An Inline Flâneur

I’ve been desk bound and house bound for most of the past month, desperate for my wheels to hit the streets again. I took the day off and headed to the Silver Comet trail with Jennifer and the kids, who were also looking to skate. What more could you ask for in a family? The weather looked pretty nice as we rolled out. We didn’t have a specific goal in mind - we were just out to have fun, so the plan was just to go until we felt like turning back. ...

In June, we took a family trip to Minneapolis. We’d never been before, but I’d heard that it was a family-friendly city, that the weather is summer is beautiful, and that skating around the lakes was a very popular activity. So on a bit of a lark, we packed our skates and headed to MSP. What we found over the course of 5 days is a friendly, flat, outdoor-oriented city that’s perfect for skating in the nice weather. ...

After a week of not skating due to a business trip and other obligations, we woke up this morning to serious thunderstorms. I love a nice, rainy, dark day, but by afternoon I was feeling some cabin fever and a desire to skate. But how? I decided that the best option would be to head to semi-suburban Atlanta’s most common building, a parking garage. A little streetviewing on Google Maps identified a garage just a few minutes from my house that looked ideal, so I drove right over. ...

My sixth night skate with the APRR crew, and the first in my Sebas! My feet feel much better than any previous skate. Very small crew tonight: just 3 skaters in the casual crew (including me), and 3 skaters in the intermediate crew. Given the hot, humid weather, the casual crew decided to aim for a chill skate. Ironically, we ended up skating some sizable hills (with the crappy pavement Atlanta is notorious for). ...

This was the last week of school for the kids, so between their activities and a heavy workload, I wasn’t able to go skating at all during the week. That was disappointing - I find that if I don’t put on skates every few days, I begin backsliding and my progress is much slower. For a variety of domestic reasons, I was only able to get out briefly yeseterday to skate, so I hit my usual traing spot: the large parking lot of a nearby school. ...

Hot, fun afternoon skating cones in Piedmont park with many of the usual suspects, and some new (even to me) faces. Wore my Seba HighLights but swapped out my typical 90mm Hydrogren wheels for 80mm street invaders on a smaller frame. Much easier to do crossovers! In addition to some slalom and noodling around, Houston lead a skate around the park and over to Legacy Fountain (fountain it wasn’t on, unfortunately - it was broiling hot). ...