready to take on anything. Now I'm blinking alright. I'm blinking streams of sweat out of my eyes at a point when I would have been just warming up before.


 I've been skating ever since my "little" sister taught me how about 14 years ago so she would have somebody to skate with. She was capable of wonderful tricks and spins and "twirlies" and could absolutely blow your mind (and your doors off) with her speed. She could go backwards faster than anybody else, certainly faster that I could go frontwards. She was even in the newspaper once and the picture of her was such a glorious blend of strength and grace that I framed it and presented it to her. In the blink of an eye, that too was gone. She has been chronically and painfully ill for years now and I have been forced to carry on solo. I miss her every time I skate and some days when I don't feel like hitting the street, I do it for her because she cannot.  


People think I'm absolutely crazy for skating like I do, particularly at my age. You just don't find too many 49 year old skater punks out there... I skate for a number of other reasons as well. I love the sport which requires an odd combination of strength, stamina, coordination, and plain old balls-to-the-wall daring. The rewards are magnificent stress relief (I jokingly say I haven't killed anyone in years), all over fitness, and a huge dose of those wonderful home-made drugs called adrenaline and endorphins. Like a lot of self confessed Adrenaline Junkies, part of the fun is pushing myself as hard as I can... and then some. It's a high speed, demanding sport that takes all you've got and then gives it right back to you. I must confess that it's been amusing to leave some pretty bad-ass teenagers in the dust ... 

 Well now my past self is leaving my present self in the dust. From this I've learned a couple of things which surprised me. First, to give my pre-cancer-battling self  a bit of credit for skating hard and fast for a long time. Somebody would offer me a compliment and I would respond by saying it wasn't that big a deal or not that hard or that it sounded harder that it was. Ha! Starting over has taught me a new sense of admiration for what I did for all those years. I'm trying to learn to say "yay me" which for some stupid reason is very damn difficult. Secondly I have figured out that when "they" said that getting back  into shape is harder than it was to get in shape in the first place, they were wrong. Yup, that invisible "they" was wrong. It is not harder. My expectations were higher, that's all. When I started skating distance all those years ago, my route was 4.2 miles from my house to the beach road and back. When I really thought  about it, I recalled thinking that it was quite possible that I would die of heat exhaustion before I made it back home. I remembered actually throwing up, but not quitting, mostly because I had to some how stagger back home, but hey - a little "yay me" here because I went out and skated that same route again.... and again... and again.    So I will do that again...and again... and again. And in the blink of an eye, I'll have that "me" back. Yay me.