there's this super long-bomb hill in boston commons that i've long regarded as my mortal enemy. it starts at the high corner and ends at the low corner (really, you say). most of the hill is pretty tame, but there's this part at the top where it dips down crazy and you pick up all this speed. in about three seconds, you're going faster than you can run, and this is bad, because once you're going faster than you can run, if things get super-hairy and your board gets the speed wobbles, you can't just hop off the board, bail and run it off. this is a point worth clarification to the non-skaters out there. if your trucks aren't tight (ie. if you wanna be able to carve tighter turns), once you get going fast, your board will start carving left and right super quick. it's hard to avoid. there's no analogy in the flora and fauna world, so i use an example from hollywood and point to the red mustang that tried to get inbetween the two semi's in 2 fast 2 furious (a totally cool movie -- awesome to the max!). once it gets the speed wobbles, the board is irreversibly out of control. this is not good. being out of control is never good, unless you're the hulk, in which case that's a good thing, cause then you get to say "hulk smash!" and smash things and have jennifer connelly as your girlfriend (even though you'll never excuse her for that double-dildo business in requiem for a dream). i've always fucked myself up going down this hill, to the point that i have to really pump myself up everytime. this is usually done by alternately flexing my left and right pectoral muscles. no, i'm joking. seriously, though, last time i hit a crack in the pavement and checked myself hip-first into a bench. this, believe it or not, is something i try to avoid. i've heard chicks dig scars, but i've never heard of any who like peanut-shaped and -sized blue bruises. maybe i'm not tapping into the right fetish crowd. whatev. today, i chickened out once again. i got half way down the hill and the board got wobbly. i had no intention of adding a matching bruise/gash/rash/slice/slash/teenage mutant ninja turtle on my right hip, and i was wearing shorts, so i said, fuck it, i'm bailing. i jumped off the board and started pumping me wee little legs as fast as i could. pump legs pump, i told them, pump like you've never pumped before. and so, they pumped away, fast, faster, fastest, except, true to previous experience, you really can't run faster than, say, 40mph. there was a comical moment, shared by the crazy thoreau-reading blanket-wearing coke-bottle-eyeglass-wearing chaw-spitting homeless hippie girl sitting underneath the light, where i did my best impression of speedy gonzalez, taking these bloody enormous steps twice a second and making that noise where you speak into a fan and it sounds like you're darth vader. i'm so fucking precious.