Talk About An Adrenaline Rush!

For Christmas I was given a nice pair of Inline Skaters (Rollerblade Women’s Spark Pro, to be precise) and I was desperate to try them out outside, so, today, I did just that.

We found a nice empty car park, and in the semi-dark I proceeded to skate around–on the wet tarmac. Now, I should mention that this very car park was on a slope, and the first few times I went around it I made sure that I was skating up the steepest part, and down the shallowest part, to minimise the scary factor.

However, I soon found myself going faster and faster, and then–before you knew it–I was at the top of the steepest part, going down it, faster and faster! I quickly realised that I was going to have to keep the momentum of skating going–and not attempt a sharp stop–in order to not fall over. Indeed, my speed was building and building, and I was going at around 20mph. It was scary. And about a quarter of the way down the hill, I realised that going this direction down the car park was a very, very bad idea.

I told you I was skating in the dark! This photo was taken before I had the scary adventure!

Now, these lovely inline skates have a brake built onto the back of the right skate, so, of course, as I was speeding down the hill, I applied this. However, this is when it really began to get scary. Because, sure, the brake worked. My right foot stopped slowly. The problem was that my left foot didn’t. And soon, I found myself alarmingly close to doing the splits (which, incidentally, I can do).  At this point, I quickly stopped applying the brake, and began to skate again–regardless of the frightening speed that I was now going at.

I figured that my best bet was to try to turn myself around (before I reached the end of the car park) and slow myself  down by going up hill. Of course, the other way to stop would’ve been to turn my left foot at a perpendicular angle to my right, but I didn’t dare risk this manoeuvre as there were quite a few massive, but shallow, puddles that I was speeding through. And, besides, I was going fast. Very fast.

Eventually, I managed to turn to the left, and skated along a relatively flat bit, before turning to go back up hill. And, I can tell you, that skating uphill is harder than it sounds.

And, miraculously, I didn’t fall over once. Which was a good job, considering that I wasn’t wearing any protective gear.